For Members Only: Bobby Bland on Malaco

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, searching for the extant spirit of southern soul, I made my way to a former Pepsi-Cola warehouse in a decidedly unlovely industrial zone of Jackson, Mississippi. It wasn't exactly Stax or Fame but I had come to meet the men who ran Malaco Records – and find out how they'd carved out the canny commercial niche that was the Malaco sound.