Wax of Stax – Not to be confused with the Dixie Hummingbirds, another influential Southern gospel group, the Dixie Nightingales were from Memphis and eventually drifted to secular music. They weren't afraid to take chances right off the bat: Their first single in 1965 was the chilling "
Assassination," about the JFK murder. In 1970, shorn of the "Dixie" label, the Nightingales made an equally discomforting song called "
I Don't Want to Be Like My Daddy," a heartbreaking monologue in a kid's voice that predated "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" by a couple of years. In between those songs, billed as Ollie & the Nightingales, they recorded "Bracing Myself For the Fall," which isn't nearly as hard on anybody, with the exception of Mother Goose metaphor and jumbo omelette fodder Humpty Dumpty. Years afterwards, Ollie just took the franchise tag under his wing and went by the name Ollie Nightingale. He was responsible for the R&B oddity "
You Got a Booga Bear Under There," a number so unique that
Alex Chilton covered it.
