James Alexander of The Bar-Kays Part 1
The Questlove Show
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bar-Kays legend James Alexander joins the Questlove Show for a deeply personal conversation, tracing his journey from a teenage musician playing segregated clubs in Memphis to becoming a cornerstone of Stax Records and a young artist mentored by Otis Redding. James reflects on the spontaneous birth and enduring impact of “Soul Finger,” the hard truths of touring in the 1960s, and the business wisdom Otis shared with him about publishing and ownership. He also speaks with profound honesty about the 1967 plane crash that claimed Redding and most of the Bar-Kays—a tragedy he narrowly escaped—and the long, painful process of grieving, resilience, and ultimately rebuilding the band in its wake.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.6 | The Questloff show is a big one. |
| 0:28.6 | All right. |
| 0:28.9 | So every year doing Black History Month, we honor the innovators and the cultural architects. |
| 0:35.7 | And today is no different. |
| 0:41.0 | For the past six decades, I will say that our guest has been an amazing, powerful force and music, definitely an influence in my life |
| 0:47.4 | and how I hear things. Basically, our guest is one of the musical delegates, the musical forces from Memphis that we don't |
| 0:59.5 | talk about enough. We do not talk about. Memphis is such a force of music that it rarely |
| 1:05.6 | gets the light that it deserves. And as a member of the legendary band The Barcais, you know, you know these songs, |
| 1:16.0 | Soul Finger to Son of Shaft to Holy Ghost, especially Holy Ghost, |
| 1:21.0 | which incidentally I think Holy Ghost is one of the best examples of giving the drummer some |
| 1:26.8 | that excited an eight-year-old |
| 1:29.6 | Questlove when he first heard that song. |
| 1:31.9 | He's both the member of the R&B, the Memphis Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, blending |
| 1:37.0 | in. |
| 1:37.9 | And even then, that's reductive because if you listen to the early work of their out, |
| 1:42.4 | like their level of rock excitement, |
| 1:46.3 | it was pretty much like no other band |
| 1:48.2 | that you would come across in that period. |
| 1:51.6 | Of course, collaborating with legends, |
| 1:54.0 | like the great Otis Redding, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

