00:00:02 - 00:00:29 Speaker 1

So this is an electric sitar made invented by a guy named Vinnie Bell. This is the kind of guitar that was used on Cry Like a Baby and, hooked on a feeling. B.J. Thomas a lot of pop records, use this electric sitar in the 60s, and, anyway, on Cry Like a Baby. This is Reggie Young playing it.

00:00:29 - 00:00:29 Speaker 1

Like.

00:00:30 - 00:00:37 Speaker 2

When I think about the good love he gave me, I cried like a baby.

00:00:37 - 00:01:02 Speaker 3

And so, country number four, I sat down with original box top guitarist Gary Talley. We talked about the Memphis native's five decade journey through soul, country and rock. I'm Ric Stewart, a community radio DJ since 1986 and an award winning filmmaker, adding some real life podcast and yet deeper into soul country. Good god, tales from the intersection of countrified R&B and bluesy Americana.

00:01:02 - 00:01:23 Speaker 3

Listen in as we revitalize our cultural roots in Western blues and variety. Now, a word from our sponsor. Ace production has just released blues rock hit Soul Country, a 28 minute music doc full of exclusive performances and interviews from Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and Grammy winner. It's the origin story of Soul country. Check it out. It's soul country icon.

00:01:24 - 00:01:46 Speaker 3

Well, Gary tuned up his electric guitar, played a version of the letter, and talked about legendary gigs with Doctor John, Billy Preston, Willie and Waylon and of course, former bandmates, the eclectic Alex Chilton. And here's how it all went down. We're here for Soul Country podcast number four with Gary Talley. When the original Box Tops a Memphian and a Nashville and a Franklin resident.

00:01:46 - 00:01:47 Speaker 3

Welcome to the show.

00:01:48 - 00:01:49 Speaker 1

Well. Thanks, Ric!

00:01:49 - 00:01:56 Speaker 3

So tell me about your formative years. You were in Memphis coming up, and, the label was in the scene at the time in the 60s.

00:01:56 - 00:02:23 Speaker 1

Well, yeah, I was born in 47. So, when I was a kid, my, my mom and my dad both played, but my dad played guitar, my mom played piano, and they were singing around the house all the time, you know? So I kind of grew up doing that and singing along with them. And, my dad had a guitar and I would sit on the couch and put it on my lap and just kind of plunk out melodies with it.

00:02:23 - 00:02:50 Speaker 1

So in addition to the pop in the country and the gospel that my parents liked, I began listening to what was then soul music. Now it would be called old school, you know, because this is, is in the late 50s and in the 60s. So I realized that I really liked all kinds of music. Then I heard not really soul music, but just real blues, you know, Muddy Waters and John Lee hooker.

00:02:50 - 00:03:23 Speaker 1

And I thought, wow, I like that too. So it was fun because there was so much music to like around Memphis. You know, you could you could hear anything you wanted. But I was influenced by all this music, and, and I liked all of it. And so that's the difference between Memphis and a lot of other places in the South, is that you actually had a big, you know, black music scene and two black radio stations.

00:03:23 - 00:03:39 Speaker 1

And, so I loved all the stacked stuff and, and Rufus Thomas and, listen to Dewey Phillips, of course, the crazy DJ who broke the first Elvis record in Memphis. And so there was so much going on.

00:03:39 - 00:03:43 Speaker 3

So when Elvis first gets well known, were you already playing guitar?

00:03:43 - 00:04:11 Speaker 1

No, no, I remember I was still in grade school when Elvis was, getting really big. And the weird thing was, we grew up, about a mile from Elvis, Elvis's house over on Audubon Drive. And, this is before he got Graceland. And so it was like a 50s ranch style house, a nice house, but nothing like Graceland.

00:04:11 - 00:04:36 Speaker 1

But, Park Avenue was the street that led from our part of town to downtown Memphis. And so everybody had to go to, Park Avenue. And my little street ran right into Park Avenue. So we saw Elvis drive and drive in a pink Cadillac, or ride on a motorcycle down Park Avenue, you know, on a fairly regular basis.

00:04:36 - 00:04:42 Speaker 1

It was really exciting. Even though he was a local guy, he was still like the king of everything back.

