David Porter

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond · Sep 1, 2026 · 1h 3m · transcript

David Porter's story goes well beyond writing songs and releasing albums for Stax Records. His recent memoir, The Soul Man, tells how he and his partner Isaac Hayes helped invent a sound rich and enduring enough to define American music from the 1960s to today. Together they wrote and produced hits for Sam & Dave, Johnnie Taylor, and dozens of other artists, and in the process built what became known as the Stax sound, a sound Porter still describes as the pursuit of pure emotional connection.

Porter grew up on a dead-end street in Memphis that also produced Maurice White of Earth, Wind &…