How do you follow up an essential document like this year's comprehensive Wattstax box set? If you're Craft Recordings, you plan a trip deep into the unheard history of the legendary Memphis label, through dozens of demos released for the first time anywhere. 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
The mighty Stax Records catalogue got a lot of much-deserved respect in 2013, from a new book exploring the label's history (Robert Gordon's Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion) to a variety of catalogue projects, many from the venerable Ace Records label. Ace has recently followed up its reissues of classic albums by The Staple Singers, David Porter and Bettye Crutcher with further Stax discoveries from Darrell Banks and The Newcomers. And not to be outdone, Ace has