The Motown sound and the great horns of Stax Records defined soul music before the days of disco.
While many of the great soul performers have died - Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells among them, what happened to the ones who survived and thrived?
In the summer of 1999, acclaimed filmmakers DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, spurred by journalist Roger Friedman, began a quest to find and record the great soul stars who never stopped working: Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), Mary Wilson (of the Supremes), Isaac Hayes, Jerry Butler and The Chi-Lites.
The team travelled to Memphis for a reunion of legendary Stax Records stars like Rufus Thomas, his daughter Carla Thomas and others.
The result is a permanent film document of a dying genre of music - rhythm & blues - some 25 years after the hits stopped coming, though the musicians kept playing. What happened when disco took over and the radio became fractionalised? How did they keep going?
"Only the Strong Survive is so adrenalised that young audiences encountering the music for the first time could easily find themselves converted into old fogies." - New York Times
