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.”