Wattstax was a benefit concert organized by Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles.
Months after the festival, Stax released a double LP of the concert's highlights, Wattstax: The Living Word.
[4] Hamilton contacted Stax Records' main offices in Memphis, TN and shared his concept of a benefit-concert for the seventh Watts Summer Festival.
When the meeting took place, the managers at the Coliseum were not convinced that "a little record company" from Memphis could sell enough tickets to fill the stadium.
Also, due to the Coliseum's policy, there could be no seating on the field to prevent the grass being ruined for the Rams' next game on August 21.
[5] During the Wattstax concert in fact, an issue arose when much of the audience poured onto the field to dance while Rufus Thomas performed "Do the Funky Chicken".
[4] A film crew, made up of a significant number of African-Americans at Stax's request,[5] was scattered from the top-row of the stadium to the corners of the stage where the artists were zoomed-in-on.
The Emotions perform the gospel song "Peace Be Still" from the pulpit of the Friendly Will Baptist Church in Watts in a sequence shot several weeks after the Wattstax concert.
[8][9] Johnnie Taylor performs his 1971 hit single "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" onstage at the Summit Club in Los Angeles in a sequence filmed September 23, 1972.
[12] Interspersed between the musical performances is documentary footage of the residents of Watts going about their daily lives, local businesses, as well as interview segments with Black Los Angelians.
Following Wattstax's premiere on February 4, 1973, at the Los Angeles Music Center,[14] but before its wide release in the United States, Stax Films and Wolper Films were informed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), producers and distributors of Shaft, that Wattstax could not be released with Hayes' performance numbers.
[15] As a result, Isaac Hayes was pulled from a tour in the Netherlands to return to Los Angeles and film a new performance number based around his next scheduled single, "Rolling Down a Mountainside.
"[15] This number concluded the original theatrical release of Wattstax from Columbia Pictures and most subsequent television and home video exhibitions.
[19] Warner Bros. also acquired the distribution rights from Sony as a result of their ownership of the library of current copyright holder The Saul Zaentz Company.
[20] This double-LP album release included live recordings from the Wattstax concert event, as well as a handful of studio recordings—The Staples Singers' "Oh La Di Da" and Eddie Floyd's "Lay Your Loving on Me"—overdubbed with audience reactions.
[24] In 2004, Stax released Wattstax: Highlights from the Soundtrack, a single-disc audio CD featuring only the songs included in the documentary film.