Riffs, roams and raves with Wimberley View Editor Teresa Kendrick
Riffs, Roams and Raves uncovers the creative, noteworthy and accomplished in the Wimberley Valley and beyond with tips on who to hear, where to go and what to see from managing editor Teresa Kendrick.
This week we continue part two of an article about Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis’ younger sister, and her husband, famed music promoter, Eddie Braddock. This week we hear Eddie’s story about his experience in the music industry and for his role as a music producer for Chess and Stax records. The article is written by Gary Zupancic, current KWVH radio host of “At the Hitchin’ Post.”
Riffs: Great Balls of Fire! Rock n’ roll power couple now in Wimberley, Part 2 This week we continue part two of an article about Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis’ younger sister, and her husband, famed music promoter, Eddie Braddock. This week we hear Eddie’s story about his experience in the music industry and for his role as a music producer for Chess and Stax records. The article is written by Gary Zupancic, current KWVH radio host of “At the Hitchin’ Post.”
Jen Bachman at the Wimberley Cafe asked me if I’d like to meet Jerry Lee Lewis’ sister, Linda Gail Lewis, and the record promoter, Eddie Braddock. Eddie had worked for Stax and Chess Record companies back in the ‘50s and ‘60s as a record promoter. His name is legendary in the music business.
“I love radio,” Eddie told me over lunch in the cafe. “That’s where it all started. My friends were all successful musicians — one even cut his record at 18 — but I couldn’t play an instrument.”
So, he thought, maybe he could get into radio as a disc jockey. One day, after his program at a Pine Bluff, Arkansas radio station, he was called into the office. The station’s engineer, salesperson and facility manager were there.
“You know,” they said, “you play a lot of Black music.” Their statement was not meant as praise.
Eddie said, “Well, have you ever noticed I have a lot of Black listeners as well as white ones?” That didn’t sway the conversation in his favor and their reason for the meeting became clear.
“We got into it,” Eddie said. “Obviously me and those people didn’t jive.”
That door closed and Eddie returned to Memphis. Before long, opportunity knocked. Estell Axton, a record executive with Stax records, told Eddie about a new distributor in town, and she told him that “they don’t have any people and they don’t have a promotion man.”
Eddie applied at the distributor and was hired. As a disc jockey, he progressed through the ranks to become a record promoter for Stax and Chess Records.
As a record promoter, he helped Black groups break into Top 50 white radio playlists. At the time, the records were considered “race records,” and not played on many stations in Mississippi, Alabama and the Deep South.
In high school in Memphis, “I went to school with a lot of people… I went to school with people like Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Charlie Freeman, who was an incredible guitar player.”
He knew the big names that are iconic in the Memphis Sound, like Booker T and the MGs.
“The MGs even played with Elvis,” he said. “There are MGs and Dunn bass lines on songs like Otis Redding’s ‘I Can’t Turn You Loose,’ Sam and Dave’s ‘Hold On, I’m Comin’, and other big hits.”
“At one point in time, Memphis was responsible for about 25% of Billboard’s top 100 songs because of Stax artists, Stax producers and Stax writers. Motown called themselves ‘Hitsville.’ In Memphis, we were ‘Soulsville.’” Pushing “race records” to DJs made Eddie very successful, but he wanted no part of the practice of “payola,” paying DJs money to play records, which was prevalent at the time.
“There were people who were big time playing my records, and I maybe never even went to lunch with them,” he said. “The second most important guy who ran the second most important radio station in the United States, which was in Atlanta, did some good things for me, but I don’t think I ever had lunch with him.”
Meeting and dealing with a lot of famous people like Marvin Gaye, Sam and Jerry Phillips, and Al Bell, writer of “I’ll Take You There,” by the Staple singers, was a common, everyday occurrence for Eddie. It was an incredible time.
Some years later, Jerry Lee Lewis’ daughter Linda Gail Lewis entered Eddie’s life in search of a manager. Eddie met her qualifications and then some. Soon their relationship became more than just business.
After 32 years together, Eddie with four marriages and Linda Gail at eight–she married one gentleman twice–it would appear that this one stuck.
You can catch up with both of them and their adventures on Facebook.