00:04:42 - 00:04:47 Speaker 3

Okay, so let's talk about how the band gets together. So the DeVille's was the initial foray?

00:04:48 - 00:05:13 Speaker 1

Yeah, I was 19 years old, and, I was going to Memphis State University, which is University of Memphis now. And so John calls me and says, hey, the DeVille's guitar player is leaving. He's moving to California with his parents. Do you want to play guitar for the DeVille's? And I said, yeah, why not? Because they were a popular local band anyway.

00:05:13 - 00:05:37 Speaker 1

So I said, well, we'll go. We'll go over to our new lead singer's house. Alex Chilton's got his family's got this nice big house where we can rehearse there. So I go over to Alex's house and I met the other guys, the drummer, Danny Smyth. And, at the time, the bass player was a guy named Russ Keck, a music.

00:05:37 - 00:06:04 Speaker 1

And then Alex comes down from upstairs and he's smoking a cigaret. It's like he's 16 years old and he's smoking a cigaret in his own house, which was just unheard of, you know? So we thought, wow, this kid's weird. He's like a rebel. And he had on a black t shirt, you know, it was like James Dean or something.

00:06:04 - 00:06:25 Speaker 1

And he comes down and we run a few songs is. Yeah, okay, this is good. So you're in the band, and then, everybody was in a garage band back then. It turns out that, they had recorded the letter right before I joined the band, so I didn't play on the letter. I was the guy that came in.

00:06:25 - 00:06:54 Speaker 1

So Richard Malone plays on the letter. He moves to California and I take his place. But the letter still hasn't even been released yet. So I was the guitar player for a couple of months. Then the letter came out and we were just playing local gigs and, we were on the local George Cline Talent Party TV show, and we do the letter, and it's like we never thought it was going to be a national hit.

00:06:54 - 00:07:19 Speaker 1

Then we found out they're playing it in Knoxville, then we find out they're playing it out of Tennessee. They're playing it all over the country. And it was like, wow, this is kind of amazing. And, we're we're still playing mostly local gigs. And, we get the record deal with with Bell Records, Chips Moman. It was his studio where we recorded.

00:07:19 - 00:07:44 Speaker 1

He played the The Letter for Larry Utah, who was the president of Bell Records, and he said he loved it. So. So we were signed a Bill records and, we recorded a few more songs, but we didn't have the first album, didn't come out until the fall. The The letter came out in the summer of 67 anyway.

00:07:44 - 00:08:15 Speaker 1

So we're touring. We start touring more outside of Tennessee, because the letters on the radio and people want to hear this new band. So, we would go to radio stations mostly in the South at first, and we went to a lot of black stations who didn't know we were a bunch of white teenagers. Alex was an older black guy because of his voice, and they would they would look at us in astonishment, like, who are these little white kids come in a radio station.

00:08:15 - 00:08:20 Speaker 3

So it's like The Cigarets kind of works. The. Yeah, age, the voice a little.

00:08:20 - 00:08:45 Speaker 1

Yeah. And actually, Alex had been up pretty much all night smoking and drinking before the session. And it took about 30 takes to get get it down. Right. And so his voice was just ragged when, when the letter was recorded, he was just hoarse and could hardly talk. And that's he gets that raspy sound. Of course, that was a great sound and everybody loved it.

00:08:45 - 00:09:12 Speaker 1

And Dan Penn loved it. The producer. And so Dan wants him to sing like that every time now. And, so he had to sound, you know, as raspy as he could and really, you know, put a lot of into it and really sound gruff and bluesy and whatever. But his natural singing voice was a lot more smooth, which he actually went back to later.

00:09:12 - 00:09:14 Speaker 1

When you get out of the box tops. So.

00:09:14 - 00:09:21 Speaker 3

Yeah. And he's, he's famous for having a solo career as well as Big Star. And then Chris Bell was the counterpoint guy, but he was almost the box type. Is that true?

00:09:22 - 00:09:53 Speaker 1

Well, yeah. Chris and Alex were friends and, there was talk about him joining the Devils. Actually, after we became the Box tops, it was pretty much set, but but before we were really the buck stops and still the Devils, I think, he toyed with the idea, or maybe Alex and Chris talked about it and maybe thought about asking him to join the band, but it never, never happened.

