Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one in the truly legendary
Speaker 1: Steve Kropper. Steve, great to have you here. So, how
Speaker 1: you been handling COVID very delicately? Okay? So have you
Speaker 1: been vaccinated yet? I have not. That is my choice, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and that's your choice because and if they come up
Speaker 1: with this thing about a vaccination to get on the plane,
Speaker 1: that's today I stopped flying. Okay, okay. There's only two
Speaker 1: people on this planet and not hear anymore. They're in
Speaker 1: the planet. My mom and Daddy. The only people tell
Speaker 1: me what to do. So you have a new album.
Speaker 1: How did that come together? Well, but because of this pandemic,
Speaker 1: and it came together and now it's it's almost over.
Speaker 1: The pandemic is almost over. But during the lockdowns, so
Speaker 1: it was John Tivers I did to pull up these
Speaker 1: old tracks and do something with him and they turned
Speaker 1: out great. So and I had just written them off.
Speaker 1: Did you know Tivin before this? Oh yeah, known him
Speaker 1: for a long time. So all the songs we wrote together. Okay,
Speaker 1: So he approached you and just for those out of
Speaker 1: the loop, exactly what is on the record. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say exactly. I'll tell you what happened. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you about the album. He has a studio in his house.
Speaker 1: I do not. I have never had a studio at
Speaker 1: my house. When I go home, I go home. I
Speaker 1: don't take my work home with me. But with the
Speaker 1: computer age, you know, you're on doing emails or whatever.
Speaker 1: And when I get up in the morning, I'm usually
Speaker 1: on the computer before seven thirty. And today I got
Speaker 1: off at nine third. Two hours of just getting rid
Speaker 1: of stuff and answer things and it's fun. Okay, we've
Speaker 1: got two things going up. What are you? Who's looking
Speaker 1: for you that it takes two hours to go through
Speaker 1: your email? Everybody just trying to sell something. And I
Speaker 1: bet you I have deleted every morning at least twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty emails, and I try to not be subscribed
Speaker 1: to them, and I hit that and they call back.
Speaker 1: So I have an old car. Just to give you
Speaker 1: an example, Okay, I bet I get three or four
Speaker 1: calls a day wanting to extend my warranty on my
Speaker 1: old car. Okay, what kind of car is it? And
Speaker 1: Infinity a good one? Really? You see Avanti the old
Speaker 1: student baker, Did I hear that correctly? I could go
Speaker 1: for an old car, but it's not. It was new
Speaker 1: when I bought it. I have a twenty eleven. My
Speaker 1: wife has a twenty our team. Okay, so you get
Speaker 1: all the email and phone calls that are junk calls?
Speaker 1: How many personal and business personal business email and calls
Speaker 1: do you get? Hundreds? And what are they looking for? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Either an autograph or want me
Speaker 1: to play something. We'll do a concert or you know,
Speaker 1: perform or whatever. And what does it take for you
Speaker 1: to say yes? A question? Do you want to do this?
Speaker 1: I will say? Is you always say so? Guys that
Speaker 1: are farm more important than I am, I don't know
Speaker 1: how they deal with life. It's amazing because if a
Speaker 1: little guy like me guess that kind of mail, they
Speaker 1: must be getting thousands a day. So if I emailed
Speaker 1: you for some reason I had your email address and
Speaker 1: I asked you to play on my record, you would
Speaker 1: say yes, Well, that depend on what the record is.
Speaker 1: I'd have to hear it first, Okay, But you're open
Speaker 1: to everybody absolutely. Okay, Well, that certainly gives you more opportunity,
Speaker 1: but it certainly takes you two hours to get through this?
Speaker 1: And is it mostly on the computer or how many
Speaker 1: people still call it's motionally on a computer? By email? Okay? Now,
Speaker 1: you have a big birthday coming up this year, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too deeply into that at
Speaker 1: this moment. But what's it like having some of your
Speaker 1: best buddies pass? It's not fun. So I am one
Speaker 1: of the few lucky people on this planet. I can
Speaker 1: say that my father lost my best friend. I've lost
Speaker 1: all my other friends and families. Is your father in law?
Speaker 1: How old is he? Same age? Okay? And what about
Speaker 1: how do you handle all your contemporaries dying? Say it again,
Speaker 1: contemporary dives that what you said? You know, know your
Speaker 1: old musician friends, your old buddies who are dying. Even
Speaker 1: I'm younger than you, I'm still experiencing this. It's weird
Speaker 1: that my friends die and it makes me think about
Speaker 1: dying myself. Well, you're trying not to think about it.
Speaker 1: I try not to think about it. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's only one guy left and the out of the
Speaker 1: original band, and uh, as far as book of ten
Speaker 1: m g s, it would be book A ten MG.
Speaker 1: Now three of the other mgs are gone. They have
Speaker 1: since gone. Ben. You know, the funny thing is these
Speaker 1: people are in plain sight and one day they're gonna disappear.
Speaker 1: And everybody says, oh, I could have seen him, I
Speaker 1: could have talked to him. It's really so sad. So
Speaker 1: Tivin approaches you and he says, well, we wrote these
Speaker 1: songs together. Let's let's lay him down. Yeah. And I said,
Speaker 1: if you want to bring these things back to life,
Speaker 1: you're gonna Ben a singer. He says, I got one.
Speaker 1: I said you better send me something. So he did.
Speaker 1: And when you do, and I said, where's this guy
Speaker 1: been on my life? Roger Real or something else? I
Speaker 1: never heard it? Hands? Okay, So where'd you come from? Well,
Speaker 1: it's up north. That's probably why I never heard of.
Speaker 1: We never crossed pass We should have crossed passed somewhere
Speaker 1: down the line, but we didn't. Okay. And did you
Speaker 1: do it via the computer? Did you go to John Studio? Well,
Speaker 1: every song on this album, if you listen to it,
Speaker 1: was done. The vocal was done through an iPhone and
Speaker 1: even my engineers, yeah, which is amazing. That was mixed
Speaker 1: in Pro Tools, so it was bounced down to Pro tools,
Speaker 1: which I don't think pro tools didn't change anything, but
Speaker 1: it was all done with an iPhone and it's for
Speaker 1: the sake of the record and promotion. It's too bad
Speaker 1: because that would have been a real good, uh promotional item.
Speaker 1: But now they're into movies. You can edit your own movies,
Speaker 1: just like Hollywood and all that. So let's hope they
Speaker 1: can do that. And I know that the iPhone people
Speaker 1: have been bragging about their phones or their microphones in
Speaker 1: their in their telephone us for a long time, and
Speaker 1: people just took it for granted. They were more into
Speaker 1: the picture thing with selfish and so forth, which is fine,
Speaker 1: and people just kind of forgot that that's a real
Speaker 1: good mike in that iPhone. And then how did you
Speaker 1: lay down your guitar? Well, originally it was just the
Speaker 1: rhythm tracks mainly with a loop, and then we brought
Speaker 1: in extra drummers. Now, as far as all the solo licks,
Speaker 1: when Roger finished the vocals, I said, I'm not laying
Speaker 1: down any any lead licks until I hear the vocal
Speaker 1: and so I just get inspired by that. That's the
Speaker 1: way I get inspired. I hate working things out. I
Speaker 1: don't like that at all. I just don't work things out.
Speaker 1: I like the spawning Eddie and listen to something for
Speaker 1: the first time, and and and let the emotion just
Speaker 1: flow and let it go and be a chanler. I'm
Speaker 1: actually the exact same way. That's how you get inspired.
Speaker 1: So let's just soon the vocal is cut. You don't
Speaker 1: want to hear it until you're in the studio with
Speaker 1: the guitar strapped on, ready to play. Correct. Okay, And
Speaker 1: let's say in one song, how long is it gonna
Speaker 1: take you to work out what you're gonna play and
Speaker 1: lay it down. Not very long. So we do piece
Speaker 1: things together sometimes and I'll get hit with something and
Speaker 1: play something in the engine will say that was a
Speaker 1: good look you did three takes ago, or if it's
Speaker 1: not completely say let's say another one, and then we
Speaker 1: put them all together. So that's the way we do it.
Speaker 1: The same thing with vocals. Okay. So if I if
Speaker 1: you laid down a lick and it was a half
Speaker 1: hour later, the engineer said, play that lick again. Could
Speaker 1: you remember it and do it? Probably not? If you
Speaker 1: pleasure to me, I could probably duplicate it, But to remember, no,
Speaker 1: it comes and goes, but it comes about as fast.
Speaker 1: I mean it goes about as fast it comes, So
Speaker 1: there you go. I have always approached I have always
Speaker 1: approached sessions the same way. So when we were learning
Speaker 1: a song and the old days, we learned it together
Speaker 1: at the same time, heard it for the first time,
Speaker 1: and the and the writers, we weren't there the night before.
Speaker 1: You used to we would write songs the night before
Speaker 1: we cut them. Today you might write a song and
Speaker 1: it might be two years before it gets cut. You
Speaker 1: just don't know what's gonna happen today. It's certainly different now.
Speaker 1: In the old days we're talking about pre internet, you
Speaker 1: would have made this record. There was a limited number
Speaker 1: of records, and everybody would have been aware of it,
Speaker 1: whether it was successful or not, depending on what was
Speaker 1: in the grooves. Today you can put out a record
Speaker 1: and almost nobody can know about it. How does that
Speaker 1: affect your inspiration to do it? You just do it
Speaker 1: one at a time, and uh, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: when you're overdubbing something or listening to something, you treat
Speaker 1: it as the only song on the planet at the time.
Speaker 1: And there's only two singers that I've ever worked with.
Speaker 1: The singer song as though it was gonna be the
Speaker 1: last song they would ever sing. Otis reading for number one,
Speaker 1: Number two, rods shuret even though and I I refer
Speaker 1: to Rod the fact that he knew that he would
Speaker 1: take the track home that night and change the lyrics,
Speaker 1: change the idea or whatever, and knowing that for the
Speaker 1: musicians in the studio at the time, he would sing
Speaker 1: it as though he was on live on stage for
Speaker 1: the last time. I've always been how did you get
Speaker 1: hooked up with Rod Stewart through Tommy Dodd? Okay, so
Speaker 1: that of course makes a question, how did you know
Speaker 1: Tom Doubt? I don't think we have a month or
Speaker 1: a year to do this, but how did I know
Speaker 1: Tom Doubt? Atlantic was our distributed stacks and he was
Speaker 1: a vice president or in our director for a long time,
Speaker 1: then became a vice person and okay, I've known him
Speaker 1: since since sixty three, let's put it that way. Okay,
Speaker 1: So right now you're in Nashville, Yeah, okay, why Nashville?
Speaker 1: You you grew up in Memphis, you were in California
Speaker 1: for a while, You're in Nashville. Why these different places? Well,
Speaker 1: I was asked by some friends of mine to come
Speaker 1: here and write some songs, and I said no. Then
Speaker 1: I met my present wife. This June will be thirty
Speaker 1: thirty two years that I've been married to her. And
Speaker 1: I met her in this town and I was she
Speaker 1: was up here from Dallas. She was living in Dallas
Speaker 1: and I was living in l A at the time,
Speaker 1: and so I took her out to l a show
Speaker 1: to the house and she said, I'd rather have a
Speaker 1: house in Nashville. Okay. So we've raised two kids and
Speaker 1: head place. Wow, it's hard to say that that I'm
Speaker 1: in in the music city of the world. And it's
Speaker 1: hard to say that I didn't come here for the music.
Speaker 1: But I didn't here because of my present So was
Speaker 1: it was? It loved first sight? Absolutely? Did Did she
Speaker 1: feel the same way or did you have to work?
Speaker 1: I think so, except she tells it a little different
Speaker 1: that she didn't. The good news is she didn't know
Speaker 1: who I was, and she said, all another one one hit.
Speaker 1: Wonder Then she found out letter that I had written
Speaker 1: more than one song. So you've been married thirty years,
Speaker 1: you have two kids, what are they up to? Well,
Speaker 1: one of them is has our own merchandising company and
Speaker 1: the other one is in college. That I put him
Speaker 1: on the plane yesterday to fly back to Fort Collins.
Speaker 1: He's going to Colorado State in four columns Colorado and
Speaker 1: he'll be home back here from school. Let's out, which
Speaker 1: is the end of my I think? And how many
Speaker 1: times you've been married twice? And do you have kids
Speaker 1: from your first marriage? I do older kids. And how
Speaker 1: how many of you have and how old are there?
Speaker 1: I have another boy and another girl, the boy being
Speaker 1: the oldest. Then what are they up to? I said
Speaker 1: that my my son is retired. My daughter works for
Speaker 1: Ashley Furniture. Wow. And are they on the payroll or
Speaker 1: totally independent? She is? And he he rant managed a
Speaker 1: bookstore for a long time and he decided not to
Speaker 1: He's he overmarried too. He married a girl in Memphis
Speaker 1: that's head of the card services, and they transferred to
Speaker 1: her to Atlanta, and that's where he went to college.
Speaker 1: So he's very happy to be back in Atlanta. He
Speaker 1: loves it. Okay, so you're in Nashville, and you've did
Speaker 1: a lot of early work in Memphis. You grew up
Speaker 1: in Memphis. Most people have not been to those places.
Speaker 1: They say, oh it's Tennessee. Having been to those places,
Speaker 1: I experienced them is radically different. Would you say the
Speaker 1: same the two cities. Yeah, uh, totally musically inclined and otherwise.
Speaker 1: Memphis is a melting pot. Now, Nashville gets a lot
Speaker 1: of people here too, from Kentucky in different places, but
Speaker 1: Memphis gets at all Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri. So they
Speaker 1: get a lot of entitled an album one time called
Speaker 1: Melton Park. And that's been going on since way a
Speaker 1: long time ago, when the river boats were gambling boats
Speaker 1: or so forth. Wow. Yeah, people don't realize that when
Speaker 1: you're in Memphis, you look over the river, it's Arkansas.
