“That night, I met someone who would be very important in my musical education. He was engineering in the studio and cooking burgers in the Dairy Queen. He had a Robert Mitchum hair cut and a slow humorous style… He was one of the coolest people I ever met. He was Packy Axton.” – Jim Dickinson
Despite the loving support of his musically-minded mother, Charles "Packy" Axton was ostracized from Stax proper through a rift with uncle Jim Stewart because of his casual approach and oft-eccentric ways. Packy preferred hanging out and playing music with local black musicians, something that, in the racially tense South, was viewed negatively by some. Still, throughout the mid-1960s, Packy recorded a series of hard, short, and down-home R&B stompers at Royal and Ardent Recording Studios by heavyweight producer John Fry (Big Star, Ry Cooder), accompanied by legendary Stax and Hi Records dynamos Steve Cropper, Booker T., and Teenie Hodges (Al Green, Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson). Late Late Party 1965-67 showcases seventeen of these powerful instrumental and vocal tracks for your listening pleasure. Supplemented by Memphis writer Andria Lisle’s extensive liner notes, unpublished photographs, and the attention to detail Light In The Attic is known for, soul fans the world over shall rejoice at the glorious re-masters and reverential CD/LP/Digital treatment.
Though Packy died in 1974 after loosing his long battle with alcohol, his music is now preserved with the respect it deserves. Whether or not he was acknowledged at the time, he helped break down color barriers by example, celebrated life’s ups and downs with rapturous song, and left a soulful legacy from which we all can learn. To quote Lisle, “This is music that makes you want to shove the coffee table out of the way and pogo until the cabinets rattle, the pets hide, and your downstairs neighbor threatens to call the cops. The fun begins the moment you drop the needle onto one of Packy’s 45s.”