00:09:53 - 00:10:09 Speaker 1

And Bill Cunningham, our bass player, had been in a band with Chris called The Jinx or something like that in Memphis, so they knew him. I didn't know it at the time.

00:10:09 - 00:10:23 Speaker 2

Give me a ticket for an airplane. Hey, you got time to take a fast train? Lonely days ago. I'm going. Oh, my baby's gonna be a little.

00:10:23 - 00:10:28 Speaker 1

And and so on and so forth. There's a little bit of that.

00:10:28 - 00:10:34 Speaker 3

And so, the song, what do you think of as the legacy of that song?

00:10:34 - 00:10:54 Speaker 1

It's pretty amazing because it seems like everybody knows it. And, we had an enormous worldwide hit with it. And then three years later, Joe Cocker comes out with his version of it, and it's another worldwide hit. And so I'm sure that Wayne Carson, the songwriter, was very happy about that. He.

00:10:55 - 00:11:00 Speaker 3

You know, what would you say that that was kind of his definitive in a way that Joe Cocker took it about as far as you could go?

00:11:00 - 00:11:24 Speaker 1

Well, yeah, I mean, his arrangement was very different and it was just really, really ballsy and really a hard hitting, you know, a rock kind of thing. And I've heard a few others too. Yeah, yeah. And I've heard a few other versions of it. But to me, the Joe Cocker version was I actually liked it better than our version.

00:11:24 - 00:11:29 Speaker 3

It seemed to kind of take a I mean, he had the ability to do that. He was, yeah, gifted sort of cover artist in a way. Yeah.

00:11:29 - 00:11:30 Speaker 1

He was great. Yeah.

00:11:31 - 00:11:38 Speaker 3

Some of the other versions of that song, by the way, I never heard the Beach Boys version, but I noticed that it was. They did one Al Green, Johnny Rivers. I could see him doing that.

00:11:38 - 00:11:39 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:11:39 - 00:11:42 Speaker 3

Bachman Turner Overdrive and Bobby Darin.

00:11:42 - 00:12:01 Speaker 1

Yeah. There was a group called The Arbors actually, that had it got on the charts, I think maybe. Yeah, there were a lot of versions of it. And what a Stacy Reinhart, I think a young artist, did a version of it a couple of years ago.

00:12:01 - 00:12:11 Speaker 3

I feel like that at some point the Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde did it. But I know that, like in the in the song In the Middle of the road, she's, Listen, listen, mister, can't you see I got a kid? I'm 33.

00:12:11 - 00:12:11 Speaker 1

Oh, yeah.

00:12:11 - 00:12:28 Speaker 3

Right. Changes that are around. So Alex Chilton, he had many, surprising incarnations. I'd seen him play solo a few times, but he had. This reminded me of the album. A man Called Destruction. Seemed like he had a little bit of a self-destructive impulse. Would that be? I guess he was self describing it, you know, on that one.

00:12:28 - 00:12:58 Speaker 1

Well, yeah. Alex is really a kind of but enigmatic guy, a very, very individualistic. And sometimes he seemed almost to be like a contrarian, like if he found out a lot of people like something he didn't like it. It was like, oh, that's too popular, you know? It's not worth anything. He had very eclectic taste, and he would record the weirdest things when he, you know him when he made his solo albums.

00:12:59 - 00:13:25 Speaker 1

But he's a very smart guy. Really smart guy. Well, he wanted to do things his way. He was not some guy that could be talked into doing something he didn't want to do, especially when the buck stops were over because he felt like. And the buck stops. He sang a way that he didn't really want to sing, and he didn't get any say about what songs were released.

00:13:25 - 00:13:41 Speaker 1

You know, the band did, and it was all up to the producer and the record label. So, you know, he wanted to do things his own way. After that, he wanted to record his own songs, do them his way, you know, just do everything the way he wanted it.

00:13:42 - 00:13:51 Speaker 3

There were some shades of the story of the monkeys in there where, like, the and the monkeys got put together by producers and they didn't had to record their own stuff right away. Sometimes in the sessions there were different players.