Speaker 1: You don't realize that it's just that close. Never Mississippi,
Speaker 1: just down south. Okay, So what age were you at
Speaker 1: when you moved to Memphis ten years old? And where
Speaker 1: were you the ten years before that? Missouri? Some people
Speaker 1: call it Missoury. Just a state with three names Missouri, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and Missouri. And there's say, misery, Why do you call
Speaker 1: a Missoury? I said, obviously you didn't grow up on
Speaker 1: a farm. So where was this farm in Missouri? Well,
Speaker 1: it's not too far. If you know where West Plains
Speaker 1: is and there and that those places. It's not in
Speaker 1: the Booth Hill. It's in the southern part, right in
Speaker 1: northern Arkansas or southern Missouri. The line is not too far,
Speaker 1: thirty miles away, I guess something like that at the most.
Speaker 1: But it's uh. It's it's just uh west of the
Speaker 1: Booth Hill. And your father was a farmer. He was
Speaker 1: originally uh, and then he met my mother at teacher's college,
Speaker 1: and uh. He was a teacher, and so was my mom.
Speaker 1: The thing about me was very simple. They didn't have
Speaker 1: babysitters in those days. There was no work to and
Speaker 1: we didn't have any close relatives that she could drop
Speaker 1: me off at. So she put me to school. I
Speaker 1: was full when I started a month later. I was five,
Speaker 1: So you know, I started when I was five years old.
Speaker 1: The thing was, my mother told me, I don't know
Speaker 1: this to be a fact. She said, I did as
Speaker 1: good as the registers. She said, I didn't really have
Speaker 1: any choice. I had to move you up. So she
Speaker 1: took me from the first grade to the second grade
Speaker 1: and on to the third grade. Except she's as a
Speaker 1: retired teacher, she stayed on the on the teacher's board.
Speaker 1: So we moved to West Plains, which was in those
Speaker 1: days is if you were raised on a farm. That
Speaker 1: was a big town nineteen miles from the farm. And
Speaker 1: she put me back. So I took the third grade twice.
Speaker 1: I was in the fourth grade for about three weeks
Speaker 1: and she said, these city boys are too big for
Speaker 1: my son, so she put me back. What kind of
Speaker 1: student were you? I did pretty good until I started
Speaker 1: playing guitar. I was a straight AS student, and I
Speaker 1: spent most of my time playing the guitar instead of studying,
Speaker 1: so my grades went down a little bit. I started
Speaker 1: making season bees, right, And what your parents? They were teachers?
Speaker 1: What did they say about that? They didn't like it
Speaker 1: very much, but they never discouraged me in the guitar playing.
Speaker 1: And I remember I never thinked. People would ask me,
Speaker 1: why what do you think last night, which was the
Speaker 1: song that we had number three in the world, Uh,
Speaker 1: why was it such a hit? And I said, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I do remember that my mother the
Speaker 1: first time I played on the record, she started doing
Speaker 1: a twist. I said, well, I guess it was the
Speaker 1: first twist instrumental. That's the thing. I com credit it
Speaker 1: to Dad at that at that at that so your
Speaker 1: parents were supportive did they understand the level of success
Speaker 1: that you achieved. I don't not until later. No, And
Speaker 1: how were you were you an only kid or with
Speaker 1: other kids in the family. I was the only one,
Speaker 1: So I remember the time. I do remember this. My
Speaker 1: dad came home. We were eating dinner, and he looks
Speaker 1: up and he says, I've been transferred to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: We're moving to Tulsa. And I said I'm not and
Speaker 1: he looked at me very sternly and said, so you
Speaker 1: don't have a voice in this conversation. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I do. I've got a working band making money. And
Speaker 1: he said, oh okay. He said, well I've got to go,
Speaker 1: and he did. And my mom stayed until I graduated
Speaker 1: from high school. And uh they found a duplex to
Speaker 1: put me in that that sort of thing. But Dad
Speaker 1: went ahead to Tulsa. He was gonna put me in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma State, in the Norman Oklahoma and uh, I said,
Speaker 1: I don't you know, but you'll be going to Oklahoma
Speaker 1: State much better than Memphis. And said, uh, I want
Speaker 1: the band. That's all I care about. The thing is
Speaker 1: that on my entrance to x AM, I failed the
Speaker 1: English part, but I raised it so high in the
Speaker 1: math part, they let me take the take it over,
Speaker 1: and I did it with There was a girl that
Speaker 1: took it over to There was only two of us,
Speaker 1: and she had already had two years of pre college
Speaker 1: and she failed it as well, and that's why she
Speaker 1: got to take it again. Of course we passed it secondary.
Speaker 1: So go ahead, no, no, you continue. Well, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that. I got reprimanded one time for calling
Speaker 1: it Memphis State. It always was. Now it's Memphis University.
Speaker 1: And so my daughter's golf coach said, Steve, it's Memphis
Speaker 1: University's something infish state anymore. I said, It'll always been
Speaker 1: in the state as far as I'm concerned. So, m
Speaker 1: my daughter played the high school college of golf, came
Speaker 1: out of pretty good golfer. So how good a golfer
Speaker 1: are you? Well? I used to be pretty good at
Speaker 1: my age terrible, but I played with a lot of
Speaker 1: guys in the nineties and all, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: when I grow up, that's what I'm gonna do. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't go on the road for fifty years and
Speaker 1: been over like you used to. So, uh, people have
Speaker 1: back trouble. Everybody does. And so I waited and waited
Speaker 1: and waited to until I had some time off to
Speaker 1: get my back work on. And the doctor said, Steve,
Speaker 1: I can't help you anymore. So what do you mean
Speaker 1: you can't help me? He said, because three and four
Speaker 1: years together, and I'm telling you, when you've been over
Speaker 1: it's like having or two before in your back. I
Speaker 1: can't bend over and pick up anything anymore, and never
Speaker 1: could anybody. Well, it's funny because you're the first person
Speaker 1: who ever told me a similar story. I have back
Speaker 1: problems too for fifty years, and I had to get
Speaker 1: an injection. I used to get him in. The guy
Speaker 1: who did the injection said, who did your surgery? Who
Speaker 1: few is the disks? Yeah? So, uh, of all people,
Speaker 1: Peter Jacobson was a pretty good friend of mine, still
Speaker 1: is and he is one of the chief investors in
Speaker 1: the Backs Clinic down in Florida. And he said, if
Speaker 1: you have back trouble, I'll put you the head of
Speaker 1: the line and you get in there. So my doctor said,
Speaker 1: we can't shooting anything in there. I can't cut him apart.
Speaker 1: They fused together. So that's what the m R. I showed.
Speaker 1: And so I suffer with it absolutely Okay, So what
Speaker 1: major parents move from Misery to Memphis. I well, it
Speaker 1: had to be my dad getting a job he was on.
Speaker 1: We moved from the farm to West Plains, Bressouri because
Speaker 1: he was on the police force, filled out an application
Speaker 1: of the railroad and and got picked up as a
Speaker 1: railroad detective immediately. And that's when we went to Memphis.
Speaker 1: And I remember right before we crossed the Mississippi, my dad.
Speaker 1: I was asleep in the back seat. My dad wiggled
Speaker 1: me up and he said, so you better get up.
Speaker 1: You might want to see this. And it was a
Speaker 1: river a mile wide. You know, I grew up on
Speaker 1: rivers and strangers that I've never seen anything that big
Speaker 1: in my life. It's amazing. So your father was a teacher,
Speaker 1: then he was a railroad cop, and then he was
Speaker 1: a teacher with the FBI for years. Really. Yeah, on
Speaker 1: the good side, what kind of relationship did you have
Speaker 1: with your dad? Very good relationship. And uh, I never
Speaker 1: met anybody that ever said anything negative by my dad,
Speaker 1: And everybody really liked my dad. He was just nice
Speaker 1: to everybody. And I didn't even know my dad had
Speaker 1: a sense of humor. But when the when some of
Speaker 1: the boys would come over from from high school and
Speaker 1: all he would start telling Jockson said, I didn't know
Speaker 1: my dad could do that. He'd have everybody's stitches. And
Speaker 1: that's just the way he was. But he was also
Speaker 1: very serious, had a serious Uh as he got older. Uh,
Speaker 1: he could have made a lot of changes and things,
Speaker 1: but he didn't. He didn't. He didn't but end anything.
Speaker 1: He just said back and listen. So, so you moved
Speaker 1: to Memphis at age ten. That's a hard transition for
Speaker 1: a kid to go from one school to another, making friends,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Yeah, it's like going to Disney World for
Speaker 1: the first time. So what was it like for you?
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing. I mean everything that I looked at and
Speaker 1: saw her her was was a shock treatment and I
Speaker 1: just dealt with it. And uh, he was talking about
Speaker 1: best friends. Donald Duck Dunn and I met on a
Speaker 1: softball field one in the sixth grade, so we were
Speaker 1: out well in the tenth or level. We were sophomores
Speaker 1: and juniors when we started a band, and we got
Speaker 1: real good in our sophomore year and we were doing
Speaker 1: proms and you know, local stuff, and it's very simple.
Speaker 1: We played music of the day that kids could dance to.
Speaker 1: We played a lot of dances, socops and dances and
Speaker 1: palms and so forth. And uh, we played the music
Speaker 1: that they could dance to. Obviously they couldn't afford the
Speaker 1: real artists. It's too expensive for him. Even in those days,
Speaker 1: it was expensive today. I don't know how they deal
Speaker 1: with it. It's amazing. I know what we make as
Speaker 1: a Blue Brothers. I know what we make as a band,
Speaker 1: and there's a there's a ceiling, and there's a we
Speaker 1: don't go any lower than a certain price, even on
Speaker 1: an off night. That's gonna cost you this much. Well,
Speaker 1: when you do that, you know the the artist is
Speaker 1: one thing. Then you gotta deal with the back line
Speaker 1: and all that. If you can get it donated, that's great.
Speaker 1: If you can't, he's got to shell it out. So
Speaker 1: he's into your profits. And I would never be a promoter.
Speaker 1: There's no way. Listen, it's a license to lose all
Speaker 1: your money. It's just crazy. Okay, so you're in Memphis.
Speaker 1: At what point do you start playing the guitar? But
Speaker 1: around fourteen? And what's the inspiration? That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I really don't know. I guess radio here and here
Speaker 1: in the radio and seeing people happy, dancing and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And that's what this record is
Speaker 1: all about. Two Fired Up. It's all about fired up
Speaker 1: and get to get the dancing again, feel good music.
Speaker 1: I'm twelve years younger than you, and in my generation
Speaker 1: people picked up the guitar to play folk songs in
Speaker 1: the early sixties and then the Beatles hit, everybody got
Speaker 1: an electric guitar. When you were starting, what was on
Speaker 1: the radio? What was the inspiration that made you want
Speaker 1: to play music? Well, that's a good question, but I
Speaker 1: first heard gospel at that age, and that blew me away.
Speaker 1: I had never heard gospel music before, just happy, good
Speaker 1: feeling music. So I think I'm guilty of taking u
Speaker 1: gospel grooves and turning it into you know, lyrically love
Speaker 1: songs basically, or different things like that. So you're fourteen,
Speaker 1: you get a guitar. What guitar do you get? I
Speaker 1: found one that I liked out of a Serision Rollbuck catalog.
Speaker 1: That's silvertone. That's silvertone, flat top, sunbursts, round hole, flattop.
Speaker 1: Did you have one where the case had the ample
Speaker 1: fire in it? No, that was a big thing of
Speaker 1: the thick. But my dad, bless his heart, And I
Speaker 1: told you he never discouraged me. He said, son, you
Speaker 1: learned how to play that, and I'll buy you a
Speaker 1: good guitar. Wow. Well he bought my first electric guitar
Speaker 1: from a guy who had one for sale, and the
Speaker 1: amp came with it. And I still have that app today. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't have that app anymore. It's Smithsonian. But okay,
Speaker 1: what was the guitar and what was the app? Uh?
Speaker 1: The guitar was a Birdland cut Away or not? Wasn't
Speaker 1: the bird Landers one seventy five got the bird Land letter.
Speaker 1: It was a one trapeze bridge thin about thin body,
Speaker 1: sharp cut away sunbursts. And the app was a Fender Harvard. Wow,
Speaker 1: that really was on green onions. That was on green
Speaker 1: onions and a bunch of otus reading and of other things.
Speaker 1: And when I wanted that sound, I always pulled that
Speaker 1: amp out and I still have it today. I had
Speaker 1: it until I gave it, specially in a few years ago. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's the Harvard and the Princeton. The difference is
Speaker 1: the Princeton has we verb? Is that it or reverse? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't own a person. I've used it to tune
Speaker 1: up with backstage when they have one. But I've never
Speaker 1: owned one, the thunder Harvard. I've owned three since then.
Speaker 1: None of them sound like this one that I had.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I knew the difference in the sound,
Speaker 1: but the quality was just unbelievable. And Tom Dad, we
Speaker 1: missed it earlier. He always wanted me to take that
Speaker 1: on the road. I said, Tommy didn't put out enough.
Speaker 1: He said, just mike it and running through the sound system.
Speaker 1: I never did do that, but I could have so.
