Memphis Music Foundation Chairman of the Board honored with GRAMMY® Trustees Award

In 1965, a young radio disc jockey from Brinkley, Arkansas named Alvertis Isbell joined a fledging record company in Memphis, Tennessee to help promote the music it was churning out in an old converted movie theater. Decades later, in 2009, he became the chairman of the board of directors of the Memphis Music Foundation (MMF), the main organization charged with promoting the city’s musical legacy, current artists, and future plans. That small label was Stax Records and Alvertis Isbell became known as Al Bell, one of the driving forces that helped change music history forever.

Today, the Memphis Music Foundation and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, located at the original site of Stax Records, are proud to congratulate Bell on receiving the highest honor the music industry offers, the 2011 GRAMMY® Trustees Award, given by the Board of Trustees of the Recording Academy. Bell now joins a pantheon of musical icons who have received the prestigious honor, including The Beatles, Walt Disney, George and Ira Gershwin, Berry Gordy, Duke Ellington and Stax Records’ co-founder Estelle Axton.

From 1965 until the company was forced into involuntary bankruptcy in 1975, Bell helped build Stax Records into one of the most influential labels in the world, working with artists such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Johnnie Taylor, Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the MGs, the Bar Kays, Richard Pryor, and a host of others. Bell also worked producing and writing such hits as The Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There.” When he owned the company in the 1970s, it was the second-largest African-American owned business in the United States. After the demise of Stax, he went on to serve as president of Motown Records Group, and later started his own Bellmark Records label, releasing Prince’s top-selling song ever, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” and Tag Team’s Platinum hit “Whoomp (There It is).” He now operates his own web-based music channel, AlBellPresents.com.

Former chairman and owner of Stax Records and former president of Motown, Bell has a proven, unique ear in the world of soul music. Bell is largely responsible for shaping the careers of such artists as Booker T and the MGs, Otis Redding, William Bell, The Staple Singers, Sam and Dave, Little Milton, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, The Bar-Kays, The Dramatics and Richard Pryor. He was instrumental in establishing the career of Isaac Hayes, and he worked closely with Hayes on his first hit album, Hot Buttered Soul and the follow-up Black Moses. Bell arranged for the production of the soundtrack for the film “Shaft,” which earned Isaac Hayes an Academy Award, and subsequently staged the famous Wattstax concert in Los Angeles and produced the award-winning film “Wattstax: The Living Word.”