Trowbridge’s, Florence, AL (Sam Phillips’ Favorite Hometown Restaurant)
Sorry to have been out of pocket for so long.
One of the biggest reasons is that we (Alexandra and I, with Robert Gordon and Jake coproducing, and David Leonard and Robert shooting) have been doing video interviews for the enhanced digital versions of the various books, which are slated to start coming out in December.
We shot in Memphis, Florence and Muscle Shoals, Nashville, and Chicago – at Phillips Recording Studio, Lauderdale Courts, Audubon Drive, Fame, Stax, and Sun International. Much of the interview material was with me alone, talking about how the books came to be written as well as some of the different approaches that I took to the material (like the huge difference required – just from the standpoint of structure and style – in telling the two contrasting stories of Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love).
But then we had conversations, too, with old friends like William Bell (straight from the White House celebration of Stax to the Stax Museum itself), Rick Hall, Dan Penn, Jerry Phillips, Roland Janes, L.C. Cooke, and Sleepy LaBeef, among others. It was really fun (with the one unavoidable downside the bittersweet memories of all those now gone), and here are just a few pictures from our trip.
With Roland and Robert at Phillips Recording
Roland, in case anyone doesn’t know, played guitar on every big Sun record from the arrival of Jerry Lee Lewis on. He has managed the Phillips studio for the last thirty years and writes the most wonderful short stories, which he sends out every Christmas. Around the middle of our conversation, Roland announced, “Now I’m going to interview you.” And he did. Robert’s new book on Stax, Respect Yourself, is at this moment just about to go to press
With Alexandra and Jake at 706 Union Avenue
The last time I had been here was with Steve Bing and John Fusco, who was researching the script for Last Train to Memphis at the time. Matt Ross–Spang was just beginning to put together recombinant versions of all the original Sun equipment then. Now he has it nearly assembled, with the equivalent of Sam’s RCA 76-D console and, I believe, two Ampex tape recorders. So for anyone who wants to record just like Elvis did, you can have your chance soon. And who knows, maybe we’ll even start shooting the movie before too long!
With Rick Hall at FAME Studios
A couple of nights after this interview we went with Rick to the Nashville Film Festival screening of the documentary Muscle Shoals, a vivid evocation of the music (produced by Stephen Badger and Greg Camalier) in which Rick was characteristically and irrepressibly himself. In fact, he pretty much stole the show, leaving the way wide open for a sequel focusing on some of the other aspects of the story. Rick’s still-unpublished memoir, Hell Bent For Fame, as told to Muscle Shoals historian Terry Pace and edited by Robert Gordon, is an even more amazing and graphic story, particularly of his early years, growing up in the desolate badlands of the Freedom Hills. He wanted it to be like a combination of Harry Crews and Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road, he told me when he first began work on it more than ten years ago – and it is
With L.C. Cooke at his home in Chicago
L.C.’s got a new album coming out only 48 years after its originally announced date. Well, that’s not quite true – I mean, not literally true in that it’s not exactly the same album as the one SAR Records would have released if his brother Sam hadn’t died. This one will have some of L.C’s pre-SAR Checker and post-SAR Destination sides as well. But, as you can imagine, it’s very cool – totally cool. There’s one song on it that as we listened to it, L.C. said, “That was probably the best song I ever did in my life – to me. You know, sometimes you cut a song and you listen and you say, I could have done that better. But ‘If I Could Only Hear’ – if I’d have sung that song about 100 years, I couldn’t have done that song no better. And that’s always been my favorite song.” And then we listened to it. Watch for a fall release on ABKCO!
Next up on Our Tour: Thomson, Georgia, Birthplace of Blind Willie McTell