Speaker 1: Certainly back in the sixties and seventies when I was
Speaker 1: into it, you go to the guitar shop, even if
Speaker 1: it was the same model, they all sounded different. Was
Speaker 1: that your experience then in his that you experienced still today? Well,
Speaker 1: I think so. I will tell a quick story and
Speaker 1: this I love the story, and it was validated. I
Speaker 1: did a podcast too for a while, and uh, the
Speaker 1: guy was interviewing and said, you know, I've told you
Speaker 1: a story about Chad Atkins. He said, I was the
Speaker 1: owner of that guitar shop. So he said, chat you
Speaker 1: used to come around and look at the guitars on
Speaker 1: the wall and all light he pulled them down and
Speaker 1: start planning it. So this kid comes running up and said, man,
Speaker 1: that's a great sound of guitar, and Chet takes it,
Speaker 1: hangs it back on the wall. It says, how's the
Speaker 1: sound now? That's a good story. That's a good story.
Speaker 1: I love that one. That that blows me away. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had guts enough to do the how's it
Speaker 1: sound now if he just said If he had come
Speaker 1: up and said, man, you're a great guitar player, that
Speaker 1: would have been a different answer. But he said, man,
Speaker 1: that's a great sound of guitar now. And I got
Speaker 1: to beat Chad a few times, and uh, I figured
Speaker 1: you get around, asked me, hadn't asked me yet? Who
Speaker 1: who are my influences? I listened to Less Paul and
Speaker 1: said actors like everybody else did. And I said, the
Speaker 1: world doesn't need another Less Paul or to actings or B. B.
Speaker 1: King or another of those guys. So I started pattern
Speaker 1: what I did after a guy named Loman Paul and
Speaker 1: who was the leader and guitar player for the Five Royals.
Speaker 1: And that's some music. I grew up on dancer too.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people today don't even know
Speaker 1: who the five Royals were not and uh Betty LaVette,
Speaker 1: who was on a dedicated album, she said she dated
Speaker 1: Loman's brother and they always want to be the Royals.
Speaker 1: I'll go, okay, be the Royals. That's sort of like
Speaker 1: the Royals. Sounds like a sports team. But if you
Speaker 1: say Royal's that's big, that's enormous. It's just spelled. It's
Speaker 1: spelled the same bit pronounced a little bit different. The Royals. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I hear from her all the time. I'll have to
Speaker 1: ask her about that story. So, okay, you're playing in
Speaker 1: the being when you playing? Okay, your fourteen, when you
Speaker 1: get a guitar, when do you start forming the band?
Speaker 1: Let's see fourteen is when I was about sixteen. And
Speaker 1: how did that come together? You say me, Well, there
Speaker 1: was another guy in school, Charlie Freeman, Charles Freeman, who
Speaker 1: was more into jazz than I was. But he was
Speaker 1: taking the guitar lessons and I wasn't. My family couldn't
Speaker 1: afford the guitar lessons. So when he his mom would
Speaker 1: pick him up at school on the day he had
Speaker 1: his lessons. I would run home and get my guitar
Speaker 1: and be sitting on his front porch whenever he got
Speaker 1: home from his lesson, and he would showing me what
Speaker 1: he learned today, and I would stay and play behind
Speaker 1: him so he could practice what he had learned. And
Speaker 1: that seemed to work out pretty good. He went on
Speaker 1: to further his career in jazz and all. And uh,
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Mashew Skipper who had a
Speaker 1: jazz band. And I don't know where Mashey was from.
Speaker 1: I think he was from Arkansost, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: And uh, I remember, but Charlie went off with him
Speaker 1: and did it a two up in Canada in a
Speaker 1: bunch of places. And uh, he was the other guitar
Speaker 1: player in the Marquees, so we always had if one
Speaker 1: of us couldn't make it didn't matter, you know. But
Speaker 1: he played with us at the in clubs and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: how much did you practice? Were you one of those
Speaker 1: guys sitting in your bedroom for hours working it out? No?
Speaker 1: I wish I had it, but I didn't. I still
Speaker 1: look today, I come off the road, I put it
Speaker 1: in the corner and I picked it back up, and
Speaker 1: we'll go back on the road again. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a silly way to look at things, but I never did,
Speaker 1: and as I'm self taught, and I learned by doing.
Speaker 1: You learn in the studio. So can you read music?
Speaker 1: Not at all? Not enough to hurt my plan. So
Speaker 1: you're playing in the Marquees, how do you end up me?
Speaker 1: How do you end up recording? Uh? I guess because
Speaker 1: we I was on for the dance songs and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, And I remember the first session
Speaker 1: I did it. Son Scotty Moore had me come in
Speaker 1: and double an upright bass and that's when the transition
Speaker 1: was happening and recording and for those who could afford offender,
Speaker 1: it sounded like you're playing with a pick. So I've
Speaker 1: overdubbed the baritone guitar down electoral baritone that I played
Speaker 1: with a pick, just like a guitar six strang and
Speaker 1: it it wasn't a bass guitar. It was a baritone guitar.
Speaker 1: So it was an oxic below a guitar, but it
Speaker 1: was you could get it low and really pop the
Speaker 1: upright bass, so you know the upright basically doom them
Speaker 1: tom and you played with a pick and double and
Speaker 1: get it right, and it sounds like an offender. Well
Speaker 1: wait a second here, you're in Memphis, you're playing in
Speaker 1: a high school band. How do you end up knowing
Speaker 1: Scotty Moore and recording its son? Well, that's that's I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's weird. I got I got a call,
Speaker 1: that's all I know. And I remember the first time
Speaker 1: I got called to plays session. I asked, Chips moment
Speaker 1: I knew, you know, he was the engineer at Stacks
Speaker 1: and whatever helping. Jim stirred and I said, Chips, I've
Speaker 1: been asked to play on a session. What I played?
Speaker 1: He said, just play what you feel. If they don't
Speaker 1: like it, they'll tell you they don't like it. And
Speaker 1: they asked you to play what they want. When I
Speaker 1: hear you play otherwise, he said, if they like it,
Speaker 1: then you just keep playing what you're playing. And that's
Speaker 1: what I did. And I'll always give him the credit
Speaker 1: for teaching me about the unwind G string. You can
Speaker 1: bend it better, because all guitar strings in those days
Speaker 1: and the best words were the Gibson Cinematics, and they
Speaker 1: came with a wound G string and that was very
Speaker 1: very hard to bend. I mean, it was very extremely
Speaker 1: hard to be in but you could do it and Uh,
Speaker 1: you know when I started using we used a B
Speaker 1: string in those days because you couldn't buy gauge strings. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's those are the That was a big breakthrough. When
Speaker 1: they have the later games strings, that's for sure. So
Speaker 1: you go to Scotty Moore. When do you start recording
Speaker 1: as the Marquees? Wow? Well. Charles Acton came to me
Speaker 1: one day and he said, I understand you have a
Speaker 1: good man. I said, I'd like to think so, but
Speaker 1: you know, he said I want to be in your
Speaker 1: band and said you do what? He plays a saxophone.
Speaker 1: I said, how long you've been playing? He said, man,
Speaker 1: I've been taking lessons for three months. And somewhere in
Speaker 1: that conversation he said his uncle on a recording studio.
Speaker 1: That was Jim Stewart. I went, okay, can you show
Speaker 1: up for rehearsal this Saturday. Come to find out, Jim
Speaker 1: had some recording equipment in his garage in North Memphis,
Speaker 1: but he had built a little sound booth. I guess,
Speaker 1: put the singer isolated. The singer put some carpet down
Speaker 1: on the concrete and that's what he called the studio.
Speaker 1: So the first studio that was it was still satellite.
Speaker 1: It wasn't stack ship was in Brunswick, Tennessee, about ten
Speaker 1: miles out of town, now very you know minute ride
Speaker 1: out there. And then Chips came to Jim and said, Jim,
Speaker 1: there's this Capital theater building, an old movie theater that's
Speaker 1: up police and I think we can get it if you,
Speaker 1: if you want it. And Jim didn't have the money,
Speaker 1: so he goes to a Stell and it Stell says
Speaker 1: a Stell action. So Stuart Jim start st and action
Speaker 1: A X S T A X. That's what they come
Speaker 1: up with stacks. But anyway, uh, she said, I'll lend
Speaker 1: you the money. I'll mortgage my home and lend you
Speaker 1: the money, but you're gonna have to give me a
Speaker 1: record shop. And that's where satellite records came came to pass.
Speaker 1: And so there was nothing legally wrong with having satellite records,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't have a record out the satellite leavel
Speaker 1: because he got a season assists a letter from some
Speaker 1: lawyers in California, so that you know, a satellite records
Speaker 1: already exists, but a satellite record shop didn't matter. So
Speaker 1: it's stayed the same, and uh, we had to go
Speaker 1: change to the label from satellite to stacks and then, uh,
Speaker 1: like all record companies, Stacks had a subsider vote, So
Speaker 1: Green Onions came out on vote one oh two. So
Speaker 1: I'm told I don't know. I wasn't there on the
Speaker 1: other end of the line for this one. But they
Speaker 1: said that we don't have time to promote a new
Speaker 1: level because you had Atlantic at co, you know, and
Speaker 1: every every big label had had an alternative levels so
Speaker 1: they can put out more records. And they said, we
Speaker 1: don't have time to promote a new label, get that
Speaker 1: thing on stacks. So it came out on stack or
Speaker 1: something originally Green understood. Okay, if Green Onion was number
Speaker 1: one O two one vote, do you remember what was
Speaker 1: one oh one? No, I don't properly, Charles Hines or
Speaker 1: Nick Charles one or the other. I couldn't remember. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're in, You're in. You know your house? How
Speaker 1: far was your house from downtown Memphis? About twenty minutes? Okay,
Speaker 1: so was it the Memphis School District though? Oh yeah? Okay.
Speaker 1: So Stewart goes into the movie studio a movie theater.
Speaker 1: Do you help build him build it? Since you're there
Speaker 1: at the ground floor. Well, let's I don't want to
Speaker 1: say help build it. But when they took the seats
Speaker 1: out of a lot of the boats and come up
Speaker 1: from the concrete, so I remember Packy Ashton, Charles Ashton
Speaker 1: and myself. We'd take a hammer and knock them back
Speaker 1: down into the concrete. That's what we did, or if
Speaker 1: there were long enough, we break them off, going back
Speaker 1: and forth until I got hot and broke off. Okay,
Speaker 1: Needless to say, the original Stacks was torn down. Now
Speaker 1: there's a museum that tries to replicate the field. But
Speaker 1: what always blew my mind was the floor wasn't flat, No,
Speaker 1: it was angle. So what was that like? Making all
Speaker 1: these records and it's the same exact angle today it was.
Speaker 1: Then What happened was some guys came in the day
Speaker 1: before they tore it down. They wanted me to remember
Speaker 1: everything I could remember about Stacks when they went to
Speaker 1: look at it. Even though it was leveled. The guy
Speaker 1: never to build it back. Existing blueprints were still on
Speaker 1: file downtown, so they didn't need what I remembered at all.
Speaker 1: I remember colors and stuff, but the angle of the
Speaker 1: floor is exactly the same facade out fronts exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Everything is exactly the same, except some of it is
Speaker 1: now a museum. Okay, but I know it's were you
Speaker 1: worked all the time. But either one leg was higher
Speaker 1: than the other or your toes your heels were higher.
Speaker 1: Were you were aware of that when you were working there. Nah,
Speaker 1: you didn't deal with that. It was just the saying.
Speaker 1: It was up the top and the horns are down
Speaker 1: at the bottom, and the piano was down there in
Speaker 1: the drum riser. I remember the drum riser. We had
Speaker 1: to build a little off angle so the floor of
Speaker 1: the drums was flat the drum riser, and it was
Speaker 1: only guarded on two sides instead of four. It was
Speaker 1: more of a just an ail thing to isolate it.
Speaker 1: And I remember piano note broke one time, one of
Speaker 1: the strings and it's stuck in the baffled behind the
Speaker 1: bass player. WHOA. That was scary for it to hit him.
Speaker 1: That had been the end of that, but it broke.
Speaker 1: I would never will forget that. That was pretty scary.
Speaker 1: M Okay. So you make the record is the Marquees
Speaker 1: Jim Steward opens up the big recording studio in the
Speaker 1: movie theater. How you end up. How do you end
Speaker 1: up getting integrated into that? I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: do know this that Jim Stirt hated the band. Stelle
Speaker 1: loved the band. Why because her son played saxophone in
Speaker 1: the band, right, So she kept pushing the Jim to
Speaker 1: record him and we recorded out Brunswick one time and
Speaker 1: I still have those tapes. Is pretty bad, pretty amateurish. Uh.
Speaker 1: The song last Night was written by a lot of guys,
Speaker 1: but the the initial riff was written by Jerry spot Smith,
Speaker 1: the piano player in Chips Woman's band. And they were
Speaker 1: already they were older than we were, and uh already
Speaker 1: had a big gig at one of the big clubs.
Speaker 1: I think they were planning of Vapors or somewhere like that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, uh so Smoochy was on that session. Chiffs
Speaker 1: Woman engineered it and we called the band and I
Speaker 1: wanted Duck to play based on it, and they say
Speaker 1: I wasn't on the record because there's no guitar and
Speaker 1: the record, however, I am on it. I'm playing the
Speaker 1: whole note on the organ when Smoochy texas organ solo,
Speaker 1: two different, two different solos on the record. So the
Speaker 1: night before the evening afternoon before they recorded it. There
Speaker 1: was a Friday afternoon. They recorded on a Saturday, packing
Speaker 1: and I came up with the dada dada, and I
Speaker 1: don't I didn't come up with that whole note on
Speaker 1: the intro. So that was something the horns came up
Speaker 1: with later. Maybe it was package out did I don't know.
