Grammy honors former Stax leader Al Bell's career of peaks,
valleys  Al Bell will be honored -- along with Dolly Parton,
Julie Andrews and the Ramones, among others -- as part of the
Grammy Special Merit Awards ceremony today at the Wilshire Ebell
Theatre in Los Angeles.  Bell also will be highlighted as part
of Sunday's 53rd annual Grammy Awards telecast, which will air
at 7 p.m. on WREG-TV Channel 3.  There were times when Al Bell
felt less like a savior and more like a cipher.  Twenty years
ago, he would drive into South Memphis, park his car on McLemore
Avenue and sit and stare at the empty lot that had once been his
dream factory, Stax Records. The old building that had produced
so much glorious music, so many brilliant memories, had been
reduced to rubble and quietly swept away.  In those moments,
Bell would shed tears for what had been, and what had been lost.
At its peak under Bell's stewardship in the early 1970s, Stax
was a musical and cultural juggernaut, producing massive hits,
selling millions o