Various Artists

Following the recent, massive Wattstax box, the team at Craft Recordings has another major Stax archival excavation: Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos is an impressive 7CD anthology including 146 demo versions of enduring Stax hits and fan favorites, songs written by label songwriters that ended up elsewhere as well as a number of songs unveiled here for the first time. Only six of these tracks have ever been released!  The material here runs the gamut of Stax's style and influence throughout the '60s and '70s. The box features raw, early song sketches and fleshed-out full-band ideas; rough versions of hits for The Staple Singers ("Respect Yourself"), Luther Ingram ("If Loving You is Wrong (I Don't Want to Be Right)"), and even non-Stax artist Wilson Pickett (whose "634-5789 (Soulsville, USA)" can be heard above, in co-writer Eddie Floyd's original pass); and works by some of the greatest names to pen for Stax, including Isaac Hayes & David Porter, Carla Thomas and the team known as We Three (Homer Banks, Bettye Crutcher and Raymond Jackson).  Michael Graves has mastered the audio.