Speaker 1: I never did asked buh. That was my idea to
Speaker 1: do the drum roule. So we had the drummer from
Speaker 1: the plantation in plane and during the show he was
Speaker 1: always Jackson played with his hands and people love that
Speaker 1: play the drums like hunger drums. And I said, you
Speaker 1: know that thing you do, that little show piece. You
Speaker 1: do what you do with your hands? He said yes,
Speaker 1: said can you do that same with sticks? He said
Speaker 1: like this and he played it and I said, that's it.
Speaker 1: And that was the intro. That that that that that
Speaker 1: that we don't know where things come from. They just
Speaker 1: follo out the ceiling and you go forward. Just be
Speaker 1: a good channeler. Okay. So he records the marquees, but
Speaker 1: then you personally get integrated into the Stax operation, right,
Speaker 1: And I do remember the first session I played the
Speaker 1: stacks and uh like all guitar players they want to
Speaker 1: be engineers. I don't know why. It's just one of
Speaker 1: those things, especially in Memphis. That's why Scotti, the combination
Speaker 1: of myself going down and playing on Scottish session, he
Speaker 1: wanted to be an engineer and he engineered the other
Speaker 1: thing that Like, when Green Onions came around, I knew
Speaker 1: it was pretty groove. They had no title yet, it
Speaker 1: was just tracks, and I had the singer that we
Speaker 1: were there to record showed up that day, and we
Speaker 1: heard later that he did show up at the record shop,
Speaker 1: but he had sang all night the night before. This
Speaker 1: is on a Sunday afternoon, and uh, he didn't have
Speaker 1: any voice, and so he never came back in the studio.
Speaker 1: So we were just playing around, keeping our chops up,
Speaker 1: and Jim hit the record button because it was ready
Speaker 1: to record, and uh, he said, guys, come up. Listens
Speaker 1: you recorded that, So yeah, so we'll come up. We
Speaker 1: listened to it. He said, if we decided to put
Speaker 1: something like this out, do you have anything else you
Speaker 1: could put on the flip side? In those days of
Speaker 1: the A side of bisade. So we just were dumbfounded.
Speaker 1: We said we didn't have anything and I got to
Speaker 1: thank and I said, book or you remember you played
Speaker 1: me a roof about two weeks ago. You thought it
Speaker 1: would be really good for vocal song? He said, I
Speaker 1: don't remember, but come down to the organ. I'll play
Speaker 1: a couple of roots. You tell me if, I said,
Speaker 1: and he played the green engin and said, that's the
Speaker 1: one right there. So how long did it take to
Speaker 1: record Green Onions third tap? And did you know what
Speaker 1: you have? No? I just knew it was good. I
Speaker 1: knew it was danceable, and so I took it to
Speaker 1: Scotty Moore, who at that time was running the lathe
Speaker 1: and Elvis's contract was Samitory sold. Elvis's contract had a
Speaker 1: lot of money, so he bought a lathe that was
Speaker 1: very much unheard of it. All the maston came out
Speaker 1: of Nashville, out of where we're setting now, in the
Speaker 1: same studio. Uh, in those days, and uh, I don't
Speaker 1: think this building was built still sixty four, so that
Speaker 1: was a year. We had the Green Onions in sixty two,
Speaker 1: I think it was, but it was mastered up here
Speaker 1: and uh, chips, I remember wanting me to play on
Speaker 1: a session. You wanted to engineer it and it was
Speaker 1: Prince Connelly I'm Going Home was it was the title
Speaker 1: of the song. Brought up a chip shutter to me
Speaker 1: young guitar and I duplicated played And that was my
Speaker 1: first session at sax Okay back at that level. Was
Speaker 1: it one or two track mono? Yeah? Mono? So was
Speaker 1: there any you know they laid it down? Were there?
Speaker 1: It was there any so called mixing, any effects added after? No,
Speaker 1: just the way it was recorded. In those days, you
Speaker 1: mixed a song the way it was gonna be sounded
Speaker 1: on the record. Basically, the engineer tried to do that
Speaker 1: since it was mono, so any echo and any effects
Speaker 1: had to be done at the time. So Green Onions
Speaker 1: is cut. How long after you cut it does it
Speaker 1: hit the market? Well, that's a good question. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: That could have been more than a than a month,
Speaker 1: several weeks, I guess. And do you remember the first
Speaker 1: time you heard it on the radio? No? But I
Speaker 1: do Green Onions. I was there, That's why I know.
Speaker 1: But and all I had was that dub that that
Speaker 1: Scotty had made me, and I took it to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, Ruben washing On w l Okay had
Speaker 1: the drive time and the reason I used to go
Speaker 1: there my wife at the time was working for Celia
Speaker 1: Mattress Company. I drop her off at her gig at
Speaker 1: seven o'clock and I'd be it at the radio station
Speaker 1: about seven torenty or whatever, and I always got in.
Speaker 1: Reuben and I were really good friends, and so that's
Speaker 1: where he got started. And I said, I want you
Speaker 1: to hear something we cut Sunday. I had scott This
Speaker 1: was on a Tuesday morning, and I had I said,
Speaker 1: I had Scotty cut me a little doub on this
Speaker 1: thing yesterday, so tell me what you think. He's a
Speaker 1: disc jocket, so he would know. And he plays the
Speaker 1: intro and about two bars and stops it, backs it
Speaker 1: up and I said, you don't like it, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: it's good. I just want to make sure I heard
Speaker 1: what I heard. I said, okay, but I didn't know.
Speaker 1: He put it out on the air and the phones
Speaker 1: lived up all I was playing. That's how that record
Speaker 1: got broke. By playing on the on the radio. People
Speaker 1: calling said I don't know what it is. He said,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. We're gonna find out,
Speaker 1: and then the phone ring again. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, we're gonna find out and it becomes a
Speaker 1: national hit and you're a young guy. What is that
Speaker 1: experience like? Well, it's overwhelming, but it's all your dreams
Speaker 1: come come together real quickly. So everything you thought about
Speaker 1: happens very quickly. And we were in such de man,
Speaker 1: it was amazing. And I the thing with green onions
Speaker 1: already had experienced that with the last night. We did
Speaker 1: a tour of the United States, the Atlantic sort of
Speaker 1: Father or whatever, and we did Dick Clark. We were
Speaker 1: on Dick Clark and uh, unfortunately that's one of the
Speaker 1: tapes that got erased. Before you get a get a
Speaker 1: judge to give her, don't do that. They were taking
Speaker 1: all of his old kide scopes and destroying them because
Speaker 1: they wanted to make more room. So Dick Clark himself
Speaker 1: in those days, he finally got a judge to rule
Speaker 1: it and make him stop. So and I went to
Speaker 1: he was a friend of mine. I went to Dick
Speaker 1: and I said, did you still have the a tape
Speaker 1: of the markets and we're on your show? He said, non, Steve,
Speaker 1: that was one of the ones that got destroyed and
Speaker 1: get out of here. So there's no record of it,
Speaker 1: and uh, there may be one up in Canada because
Speaker 1: there's a TV show. We did it up there one time. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was the sixties through the lens of today. Everybody
Speaker 1: would ask. The first question they would ask it. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it's right, but it's the first question they
Speaker 1: would ask would be about the money. So did you
Speaker 1: ever make any money on Green Onions? Absoluteness still do today,
Speaker 1: But that was not why we cut it. That was
Speaker 1: not why I picked up the guitar warts to make money.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're good at what you do, you're
Speaker 1: gonna make money out of it, I think. And if
Speaker 1: you don't, you just keep going until you do. Okay.
Speaker 1: A couple of questions here. You were going to Memphis State.
Speaker 1: Did you graduate from Memphis State? No? I went two
Speaker 1: years and we had green Onions, So I quit. I said,
Speaker 1: I can always go by, and I never went back.
Speaker 1: And what'd your parents say when you quit? I guess
Speaker 1: he knows what he knows what he's doing, because I
Speaker 1: convinced him I was gonna go back whenever all this
Speaker 1: was over, and they never did stop. Okay, So Green Onions,
Speaker 1: you tell the story, you go to the radio station.
Speaker 1: You talk about a woman. Were you married to her
Speaker 1: at that point? Uh? Yeah, whens were done. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: be honest here, all your dreams come true. You go
Speaker 1: on the road with a hit record. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of perks of being on the road. You
Speaker 1: take an advantage of the perks. I don't know. That
Speaker 1: was not again, that was not a purpose baby. We
Speaker 1: did it was influenced by some of them, but that
Speaker 1: was not the real orison we did it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of womanizing and drugging out there, No,
Speaker 1: not at all with that. Then, Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to Memphis at this time. What was it light between
Speaker 1: the races in the fifties and sixth Well, basically, there
Speaker 1: was no color in those days. Now, when you read
Speaker 1: the history books, it says Memphis was the most segregated
Speaker 1: town in the South. And it might have been. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it was something we all just took
Speaker 1: for granted. I didn't look at a book or anybody
Speaker 1: being any different color than I was. And that's not
Speaker 1: why we did it. We were all there it stacks
Speaker 1: as a team and working as a team, and it
Speaker 1: seemed like everybody in Memphis was working as a team
Speaker 1: because Memphis was the most was credited with being the
Speaker 1: most beautiful city in the United States for about eight
Speaker 1: years in a row. And I remember doing something in school.
Speaker 1: I made a little wishing well and whatever, and it
Speaker 1: got first place from the Quanners Club. So there were
Speaker 1: and I have said this over and over, there was
Speaker 1: never any color that I knew of its stacks. There
Speaker 1: might have been later some division, but not not while
Speaker 1: we were making all those records. And all that came later.
Speaker 1: It came after Martin Ruther King was assassinated. So okay,
Speaker 1: what the day that he was assassinated? What was it
Speaker 1: like being in Memphis. I wasn't. I was in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: The whole band had gone out there a day early
Speaker 1: to play at the Fillmore West, and I think we
Speaker 1: were supposed to be on the same show with Dina
Speaker 1: Ross and the Supremes, who never got on the plane
Speaker 1: in Detroit. When I heard about it. We were already
Speaker 1: out there. Did the show play? Oh yeah, Now there's
Speaker 1: a there's a small story that Bill Graham came to me.
Speaker 1: I went to the restaurroom and Bill Graham came in
Speaker 1: there behind me, and he said, Steve, I might have
Speaker 1: send you guys back to Memphis. We have not sold
Speaker 1: a ticket since we heard about that today, so it
Speaker 1: really he said, yeah, he said I'm gonna take it.
Speaker 1: He said, I'll take care of you, but I can't
Speaker 1: pay you what I promise you. I'll pay you, but
Speaker 1: I'll get you back to Memphis. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: he had to deal with the Jack Tar motel hotel.
Speaker 1: What it was, I stated, the Jack Tar and you
Speaker 1: stayed there, and uh, Bill Graham always uh to get
Speaker 1: off of that story a little bit, I'll get back
Speaker 1: to it, uh, Otis when he did sitting on the
Speaker 1: dock of the bay. Bill Graham always offered to the
Speaker 1: Jack Tar Hotel or his boat house and Sausalita and
Speaker 1: Otis decided to stay in the boat house, and that
Speaker 1: was validated by new Young. We were out there with
Speaker 1: him in ninety three. He was reading a book. So anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: we get we get back to the hotel a motel
Speaker 1: and we get a call from the guys at the
Speaker 1: Fillmore and they said, get your butts back down here
Speaker 1: as soon as you can. There is a line around
Speaker 1: the block. So we drive back down there and sure, enough,
Speaker 1: there was a line all the way around the block.
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted to get in to hear the Book of
Speaker 1: Two the MG's. But there was a period during that
Speaker 1: day that zero It just went to zero nothing. So anyway,
Speaker 1: we had a great show that note night. And I think,
Speaker 1: uh one of the bands that Mothers of Invention was
Speaker 1: on Earth and I think and uh, I don't even
Speaker 1: know who else played that night, but we were minus
Speaker 1: the Supremes. Maybe they had a local band play. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't remember. We played there so many times. Right,
Speaker 1: so you go back to Memphis. What's the vibe in Memphis?
Speaker 1: Pretty ugly? So things have changed. I can tell you
Speaker 1: that the only building left standing in that block where
Speaker 1: Stacks was was Stacks. Wow, that was the only one
Speaker 1: that didn't torch the bank. We got it. All the
Speaker 1: other play all the other buildings, the sandwich shop across
Speaker 1: the street, the bakery, all those places, the filling station,
Speaker 1: everything was tourist, the liquor store, everything except Stacks. So
Speaker 1: it is what it is, Okay, Now today Bull Street
Speaker 1: is just a tourist trap. Was Bull Street already over
Speaker 1: by time you came of age? Was this still happening?
Speaker 1: It was still happening, and what was it like now
Speaker 1: some of the streets were redeemed like Rufus, Thomas Boulevard
Speaker 1: and so forth. And they started doing that, and uh,
Speaker 1: the music notes with people's name on it came way later.
Speaker 1: I don't know when they started that, but you know,
Speaker 1: they're still doing it as far as I know. So
Speaker 1: would you go hang out there and go to the
Speaker 1: go to the clubs? Now? What we did when I
Speaker 1: was in high school, we used to drag that place.
Speaker 1: In other words, we we'd go by the Hippodrome and
Speaker 1: places like that and roll the windows down and drive
Speaker 1: real slow so we could hear Ray Charles's music or
Speaker 1: whenever they came to town, James Brown or BB who
Speaker 1: it was performing and we could hear it. So that
Speaker 1: was a place that you went to the Pond shops
Speaker 1: on Saturday and you looked through the window and you went, oh,
Speaker 1: you're just dreaming at those guitars and stuff, and say,
Speaker 1: then I liked on one of those one of these days.
Speaker 1: It was a wish factory basically, and there were still
Speaker 1: guys on the corner selling pencils and and their thing.
