Former Otis Redding sideman helps church, other musicians
5/12/1998 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn. NOTE: A photograph is available with this story. A UMNS News Feature By Cynthia Bond Hopson* Ben Cauley believes God extended his life more than 30 years ago, when the musician survived the same plane crash that killed legendary soul singer Otis Redding.
Cauley, then barely 20, was a member of the STAX Records band the Bar-Kays. The group had toured with Redding during 1966 and 1967, and Redding had written a ballad that he believed would be their ticket to crossover audiences and lasting fame.
Cauley and four band members were with Redding on Dec. 10, 1967, when their plane went down en route to a Madison, Wis., engagement. The plane crashed in a lake near the airport, three minutes from landing. Cauley was floating in the debris, the sole survivor. Another band member had gone ahead and was not on the plane.
"We had recorded 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay' the day before," Cauley said, "but God gave me an extension that day. It was nothing I did. It was just the grace of God."
That extension helped shape the musician he became and the mission he has today. Since then, Cauley, now 50, has traveled the world over, playing his trumpet and arranging music for the likes of Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers and the Doobie Brothers. He performed at the famous Apollo Theater and shared a stage with the Rolling Stones, but that is not all he wants to be remembered for.
Cauley wants to help as many musicians affordably "make it" as he can, and he sees the compact but extensively outfitted studio nestled in his Memphis, Tenn., home as a way to do that.
He has worked a lifetime to come to this place.
"I want to tell people that I am trying to help as many musicians as possible," he said. "There are a lot of good, decent musicians and a good ratio of talent." That talent needs affordable studio time.
"God has been good to me. Anything the big cats can do, I can here" at a lower cost, he said.
When he is not doing session work or working in the studio, he is sharing his time and gift of music with choir and congregation at Calvary Longview United Methodist Church, which he and his wife, Shirley, attend.
Cauley is dependable and multitalented, said the Rev. Jimmy Gillespie, pastor of Calvary Longview.
"He's given his life to the Lord," Gillespie said. "He plays the organ, bass guitar and the trumpet, and he's an excellent singer. And if he's supposed to be there, you don't have to look for him. He's there."
Gillespie met Cauley through a mutual friend eight years ago. At one point, when Calvary Longview needed a backup pianist, Cauley took the job.
"He played for a mere $65 a week," Gillespie recalled. "Money has never been important to Ben."
When the church's Men's Day rolls around, Cauley makes sure the men have practiced, the pastor said. Sometimes they go to his studio and practice, and at other times, Cauley brings the studio to them.
"He directs us and he sets it up so we really sound good," Gillespie said. "Sometimes I think the women get a little jealous."
A diabetes-related stroke two years ago has slowed Cauley slightly, but his determination to share his music and set a drug-free example has never wavered. He is proud that he did not succumb to drugs and other pitfalls so often associated with celebrity lifestyles.
"That's the one thing I can say: I never messed with drugs, and one time I puffed a cigarette," he said. "And notice I didn't say smoked; I said puffed."
He wants the new crop of musicians to be focused and to make music for its own sake - to feel its power, to see it move hearts and souls. He has seen it do all that. At STAX, he said, there was no black or white music, it was just music. And in the 1960s, when racial tension was high in Memphis, Ronnie Caldwell, the Bar-Kays' lone white member, transferred to their all-black high school to be near his friends and make music.
They were fiercely protective of each other and saw each other as equals. Cauley remembers urging Caldwell to hold on in the final moments after the crash. He kept in touch with Caldwell's mother until her death in January.
"It wasn't the color, it's what's in your heart and how you present yourself," Cauley said. "Music has no color barrier. You know, they say music can soothe the savage beast. Well, it can."
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*Hopson is assistant professor at the University of Memphis in the Department of Journalism.
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