Speaker 1: And it was a great place to hang out and
Speaker 1: what about the Duke Joints? And I've been through Memphis
Speaker 1: and people have pointed them out, But was that a
Speaker 1: factor something you were aware of back then? No? The
Speaker 1: hippodrama named the Handy Club was another one. Uh Courage
Speaker 1: Tropicana was way outside. It wasn't outside of the city,
Speaker 1: but it was away from Bill Street. And I don't
Speaker 1: remember very many club has been down on Bill Street.
Speaker 1: The Landscape Brothers was there where it was bought his
Speaker 1: suits and the mgs did too, But that was or
Speaker 1: Elvis was earlier, way before us. Were you ever bothered
Speaker 1: that it was Booker T and the MG's that your
Speaker 1: name wasn't in the band? No? Done horse. However, so
Speaker 1: when Jim found out what had happened that day and
Speaker 1: Mrs Ashton, I want walked into the record shop, you know,
Speaker 1: just my normal gig at nine o'clock, got to be
Speaker 1: there by nine. She said, there's a lot going on.
Speaker 1: I bet you're responsible, and I said, I held up
Speaker 1: the devil. I said, you're not talking about this. The
Speaker 1: phone was running off the wall before I got there.
Speaker 1: What did I just hear on the radio to day?
Speaker 1: I want to buy it? Nobody knew what it was.
Speaker 1: So I still called Jim and he was working at
Speaker 1: the bank. Still working at the banks, she said, will
Speaker 1: you take your lunch break. You better get down to
Speaker 1: the studio because there's something going on you need to
Speaker 1: know about. So when he was told what was going on,
Speaker 1: he said, we gotta get the guys in for emergency session.
Speaker 1: We gotta come up with a name for the song
Speaker 1: in a name for the group. And that's what we did.
Speaker 1: Was everybody was there with Louis Stainberg and Al Jackson, Booker, team, myself. Okay,
Speaker 1: then how did you come up with the names? What
Speaker 1: Green Unions? A book of both Booker came up because
Speaker 1: Booker it was a book of things. Booker came up
Speaker 1: with that idea. But you know, even though we all
Speaker 1: shared in the writers of it, we did. But uh,
Speaker 1: Louis Stainberg, the bass player, said, let's name it onions.
Speaker 1: Why would you want to name and onions? He said,
Speaker 1: because that's the stink of hist music I've ever heard
Speaker 1: my life. So I I said, okay, onions is fine,
Speaker 1: but think about the negative side of onions. Sometimes onions
Speaker 1: made people cry and there's other people indigestion. I said,
Speaker 1: what about Green Onions And they said, ah, good idea,
Speaker 1: So it became Green Onions. Okay, so the record is
Speaker 1: a smash. You go on the road. Now you're back
Speaker 1: at Stacks and you're coming back in with a hit
Speaker 1: under your under your arm? How do you become integrated
Speaker 1: in the scene and working? Uh with Stacks, it's both
Speaker 1: an A and R guy and in the studio. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell my side of the story, which I
Speaker 1: know to be the truth. Jimm Third couldn't rebuttle it
Speaker 1: if he wants to rebuke it or whatever you call it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we have been very lucky at Stacks with instrumentals, so
Speaker 1: they wanted to know all the instrumentals that I had.
Speaker 1: They never even asked me. I've been writing lyrics to
Speaker 1: song since I was fourteen. Not one time did they say,
Speaker 1: have you got any songs? Steve, No, not one. So
Speaker 1: I go to Jim Sturt's favorite artist, Carla Thomas, and
Speaker 1: I said, Carla came to the record shop. I said, Carla,
Speaker 1: can you come back in the back. I've got an
Speaker 1: idea for a song I think you're gonna love. There
Speaker 1: was no time to lose, and she says Steeve. That's great.
Speaker 1: So she went to Jim and said, Jim, this Steve's
Speaker 1: got a great song. I want to cut it. He said, okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to cut it, we'll cut it. And
Speaker 1: I started. He said, let me see the lyrics. I
Speaker 1: had no time to into O L O O s C,
Speaker 1: no time to lose, so I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: could spell. I still can't spell, but I know how
Speaker 1: to spell lose now. And uh so they cut it.
Speaker 1: There was the biggest money making records Ship has since
Speaker 1: she was now. They have tried to come up with,
Speaker 1: you know, follow ups and all that, had not done
Speaker 1: very well with it, but no time to lose. They
Speaker 1: played on the radio and their social records and had
Speaker 1: a little income on it. So that's pretty good. Okay,
Speaker 1: the songs you wrote, who owned the publishing then and
Speaker 1: who owns it now? Well, the original masters Universal owns it.
Speaker 1: That's the record it was originally the song was East
Speaker 1: Memphis Music. Now you know, everything reverted back. It now
Speaker 1: owns my share of the publishing. And I came in
Speaker 1: one day. I told my wife, I said, I'm getting
Speaker 1: ridy to sell something I've never owned. That's the publishing
Speaker 1: so primary Way in New York ons it. I see,
Speaker 1: So what do you do with the money? Well, I
Speaker 1: say about the money, They said, you just made a
Speaker 1: Fortunates said, but I don't know, but it keeps me
Speaker 1: in golf balls and fishing. Reverse. It's always, you know,
Speaker 1: you never know what you can do with the money. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now you have success with Carla Thomas, Jim Stewart
Speaker 1: must be pretty impressed, I think. So he finally got
Speaker 1: around to asking me, did I have any more songs?
Speaker 1: Of course I had a bunch. We kept coming up
Speaker 1: with him and and hitting and so forth. So Wilson
Speaker 1: I wrote Midnight in the Midnight Hour, and there's a
Speaker 1: whole story behind that song. And wait, wait, tell the story. Okay.
Speaker 1: I didn't know who Wilson Picktt was at all, and
Speaker 1: so Mrs Action said, I think he's sang on some
Speaker 1: gospel songs. So we're playing him and said, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing my Jesus at the midnight I wolf, I want
Speaker 1: to wait till the midnight hour, said, that's that guys label,
Speaker 1: He's midnight Hour. And he wrote, I'm gonna wait till
Speaker 1: the midnight hour to take my girl out. You know
Speaker 1: that basically and when there's nobody else, no one else around,
Speaker 1: just you and I in the midnight hour. So came
Speaker 1: out to be a pretty good idea, I would say,
Speaker 1: even though we spread him. He wrote most of uh,
Speaker 1: don't fight it, you got the fee you And then
Speaker 1: I came up with I'm not tired, Doom, the Doom,
Speaker 1: the doomdom. It's just an old gospel groups all that is.
Speaker 1: So we wrote three songs at night, cut all three
Speaker 1: the next day. All three were chart wricords. Unbelievable, It
Speaker 1: is unbelievable. Okay, we're most of your songs written in
Speaker 1: collaboration like that, all of them, all except I can
Speaker 1: remember one. It was for the Marquees. Everything. I love
Speaker 1: to collaborate. That's on the on the way I like
Speaker 1: to do it because it doesn't matter what percentage of
Speaker 1: something somebody rights. It does if you if three people
Speaker 1: writers thirty third if four people, rather just about it
Speaker 1: that way pretty simple. And Jim Jim made a decision
Speaker 1: that I don't think any studio ever made. If you
Speaker 1: played on it, you got a part writers on it.
Speaker 1: On instrumentals, wow, not the vocal songs. That was up
Speaker 1: to the writers that wrote the song and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Uh. And if the writer wanted to
Speaker 1: share it with the artists, that's fine, but he did not.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an automatic thing. On instrumentals, it was definitely automatic.
Speaker 1: So if you needed a song, would you schedule the
Speaker 1: equivalent of a writing session or would you have a
Speaker 1: recording session and work it out in the studio. Now, well,
Speaker 1: we've worked it out in the studio a lot of times,
Speaker 1: but most of the songs were written the night before.
Speaker 1: So mostly artists that had you know, recording session lined up,
Speaker 1: they would fly in the day before that night. We
Speaker 1: would get together and right, and this is what I
Speaker 1: want you to say, and we'd find the keys and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So then we'd show it to
Speaker 1: the band the next morning, starting around uh eleven, I
Speaker 1: think most successions started and ended by five. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: ended earlier, but they always started no later than eleven o'clock.
Speaker 1: Ten eleven o'clock. They were ready to go, and we
Speaker 1: would show them what we've written and they would come
Speaker 1: up a lot of a lot of the things. We're
Speaker 1: here to arrange a lot of the stuff, maybe some
Speaker 1: of it probably alas actions should have got some writers
Speaker 1: on some of the songs that he did because he
Speaker 1: set the group for everybody. Everybody to listen to Al Jackson.
Speaker 1: He was a drummer, he set the tone for so
Speaker 1: he was doing okay with with the boot MGS. He
Speaker 1: got of that. So if you really think about it,
Speaker 1: half goes to the publisher and half goes to the writer,
Speaker 1: so that half that fift percent gets divided. That means
Speaker 1: that the MGS made twelve of every song that we
Speaker 1: ever had is twelve and whatever it is. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the midnight hour, as big as Green Onions was, it
Speaker 1: was an instrumental, it was in its own category. But
Speaker 1: in the midnight hour there was not a band alive.
Speaker 1: And this is after the Beatles hit. They did not
Speaker 1: play in the midnight hour. Could you realize the success
Speaker 1: of that record? No, a little bit. You and I
Speaker 1: used to get asked how many versions of in Him
Speaker 1: that hour was there? I said, I don't know about
Speaker 1: have been pedo and over a hundred and fifty world.
Speaker 1: So do you get intimidated? You feel, well, I have
Speaker 1: this gigantic kid, I might not be able to make
Speaker 1: another one. No, I know I should have, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: And uh, let me tell you a quick story. Eddie
Speaker 1: Floyd and I were put together by Al Bell. He said,
Speaker 1: I've got this friend of mine who's an artist and songwriter.
Speaker 1: I know you guys will hit it off. So I
Speaker 1: go to Worston, d C. And I meet Eddie Floyd
Speaker 1: and we wrote three or four songs that week and uh,
Speaker 1: so he and I are in in the Uh we
Speaker 1: had written six or four or five, seven, A nine
Speaker 1: for Wilson coming in and on his record knock on Wood.
Speaker 1: I said, Uh, we knew we had a good song.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't think of every being you think
Speaker 1: of maybe it's been a hit, but we knew he
Speaker 1: had a good song. Could not come up with an intro.
Speaker 1: And after about an hour of that, I said Eddie,
Speaker 1: I wonder what in the midnight hour would sound like backwards?
Speaker 1: He said, I don't know, play it. So I played
Speaker 1: it backwards. It starts on the D goes dB A
Speaker 1: G E A, so I started on E G B
Speaker 1: A B d V. Same thing. So I tell people
Speaker 1: in my show, follow the dots. You want to know
Speaker 1: how to write songs and store or something, just follow
Speaker 1: the dots. Well, you're mentioning one thing that people don't
Speaker 1: admit you really, people, you may not know exactly what
Speaker 1: will be a hit, but you know when you do
Speaker 1: something great, you can feel it's different from the rest
Speaker 1: of the stuff. Well, you feel it as good. It's
Speaker 1: better than other things that you've had. Yeah, that much,
Speaker 1: I don't know about greatness. But I tell us also
Speaker 1: that whenever we had a recording session, if we had
Speaker 1: three songs on the session, they all got treated with
Speaker 1: the same energy, and we didn't know which one was
Speaker 1: a hit. Maybe the writers did felt that this was
Speaker 1: better than something else they had, But as far as
Speaker 1: the backing band, the session band, we treated them all
Speaker 1: with the same inflection. We treated Uh soul Man exactly
Speaker 1: the same what we did the other songs on the
Speaker 1: on the date, same thing with Otis and stuff and
Speaker 1: all that we didn't know what was hitting to this
Speaker 1: press and release and put out there. Then you know
Speaker 1: for sure if you have a hit or not. The
Speaker 1: difference in Otis rating is he had seventeen in a
Speaker 1: row from these arms of mine. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: guys can't follow up, but Otis had as far as
Speaker 1: R and B is concerned, as far as generating enough
Speaker 1: income to say that was a hit. He had seventeen
Speaker 1: in a row. But he started off as the road guy.
Speaker 1: He wasn't even the singer. Now he was the singer
Speaker 1: in the band when he showed up the Stacks and
Speaker 1: Johnny Jenkins in the Pine Toppers. The thing is that
Speaker 1: we were there to record Johnny Jenkins in the Pine Toppers,
Speaker 1: who already come off of a hit called Love Twist.
Speaker 1: They couldn't come up with a follow up, so it
Speaker 1: was Joe Walcotta Jerry Wexter's idea to send him to Memphis.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can come up with something, because they really
Speaker 1: they they they're good and be doing instrumentals. So when
Speaker 1: Otis he wanted me to hear him saying he went
Speaker 1: to Al Jackson first and Al said, you know, that
Speaker 1: big tall guy came up driving the car and I
Speaker 1: thought he was a roadie and so that's probably where
Speaker 1: you got that from. But he was a singer. And
Speaker 1: they told me later that, uh, some something happened with
Speaker 1: Johnny Jenkins and he didn't have a light driver's license
Speaker 1: at the time, and so he didn't want to get
Speaker 1: caught driving a car without a license, so he had
Speaker 1: orderst So Otis gets out out of the car. We've
Speaker 1: watched them pull in front of us. We're standing outside
Speaker 1: of the studio waiting for the session to happen, and
Speaker 1: they showed up and he pulled on down and he
Speaker 1: gets out, unlocks the trunk and started carrying in mikes
Speaker 1: and stuff. And I said, man, we got mix and sad.
Speaker 1: You don't need to bring those mix as you said
Speaker 1: up like it was a gig, right, I said, bring
Speaker 1: Johnny's guitar and apps whatever you want. But I said,
Speaker 1: you don't need neither of mix. Put him back on
Speaker 1: the trunk, and that's what he did. So I thought
Speaker 1: it was a rotor. So he comes to Ale Jackson
Speaker 1: and al I said, you know that guy would come
Speaker 1: up driving a car, the big tall guy, and said yeah,
Speaker 1: And he said he wants you to hear him saying
Speaker 1: I've already told him you only hold the auditions on Saturdays.
Speaker 1: Probably the chance that you hear him saying won't happen.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the session, Jim Schurch send
Speaker 1: everybody home early. He said, why don't we just take
Speaker 1: off and start again to mar guys. So we did
Speaker 1: that and we're back in the back listen to stuff,
Speaker 1: and now comes to me, and he said, you know
Speaker 1: what I told you earlier about this guy when you
Speaker 1: want you to hear him saying? I said yeah. He
Speaker 1: said he's driving me nuts. Can you just take five
Speaker 1: seconds out of your time and get this guy off
Speaker 1: of my back? I said, okay, bring him down to
Speaker 1: the pian He brings them down and I said, okay,
Speaker 1: saying something. He said, I don't. I don't play piano.
Speaker 1: Play a little guitar. I don't play piano. Said give
Speaker 1: me some of them church courts. Did you play pian
Speaker 1: and not enoughing? Just to ride with it? He said,
Speaker 1: play me some of the church squads. And he's time
Speaker 1: about six eight trips that that that he starts these
Speaker 1: arms of mine and I went, whoa, the hair of
Speaker 1: my arm litterally stood up. I should stop it right there.
Speaker 1: He said, you don't like us some men I love it.
Speaker 1: But I got Jim Sturch here this so I go.
Speaker 1: I knew I would get fired if Jim did. Brushed
Speaker 1: me off and said, no, Steve, I'm not doing it,
Speaker 1: he said. I said, Jim, you gotta come out and
Speaker 1: hear this guy saying you're gonna die. So he did.
Speaker 1: He heard it. He said we gotta get this down
Speaker 1: on tape. Call the guys back. So Duck had to
Speaker 1: remind me in Tokyo one time, the two days before
Speaker 1: he passed away that I came running out of the
Speaker 1: studio and he was putting his base in the tronk
Speaker 1: of the car, and I said, get your base back out.
Speaker 1: We gotta get this song down. The next morning, we
Speaker 1: were cutting a B side for these Arms of Mine,
Speaker 1: Hey Baby, or whatever was called, and I Johnny played
Speaker 1: guitar on and I played piin on on These Arms
Speaker 1: of Mine, and as Johnny Jenkins playing guitar a little,
Speaker 1: little little. A lot of people don't know that either.
Speaker 1: They think us Me and I don't care what they think.
Speaker 1: It's it is what it is. If they've read a
Speaker 1: book and tell the story, I tell a story about
Speaker 1: tell her now that it was john and Jenkins played
Speaker 1: guitar on that and I played piano. You don't play piano,
Speaker 1: I said, I know that I don't play. Okay. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: after Otis passes, uh, Dock of the Big comes out.
Speaker 1: Now if one listens to Dock of the Bay, you
Speaker 1: can hear the fingers on the strings. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? No, I don't. I played guitar on
Speaker 1: I played both guitars on that, right, I know. But
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's you know, when you heard it
Speaker 1: on I never I never noticed it. You can hear,
Speaker 1: you know, if your guitar player, you can hear the
Speaker 1: fingers moving on the strings. You didn't steer it on
Speaker 1: the radio, but on every you know, it's not that subtle. Well,
Speaker 1: when we get to today, I'll gonna listen to it
Speaker 1: exactly explain what it was. Okay, Now, at this point
Speaker 1: in time, you have a number of successes. Los Angeles
Speaker 1: is just starting to build up as a recording center.
Speaker 1: You certainly have New York, you have Nashville, and then
Speaker 1: Muscles Shoals is starting to become a thing. To what
Speaker 1: degree did you know these other guys or compete with
Speaker 1: these other guys who are just in your own world?
Speaker 1: I didn't. That was Al Bell's I did farm stuff up.
Speaker 1: So he had already started farming sessions up, WORSA, DC, Chicago,
Speaker 1: l A, and Muscle Shoals. Now Jerry was already aware
Speaker 1: of it. And what happened with Jerry Wessler, who was
Speaker 1: president out of Atlantic Records. Uh, he knew that these
Speaker 1: guys and muscle shows were cutting some good records. So
Speaker 1: when Jim Stir decided no more outside recording, I said, Jim,
Speaker 1: I'm just on a roll with Wilson Pickett. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had three hits in a row here. And he said,
Speaker 1: like I said to you, no outside recording. I went, oh,
Speaker 1: so maybe that was the start of the downfall. I
Speaker 1: haven't idea. I don't know. I wasn't that upset about it,
Speaker 1: but I was a little upset. We still had a
Speaker 1: lot going on. And what we did after the Stacks
Speaker 1: vote tour, everybody wanted to be their own producers. They
Speaker 1: wanted to go on instead of same produced by staff,
Speaker 1: they wanted to produced by whoever was in charge of
Speaker 1: the session. So that's what we did and the sister Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: as years are going by, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: Internet twenty years ago. There's an incredible advancement in recording technology.
Speaker 1: We go from one to two to four to eight
Speaker 1: to sixteen to twenty four tracks. We have boards with
Speaker 1: multiple channels to what degree with stocks keeping up with
Speaker 1: that into what degree being a guitar player and being
Speaker 1: in you know, gear head, to what degree were you
Speaker 1: up to speed on all that stuff. Uh, technically, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure we were speed. We were always behind everybody
Speaker 1: in technology. Now. The thing about Atlantic was way ahead
Speaker 1: of the game. They had an eight track. There was
Speaker 1: two in the world and they had one of them.
Speaker 1: So that's what they did. And they, when I say they,
Speaker 1: I should say that Motown brought in Diana Ross I
Speaker 1: brought the four Seasons in different things to do those handclaps,
Speaker 1: and that's that great sound that made everybody want to dance.
Speaker 1: They would dub it down on eight track at Atlantic
Speaker 1: and put all that stuff on it. And Tom Dowb
Speaker 1: being a good friend, taught me how he did a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff and a lot of the handclaps. We're
Speaker 1: done with the metal flanges from the reels because they
Speaker 1: were more metalic that they sounded more like they just
Speaker 1: sounded about it. Well, well, a little bit slower. How
Speaker 1: were they done with the reels and the metal flanges. Well,
Speaker 1: if you took a real apart, you got this round
Speaker 1: metal flange, you get two of them together and clap
Speaker 1: it together. What you're saying, I thought that with hands
Speaker 1: and it sounds like a million hands on it's not.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is chay was a board over
Speaker 1: a broom handle, one guy with two flanges clapping and
Speaker 1: doing his feedback and forth. And if you might it properly,
Speaker 1: you can get this big chat sound. And they used
Speaker 1: to do and what were you using for weaverb We
Speaker 1: had our own echo chamber. Originally it was your bathroom
Speaker 1: that had these old, uh black and white tiles hex tiles,
Speaker 1: just like all the bathrooms. And Jim says that was
Speaker 1: the girl's bathroom. It might have been. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but one of them was taken up for the record
Speaker 1: shop and the other one was still over there. And uh,
Speaker 1: there was a guy there is a guy here in
Speaker 1: town that's doing a book on recording studios, and he said,
Speaker 1: how did you send the signal over? I knew the
Speaker 1: return of the echo was on the eighth pot, so
Speaker 1: of two Ampex mixerers, so it was on one side
Speaker 1: or the other. There was know, we didn't have any
Speaker 1: pan pots in those days, and you could have spent
Speaker 1: the signal. But Jim guy said, maybe you need to
Speaker 1: ask Jim that Jim couldn't remember how we said it
Speaker 1: eire and well to Jatan who built all of that,
Speaker 1: he's gone. So he's not around to ask anymore. We
Speaker 1: know about the return, we don't know how it was
Speaker 1: sent over there. So were you always kind of a
Speaker 1: producer or how did you decide you were going to
Speaker 1: become a producer? M Well, the way I became a
Speaker 1: producer there was no one else to do the job.
Speaker 1: And I have been asked in the past, how come
Speaker 1: there's only one guitar on the sessions because we couldn't
Speaker 1: afford a second guitar player. That's why. Pretty simple, And uh,
Speaker 1: my job at Stacks as a producer all that. While
Speaker 1: we're on our subject, Mrs Axon, I had a job
Speaker 1: at the record shop and she went to Jim Still
Speaker 1: one day and said, you're gonna start paying Steve because
Speaker 1: he's spending more time in the studio than his record shop.
Speaker 1: So they come up with a deal and Jim started
Speaker 1: paying me. And okay, you talk about when everybody becomes
Speaker 1: an independent producer. At what point do you disconnect from Stacks?
Speaker 1: September nine, Well, it must have been a big effect
Speaker 1: if you remember exactly what it was. I remember the day,
Speaker 1: I remember the day of the time, the day and everything,
Speaker 1: So what happened, I don't remember the whole week. But
Speaker 1: I remember that day well. I was told I couldn't
Speaker 1: get out, that you can't leave Stacks, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm gone by No, you can't leave Stacks. So
Speaker 1: I went to Albil, who was by then vice president
Speaker 1: of the label, and I went to Al I said, all,
Speaker 1: I'm not happy here anymore. I want to go. He said, Steve,
Speaker 1: if you want out, I'll help you get out. It's okay.
Speaker 1: And he did and we got out. I had already
Speaker 1: told Jim I said, I'll get my lawyer. I want
Speaker 1: to get out of studio. I gotta go. And uh,
Speaker 1: there was a great tant transition to go from Stacks
Speaker 1: to t M I. They have been working on the
Speaker 1: studio for a long time and the owner and uh,
Speaker 1: one of my best friends are our lead singer in
Speaker 1: our band who did a lot of art work on
Speaker 1: the album covers and all that for Stacks have been
Speaker 1: working with this guy for a long time. And they
Speaker 1: come and got me out of bed one night and
Speaker 1: said we're gonna show you something. So they showed me
Speaker 1: that and they said this is yours if you want it.
Speaker 1: That was t M I was a great studio, and uh,
Speaker 1: that did I mean that helped, but it didn't really
Speaker 1: entice me to leave Stacks. That's not why I left Stacks.
Speaker 1: What I did tell Al and Uh and Jim start,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna leave Stacks and going across the street
Speaker 1: in competition with you. I'm not doing that. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make a different kind of music. I'm not gonna make
Speaker 1: R and B music anymore. And so Al says, well,
Speaker 1: I've got this artist I need you to do. You've
Speaker 1: already agreed to do it. And Uh, he said, you're
Speaker 1: doing real good with Eddy Floyd. You're not gonna stop
Speaker 1: doing that. So I recorded them at him. Okay, a
Speaker 1: couple of a couple of questions here online It says
Speaker 1: you were an A and R guy for Stacks. Is
Speaker 1: that accurate? Yeah? So did you ever sign things? Or
Speaker 1: we're talking about it was so loose. Someone come in
Speaker 1: and you say, hey, this is a good guy. Well,
Speaker 1: I know, I don't think I ever signed anybody. Uh.
Speaker 1: It happened most of it by accident. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you this. I don't ever remember telling somebody becoming famous
Speaker 1: that I said. I listened to her said they're not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. That never happened as far as I can remember.
Speaker 1: So you have great ears. So how did you decide
Speaker 1: you weren't gonna make R and B music anymore? Well,
Speaker 1: I knew I couldn't get out if I said I
Speaker 1: was going to Carcion Cita Buld competition. So at this
Speaker 1: I'm just following the footsteps of Lincoln, Wayne Moment, Chips Bowman.
Speaker 1: He started doing. He did the Sweden inspirations, he did
Speaker 1: King Carters, Elvis and uh However and writers a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys. You know. He did Neil Neil, not Neil
Speaker 1: sadaka Neil Diamond Diamond. So you go, at this point
Speaker 1: in time, not only is the Memphis sound famous, not
Speaker 1: only Stocks famous, you were individually famous. And the way
Speaker 1: people read the credits on the records in depth, so
Speaker 1: I would assume from around the world people are contacting you,
Speaker 1: they want to work with you. Okay? Is that what
Speaker 1: happened when he went to work? Pretty much the thing.
Speaker 1: The thing is, I left him. I made a production
Speaker 1: deal with Columbia Records. I didn't leave to him. I
Speaker 1: left Stacks and and made a deal with the Columbia
Speaker 1: Records And at the time, Clive Davis, the President, and
Speaker 1: he kind of took me in and he wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that you know, I was on his team,
Speaker 1: and I was, so I did a lot of the
Speaker 1: thank The first artists he sent me was a band
Speaker 1: called Dreams. Very successful with that. Then we did Jeff Beck. Okay, okay, wait,
Speaker 1: wait forget whatever his personality is, and one on one
Speaker 1: he not really the public personality anyway. But of all
Speaker 1: of them, we'll leave you out of this because we're talking.
Speaker 1: I consider Beat to be the best, better than Hendricks,
Speaker 1: better than Jimmy Page, as I say, not the greatest
Speaker 1: songwriter in terms of player, unbelievable. So what did you
Speaker 1: think of working with Jeff Beck also being a guitar player?
Speaker 1: It was a treat, big treat. The thing I can
Speaker 1: say about Jeff as a guitar player, I would watch him.
Speaker 1: I was sitting next to him, and I'll go, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not the world's worst guitar player, but I know
Speaker 1: you can't get that there in that position. He did
Speaker 1: whatever was in his head. He just played. The thing
Speaker 1: about if is that as his career went, as he
Speaker 1: got older, he got better, better, better, better and better,
Speaker 1: except he'll never top going down that's one of the
Speaker 1: best versions that's ever been done. I think Going Down.
Speaker 1: Don't believe me, I know it fantastic. And I think
Speaker 1: Bobby Chense I didn't know at the time and I
Speaker 1: was producing Bobby that he was a great rock guitar player.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that he played guitar. I just
Speaker 1: knew him as a good singer. And it was a
Speaker 1: Jeff Beck group. They called it, I think at the time.
Speaker 1: Next Building played piano, Coos and Power played drums, and
Speaker 1: claud Shaman played the bass, and Bobby Chance singing and
Speaker 1: Jeff played that incredible guitar. Wow. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the album as a whole was pretty Yankee. I don't
Speaker 1: think Jeff was very proud of the album, but he's
Speaker 1: got to be proud of Going Down. That is amazing.
Speaker 1: So what was your production technique? How involved were you?
Speaker 1: Were you type of guy who would were arrange, type
Speaker 1: of guy change the songs. Youre the type of the
Speaker 1: guy just sit behind the board, not interfere too much.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, but I do know this. I
Speaker 1: have told many people, if I knew what made me
Speaker 1: who I am, I'd bought it and give it to everybody.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I was just there at the
Speaker 1: time and it worked. The thing I say about producers,
Speaker 1: you gotta be able to hear something finished. You can't
Speaker 1: just get lucky and stair step it and get lucky
Speaker 1: each time you do something. You gotta hear it finished.
Speaker 1: And you worked for that goal. I think now another
Speaker 1: being you worked with. It was un epic, but part
Speaker 1: of the whole uh CBS enterprise was Poco. That it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like anything could be further from your wheelhouse
Speaker 1: than Poco, all right, And recently I got to see
Speaker 1: Richie Farrey again for the first time since Poco and
Speaker 1: Timothy I have seen. You know, he's out with the
Speaker 1: Eagles and I knew his time. I don't know whatever
Speaker 1: happened to Paul Cotton. The only hit out of that
Speaker 1: album that I did was Railroad Days by Paul Cotton,
Speaker 1: and I think Richie knows that. And Richie Farrey at
Speaker 1: the time was the writer and they had just split up.
Speaker 1: Him and Jimerson has split up and uh he has
Speaker 1: fit up with his wife as well. It was writing
Speaker 1: all these great love songs, but that's all it was
Speaker 1: with love songs, and I don't think Polko was known
Speaker 1: for love songs. So I told Clive that okay, and
Speaker 1: put the album out anyway, and you know, we had
Speaker 1: railroad days. It's number one record was pretty good. That
Speaker 1: was all we had out of that. And another thing
Speaker 1: happened with looking Glass, I think with Ell Litt Laurie
Speaker 1: looking at us. And so I'm up in New York
Speaker 1: at the time, and they said, we got this group
Speaker 1: who wants you to go here? So I did. They
Speaker 1: came back the next day and I'm sitting down and
Speaker 1: cloud he said, well, they have any hits. I said,
Speaker 1: they got one Brandy. He said, well, let's take him
Speaker 1: down to Memphis. You cut him and see what you're
Speaker 1: gonna said. He called me about four days into the session.
Speaker 1: He said, how's it going. I said, going pretty good.
Speaker 1: She says, uh, if you got any hits, I said,
Speaker 1: one Brandy. He said, would send them back to New
Speaker 1: York then, And so they, I don't know, they think
Speaker 1: I had something to do with it. I had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with that, with him going back. But here's
Speaker 1: what they did. They got an engineer to work for nothing.
Speaker 1: They went in at midnight or late in the evening
Speaker 1: and recorded Brandy the same way. We didn't head anbaring
Speaker 1: record with it great. I'm proud of proud of them.
Speaker 1: I heard that in Woodstock. I heard them do it
Speaker 1: Brandy and it was hit. Then there's still a hit.
Speaker 1: So I heard on the radio. I go, man, that
Speaker 1: was a hit. So okay. So how long Needles Sway
Speaker 1: Clive gets blown out of CBS uh and how long
Speaker 1: does it last for you with t M I what's
Speaker 1: the next step for you? Well, the guy that signed
Speaker 1: us to Columbia whole mrs ever't doesn't matter. Um, he
Speaker 1: was booted out of Columbia because of indifferences or something.
Speaker 1: I think what it was. He was part on over
Speaker 1: a building they were keeping the records in as a
Speaker 1: as a wherever storage place. He couldn't do that. So
Speaker 1: the guy was in partnership with came to me one
Speaker 1: day answered, we're moving over to our c A. So
Speaker 1: I wind up doing three records on Jos's Feliciano and
Speaker 1: some other stuff. And and during that transition time I
Speaker 1: did a little record. My name is not on there,
Speaker 1: but I still produced. It was Tower Power, Bump City, Yeah,
Speaker 1: down to the Nine Clubs, to leon Man and all
Speaker 1: those records awesome. The problem was they got busted about
Speaker 1: two or three times a week, and the fact that
Speaker 1: we were friends with the police, they didn't they just
Speaker 1: turn them loose back in the studio or whatever. So
Speaker 1: when it came down to do a second album, they said,
Speaker 1: we're not coming back to Memphis, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going out to Oakland. I went out there
Speaker 1: later and row with Steve the bart player. He was
Speaker 1: a ride and uh, you know, we hit it off
Speaker 1: real good and all that sort of stuff. But the
Speaker 1: rest of the man, we would we hit it off tremendously,
Speaker 1: all good friends, but I wouldn't go to first go
Speaker 1: to cut them, and they wouldn't come to l A.
Speaker 1: I mean, to to Nashville. So I'm Memphis, I mean,
Speaker 1: and uh that's where we ended it right there. So
Speaker 1: you did Bumps, you did down to the nightclub bump City. Yeah, unbelievable,
Speaker 1: unbelievable records. Okay, So at any point in this game,
Speaker 1: do you feel in the seventies that, hey, you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of success, be you want to walk away?
Speaker 1: See are you still on a roll? You fear where
Speaker 1: you are in the game, Are you thinking about any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. No, the thing is that what I
Speaker 1: look back on my career. I spent over nine years
Speaker 1: in the studio in the fifties up the years on
Speaker 1: the road. So uh, they say, what do you like
Speaker 1: the best? I said, I don't. It didn't matter. If
Speaker 1: I'm on stage, I'm having a great time. If I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio, I'm having a great time. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. But when you can make a living out
Speaker 1: of having fun, that's the best thing. That's now I understand.
Speaker 1: I've always understood why sports guys who get paid a
Speaker 1: lot of money to do to play the same game
Speaker 1: they've been playing since they were kids. And nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. No, accept it ends at some point where
Speaker 1: as a musician, if you're good, you can continue to go.
Speaker 1: You have to God takes you away, right, Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: working with all these people, you have a unique guitar style.
Speaker 1: Did it ever change your guitar style being having all
Speaker 1: these other influences? No, I don't think so. But you know,
Speaker 1: I listened to radio every now and then I go, hey,
Speaker 1: I played pretty good on that. I remember half of it?
Speaker 1: I don't. And then at this point you know you're
Speaker 1: you're in the pan theeon in that era? Does it
Speaker 1: end up that you end up meeting everybody like obviously
Speaker 1: you're working with Jeff Beck, do you know? You know
Speaker 1: pretty close? That's the scary part. I think I've met
Speaker 1: almost everybody. There's anybody, whether comedians or actors or whatever.
Speaker 1: I met him all presidents. I played for four of them.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I would like to thank Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton and I were pretty good friends at one time.
Speaker 1: How did you become friends with Bill Clinton? Well, you don't,
Speaker 1: I mean you he takes you on. You don't take
Speaker 1: him on. You might accept him as a person, but
Speaker 1: if if he's standing at the end of the stage
Speaker 1: or an address of Whiting on the restaurant where you
Speaker 1: get up stage, you got a pretty good ata likes
Speaker 1: you and not eously. You know, you come from adjoining states.
Speaker 1: But what would you talk to Bill Clinton about? Music? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And would he ever? Definitely didn't talk about girls or
Speaker 1: the state. We've talked about music. I wasn't fishing for that.
Speaker 1: But would he ever? Did he ever call you on
Speaker 1: the phone and say, hey, Steve, no, no, So what
Speaker 1: did you get in the Oval office? He said? You know,
Speaker 1: I remember where I was the day I heard Grant Onions.
Speaker 1: I mean not Grandos, but Dock of the Bay. He
Speaker 1: was in a pub in England. He told me, as
Speaker 1: I'm walking over, So what did you learn about famous people? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. There's only three guys in my
Speaker 1: career that could light up a room just by walking
Speaker 1: into it. Elvis was one of them. Bill Clinton was
Speaker 1: another one, and Roy Oberson was the third one. They
Speaker 1: walk in, every head would turn, every conversation would just stop,
Speaker 1: didn't go back to where it was, And that's what
Speaker 1: they did. And you're making this R and B music
Speaker 1: in Memphis? What did you think about the British Invasion sound,
Speaker 1: the Beatles and who came thereafter then ultimately clapped in
Speaker 1: and back, and then you have to San Francisco sound,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the folk rock from Los Ange Angelists.
Speaker 1: Was that something that interested you? Or he was saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just doing what I'm doing. I would say, I'm
Speaker 1: doing what I'm doing, and I'm okay at that. I'll
Speaker 1: just stick with what I got to successful. Well, I
Speaker 1: venture out and try to do something I don't know
Speaker 1: a lot of people do. Okay, let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: another legendary moment. Okay, I remember going to see Lemmings
Speaker 1: off Broadway, becoming aware of John Belushi and Chevy Chase
Speaker 1: and the fall of seventy. SNL goes on Ackroid and
Speaker 1: Blush start this crazy thing with the Blues brothers you
Speaker 1: know from me and talking to you down a little different.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, listen, how the fund does you know?
Speaker 1: Steve Cropper half time to say, Okay, I'm gonna pick
Speaker 1: up I'm gonna go on the road with these guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, how did all that happen? What was going
Speaker 1: through your mind? Okay, I don't know. It's kind of weird,
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you the connection. So Belushi happened to
Speaker 1: be the New Year's Eve gig that we played with
Speaker 1: Levon Helm in New York, and he said, if I
Speaker 1: ever put a band together, I wanted that band. And
Speaker 1: then he got the opportunity to Steve Martin asked him
Speaker 1: to open up some shows for him. So Steve said,
Speaker 1: that's when Steve Martin had King Tutt. His connection was
Speaker 1: Sating out Live. Was a writer for Saturday Night Lives,
Speaker 1: so he knew them very well. So he comes to
Speaker 1: John and he says, I want you guys to open
Speaker 1: from me. He said, they insist that I have an
Speaker 1: opening act, and I want you guys to do it
Speaker 1: rather than use some local band, you know. And John says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Danny and I don't do stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: He said, I don't care what you do, he said.
Speaker 1: John says, good. Can we play music? He said, if
Speaker 1: you want to play music, play music. That's when he
Speaker 1: started putting the band together. So I get a call
Speaker 1: from him. I'm I'm working on Robin Ford's album, Great
Speaker 1: Guitar Player, and I have this thing when I'm mixing
Speaker 1: or working on somebody, and we were mixing the album
Speaker 1: at the time. No calls except one guy who might
Speaker 1: take me to lunch. He was he was worked for
Speaker 1: the publishing company that I was with it. I wasn't
Speaker 1: with them, but they had some of the old songs,
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, if he calls, it's okay. And
Speaker 1: he would always call and say I'm president so on,
Speaker 1: so this is Stevie Wonder or he'd come up with
Speaker 1: a name. So when I said, Belusha's on the phone
Speaker 1: for you, I hung up. On the third time. I
Speaker 1: hung up again the second time on the third time,
Speaker 1: he said, don't hang up. It's really John Belushi. The
Speaker 1: thing is I had met him before at a Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney party and we talked for a long time about music,
Speaker 1: about different things, and he was there Paul had hired
Speaker 1: him to do that Joe Cocker thing that he used
Speaker 1: to do. And uh. Anyway, he said, don't hang up,
Speaker 1: and then he said, I understand you don't get along
Speaker 1: with Duck. Done very well, and so I really left it.
Speaker 1: But I knew that wasn't my friend. That had to
Speaker 1: be John Belushi, and he said no. He said really.
Speaker 1: He said, I've already talked to Duck and Duck's gonna
Speaker 1: come up and play. He said I need you up
Speaker 1: there and said, I'm in the middle of mixing record.
Speaker 1: I can't do it. So he said you can't do it.
Speaker 1: I said, man, I can't do it. I can't be
Speaker 1: up there and tomorrow I can't do it. So when
Speaker 1: I hung up with John, Robin was sitting in the
Speaker 1: couch below the console. He stands up. He says, I'll
Speaker 1: do it. I said, you know you won't. He did.
Speaker 1: He said I'll do it. I said, no, you won't.
Speaker 1: So I talked to Bruce rob who was an engineer
Speaker 1: on the on the job and I said, can we
Speaker 1: do what you've done before with with with what's her
Speaker 1: name from Atlantic, Jerry Wexler, And I said, can you
Speaker 1: mix it? Send me the mixes and all, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you this and that and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: So well, I think we had two left was gonna
Speaker 1: be so I call blew you back and I said,
Speaker 1: if you could wait two or three days, I'll be
Speaker 1: up there. And he said, okay, I'll wait on you.
Speaker 1: So he did, and that's how all got started. So
Speaker 1: the other thing, the reason Duck and I are in
Speaker 1: the band at the time, we had done two our
Speaker 1: theoms and two world tours. Will leave on him and
Speaker 1: the Saturday Night Live Horns with a horn back at Horns,
Speaker 1: and uh so Belushi goes to Tom alone, he was
Speaker 1: a trombone player at that time in the director of
Speaker 1: the Saturday Night Live Horns and the band, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know we're gonna open these shows for Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: Do you want to take the whole Saturday Night Live band?
Speaker 1: And what should we do? And he said, you need
Speaker 1: to get done in cropper because they're old Road Dogs.
Speaker 1: I don't know where he got that from it anyway,
Speaker 1: that's how we got to be part of it, thanks
Speaker 1: to Tom alone. Okay, but if that it turns into
Speaker 1: a phenomenon, there ends up being multiple records. You know,
Speaker 1: tours are just the Blues Brothers. There's a movie. You know.
Speaker 1: Was that all a fun ride or did he get older?
Speaker 1: This most fun you didn't have in life? I guess
Speaker 1: it was pretty pretty fun. Yeah, And we had no
Speaker 1: idea that first album doing it ain't what triple platinum
Speaker 1: right off the bat. Now I follow up to quadruple
Speaker 1: platinum for four million sales at the time, it came
Speaker 1: out two and a half three million sales, which I
Speaker 1: think is the stepping stone, the one thing that allowed
Speaker 1: Atlanta to put them a little more pressure on Universal
Speaker 1: do a movie because they had turned Danny down before
Speaker 1: on the idea of doing a Blues Brothers movie. Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta email from Tivin and he said, you gotta
Speaker 1: ask Steve some questions that no one's ever asked him.
Speaker 1: So he said me, if you and I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: him what about these phone calls with Bob Dylan? I
Speaker 1: ain't gonna go there. But anyway, I gotta call Bob,
Speaker 1: and I got a call from somebody worked Bob and
Speaker 1: said Bob was gonna call you in ten minutes, and
Speaker 1: he did, and I just assumed he wanted me to
Speaker 1: be in his band. I don't know if I had
Speaker 1: done or not. And he never did say was you
Speaker 1: to be in a band? He never gave me the
Speaker 1: opportunity to turn him down. So, so, did you want
Speaker 1: to talk music or just talk? Well, he got on
Speaker 1: the phone and said, Cropper, I had you in my mind.
Speaker 1: He must say that twenty times. I had you in
Speaker 1: my mind. Okay, what I had him? Man, that's all
Speaker 1: he said. Finally hung up. After about ten minutes, he
Speaker 1: kept saying that and then hung up. And that was
Speaker 1: into that and never heard from him again. No, but
Speaker 1: he's a good friend. And what about working with John Lennon. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing about that is that it was a pretty
Speaker 1: crazy session. But I stayed and so John said, are
Speaker 1: you gonna stay for the next song? I said absolutely?
Speaker 1: He said can you stay after the next song? Because
Speaker 1: I came up with a riff that I always thought
Speaker 1: it would be good for a book of D n
Speaker 1: M cheese. I said sure, so it's after everybody tlearned out.
Speaker 1: It's just John Lennon and myself in the studio and
Speaker 1: he gets a guitar. It passes to be his bottle
Speaker 1: of vodka, which I thought was water holiday long. It
Speaker 1: was really Holy Acrol. He could handle it. So he
Speaker 1: plays me this riff. It's pretty good. So I take
Speaker 1: it back short to my band or Tim, and we've
Speaker 1: made a little record, recorded it, send it to a secretary,
Speaker 1: and one day, by accident, they said John Lennon's new
Speaker 1: record is out. That was imagine. Well, whoever put the
Speaker 1: record on the jew box put in upside down, so
Speaker 1: the B side played first. I said, that's the instrumental,
Speaker 1: I said, riff. So if you want to pick it up,
Speaker 1: it's called beef Jerky. He cut it in New York.
Speaker 1: Now are you yes? I said, you've met essentially everybody
Speaker 1: anybody ever intimidate you? Do you get up tight meeting people?
Speaker 1: Or John Lennon just another musician. Well, John Lennon was
Speaker 1: John Lennon, but you know I had met him before.
Speaker 1: I bet all three, but uh, the only guy that
Speaker 1: wasn't there at the time, and in uh what was
Speaker 1: the seventies, now, sixty six the Stax Fold tour. They
Speaker 1: were at the Bag of Nails and we were down
Speaker 1: there rehearsal for the show, and uh, the only guy
Speaker 1: that wasn't there was George the guitar player is the
Speaker 1: only one who wasn't there. It's crazy, but NDO and
Speaker 1: Paul and and John were there. Pretty crazy. The thing
Speaker 1: about that is that they respected us so much they
Speaker 1: sent a Roles to pick us up in red carpet. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was pretty nice something to do that. And you
Speaker 1: also played with Keith Richards. Yeah, what's the smile and joke?
Speaker 1: Fare Well, it's the same thing you just said a
Speaker 1: while ago. I don't want to admit that. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I just treat everybody equal and I've always done that.
Speaker 1: You are who you are. I mean, I ain't taking
Speaker 1: anything away from you. But if you want to be special,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to be special. Okay. I think I
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: just take all these people with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: So you're planning for a president, Well, you just treat
Speaker 1: him like a regor guy, and he loves it. They
Speaker 1: always love it if you bow down to him, right,
Speaker 1: off the bat and treat them like bigger than I know.
Speaker 1: That's what I told me. You want to talk to
Speaker 1: famous people, first thing you do. First rule is don't
Speaker 1: ever talk to him what they're famous about, you know,
Speaker 1: all this other stuff. And you were working with Jeff
Speaker 1: Beck and Stevie Wonder sent a demo. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: Jeff Beck story superstitious. So they want me to hear
Speaker 1: the song that Stevie Wonder has written for Jeff Beck.
Speaker 1: So we get to Electric Lady Studios and Stevie says,
Speaker 1: put it up, put it up, tells the engine to
Speaker 1: put it up, put it up. He puts it up.
Speaker 1: So while it's playing, it's superstitious. I'll lean over when
Speaker 1: I said, Stevie, put horns on that and put it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did just say that, put horns on it and
Speaker 1: put it up. And that is that the version with
Speaker 1: horns that came out. Yeah, so you're responsible. So you're
Speaker 1: responsible for Beck not getting it. Maybe, but I heard Beck.
Speaker 1: So Stevie calls him up to sit in one night
Speaker 1: and I said, now I find it. It it I
Speaker 1: understand why he wrote that for Jeff Beck. Good got
Speaker 1: the money. Yeah, but that was a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago that I heard it for the first time. I
Speaker 1: heard Jeff play for the first time. Okay, a lot
Speaker 1: of time is going by. You're still eager to go
Speaker 1: on the road, you're still eager to play. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: that's hard to say. If I ever did. I think
Speaker 1: you asked me that similar question before. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I was ever. I have a longing to go fishing
Speaker 1: and a longing to play golf that I don't have
Speaker 1: a longing to play music. I do that if I'm
Speaker 1: called upon, and I will say this. They don't pay
Speaker 1: you to play. They pay you to carry the luggist
Speaker 1: to an airport. But when about two hours you're on stage, man,
Speaker 1: that's the best fun you can have. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm also one of those guys. I don't. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: playing to be playing, but I don't enjoy planning for
Speaker 1: two people two thousand. I enjoy two hundred thousand. I
Speaker 1: rooted joy. I understand the concept there too. And uh,
Speaker 1: you keep up with popular music, no because you've been
Speaker 1: through too much or you don't like it. I think
Speaker 1: I know the difference in terms of I know what's
Speaker 1: a hit and what's not. If it's good enough to
Speaker 1: make my hair stand up. It's good. If it doesn't,
Speaker 1: it ain't. What are a few records you were not
Speaker 1: involved with that major here stand up? Mm hmm. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I never thought of it that way,
Speaker 1: but I'm I can think of you probably, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I really don't know. Okay. And to what to do? You?
Speaker 1: Are you a gearhead? What a gearhead? I'm not a
Speaker 1: gear head? How many? How many guitars you own? Way
Speaker 1: too many? You want to play one at the time,
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm asking how many? How many? On? Well,
Speaker 1: I play the same gitub and playing one. I retired
Speaker 1: one after fourteen years and the one I'm playing presently
Speaker 1: I've been playing close to ten years. Now, why did
Speaker 1: you retire the first one? Uh? It needed to be refretted. Okay?
Speaker 1: And what model is this? Well, it's it's a telecaster,
Speaker 1: but it's made by Pete called a Generation series, very
Speaker 1: versatile guitar. People said, why did you pick up the telecaster?
Speaker 1: Because it's the most personal guitar on the planet. You
Speaker 1: can make it do about anything. If you want to
Speaker 1: play rock, you can hear the switch and make it
Speaker 1: play rock. If you want to play R and B,
Speaker 1: you can play R and B. You want to play chinks,
Speaker 1: just back beats. It's just the only guitar in the
Speaker 1: world is built for back beats, I think, because the
Speaker 1: other one you hit it, you hit a six or
Speaker 1: six do chord. It's going to the store. A telecaster doesn't.
Speaker 1: What about a strato caster. A lot of the English
Speaker 1: musicians played stratocasters. Listen. Yeah, they have a different sound.
Speaker 1: It's a different pickup set up. And and the other
Speaker 1: thing is that I play with my palm of my
Speaker 1: hand muted on the bridge. No matter who makes the guitar,
Speaker 1: that's where it is. So on a strap it will
Speaker 1: take the pick out of my hand in two beats
Speaker 1: because I been'll pick up. So I have several custom
Speaker 1: made straps with a nod midle pick up. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what about the amps, Well, that's different. I will
Speaker 1: give you a little secret on picking the best electric guitar.
Speaker 1: Play it acoustically. If it sounds good acoustically, you can
Speaker 1: find an amp to marriage with it to make it
Speaker 1: sound really good, even a solid body like the telecaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how about a fact? How about effects? Well, it
Speaker 1: depends I don't use a lot of effects. Never did.
Speaker 1: That's not my sound. And tremorl oh, yeah, book or
Speaker 1: T I have a tremulator similator thing that makes it
Speaker 1: vibrate um. The old super reverbs had one vibrato in it.
Speaker 1: The one I'm planning now the amp does not have
Speaker 1: one in it, so I have to use it outboard,
Speaker 1: just get a little deeper. Fender had tubes, then they
Speaker 1: went to transistors. We have marshals. Are you a guy
Speaker 1: who says, well, transistors tubes totally different sound. You gotta
Speaker 1: have the right amp. Maybe the best amp I ever
Speaker 1: had had both one side was to the other side was,
Speaker 1: you know, just regularly whatever they do the new technology. Uh,
Speaker 1: that amp I don't have any more. What amp was that?
Speaker 1: It was a PDM Okay, do you like when people
Speaker 1: call you the colonel or not like it? It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: My nickname is crap dog. Let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: Back in the very beginning. Did they call you Steve
Speaker 1: or did they call you a cropper? I think Steve
Speaker 1: in the beginning? How far back you're going? Two stacks?
Speaker 1: Well before that, in high school we had a former
Speaker 1: that we used, so I was Saucy, son of Hollins Cropper.
Speaker 1: Now some of it works, some of it doesn't. But
Speaker 1: Tom dad always called me Saucy s a U see
Speaker 1: why because he thought that's what it was, Saucy. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you were Sauncy, did everybody else have an equivalent nickname? Yeah? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's definitely the man it was. I was the son
Speaker 1: of who whatever their dad was. Some of the works
Speaker 1: and some of it didn't. Okay, So then you get
Speaker 1: the stacks. What's your name creeper? Why is it that?
Speaker 1: I don't know because that's what Eddie Floyd called me?
Speaker 1: Creeps creeper or creepster? Is that because you crept along
Speaker 1: or he creeped? You know that? But he did? You know?
Speaker 1: His nickname is tree from from wood wood of a tree,
Speaker 1: so everybody calls him a tree. And then how did
Speaker 1: you become the colonel? And then uh, I don't know that. Well,
Speaker 1: the horns gave me that in in Japan and they
Speaker 1: don't remember what I did. Uh. So Eddie Floyd called
Speaker 1: me also Stevie instead of Stevie wonder they call me
Speaker 1: Stevie Blunder. Did you make it? And I remember Eddie
Speaker 1: Floyd used to say, you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the stea, he's one. He said, you can't see him.
Speaker 1: He said, if he turns out of what you can.
Speaker 1: And I was skinny in those days. I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know. And what about crumpster? What's that all about?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Well do you do your friends
Speaker 1: call your crumpster? I'm trying to think now, since you
Speaker 1: asked me the question, you know they don't. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think what John belushia called me other than Cropper.
Speaker 1: Most of the guys just say the last name Cropper.
Speaker 1: And then when you were he was Blushi funny in
Speaker 1: real in regular life. Yeah. But the thing about Belushi
Speaker 1: was he never turned down a fan ever. If there
Speaker 1: was two guys or two hundred guys, he would stay
Speaker 1: there till it was over with and that was it.
Speaker 1: And uh, when I was hanging with him in New
Speaker 1: York and l A, people would jump over cars and
Speaker 1: jump in front of cars or whatever. If he was
Speaker 1: across the street hanging out the windows, yelling and screaming
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. And Roy overs and
Speaker 1: they did the same thing with Roy. And I'm going
Speaker 1: I hope I never come in that famous I guess
Speaker 1: I hadn't. And how's your help? So far, so good,
Speaker 1: so hopefully you'll be around for another twenty years, Steve,
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful. There's so many stories I still
Speaker 1: want to hear, but I think we've come to the
Speaker 1: end of the feeling for today. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: the with this. You better anytime, man, Okay, until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left sets