00:13:51 - 00:14:15 Speaker 1

Oh, yeah. We there were a lot of songs where the rhythm section at American Studios would record a track and we'd come back in and sing on it because our manager, a guy named Roy Mack, he was a local DJ and, he just he was he was a crook. He cheated us out of so much money.

00:14:15 - 00:14:39 Speaker 1

All he cared about was making money for himself as much as he could, as fast as he could. He didn't care about the longevity of the band at all. In fact, he almost killed us out on the road by keeping us on the road constantly. And of course, we'd be out on the road making money for our manager, and the record label would say, we gotta have a new album.

00:14:39 - 00:15:03 Speaker 1

So the American rhythm section would go in and and cut things, and we'd come back in and and sing on them and, you know, I would play some guitar parts or Bill would add some, but we didn't have any control over anything. It was much harder being on the road back then than it is now. There were no cell phones, for one thing.

00:15:03 - 00:15:42 Speaker 1

There weren't restaurants that were open when you got through playing it was nothing open. I mean, we'd go to bed hungry so many times and you'd be out on the road and you wouldn't get any sleep because you had to drive 8 to 10 hours to the next gig. And a lot of times we would, we would play, a gig, pack up the, the band, drive across the country and get to a hotel in the afternoon of the next day, and then have to go set up for a gig that night.

00:15:42 - 00:15:47 Speaker 1

And but he kept us doing that for weeks at a time.

00:15:47 - 00:15:57 Speaker 3

And so that describes the years of 67 to into 70. Yeah, yeah. And so it was about how many albums like three.

00:15:57 - 00:16:07 Speaker 1

Well, there were really five albums and nine singles, I think. And

00:16:07 - 00:16:35 Speaker 1

Dan Penn produced the first three albums. First album had the letter in Neon Rainbow, then Cried Like a Baby. It was the second album, the third album that was the one called nonstop. We were on a train. Choo Choo Train was on that one, and I met her in church and Baby Sweet Cream Ladies. Then the fourth album, we really did four albums in the studio.

00:16:35 - 00:17:01 Speaker 1

The fourth album was called dimensions, and by that time Chips Moman, the studio owner, was, producing us instead of Dale Chips and Tommy Cargill were producing us. Dan stopped producing us, probably not because he wanted to, but because he had some kind of deal with chips where chips had the upper hand.

00:17:01 - 00:17:04 Speaker 3

So the relationship of the band with Dan Penn was was pretty strong.

00:17:04 - 00:17:33 Speaker 1

We had faith in him as a producer, you know, we thought, I mean, he's a brilliant producer. You know, he the biggest hits were The Letter and Cry Like a Baby. And he and Neon Rainbow up until that time. Anyway, Soul Deep was our hit in 69 with With Chips and Tommy producing so. But it didn't it didn't get at the top of the charts like, like The Letter and Cry Like a Baby did.

00:17:33 - 00:17:36 Speaker 3

And, Spooner Oldham was in there somewhere.

00:17:36 - 00:18:07 Speaker 1

Spooner was in there right after the first album. Dan and Spooner, of course, were old buddies from from Alabama, from Muscle Shoals and, they wrote Cry Like a Baby. And, of course, that was our next biggest hit. And, and, and Spooner played, you know, he played a lot on our records. He didn't play on all of them, but played on quite a few.

00:18:07 - 00:18:32 Speaker 1

And and he and Dan wrote Cry Like a Baby. And, And I'm your puppet. We did that one, and we did several songs they wrote, and then we did, a lot of songs that Dan wrote by himself or with other people. But by 69 we were, we were just exhausted from being on the road.

00:18:32 - 00:18:53 Speaker 1

We were disappointed because we felt we found out how much money we were supposed to be making, you know, and we were just being being cheated out of most of our money. And, we went to England. We went to London to play. This was almost like the straw that broke the camel's back. So we go to London, which we've always wanted to do.

00:18:53 - 00:19:17 Speaker 1

We get to London in December, the middle of December of 1969. And of course, we we're just we just love it. It's just so exciting to be in London and, then we've and we're, we're, we have this tour booked. Will the promoters, a guy named Arthur House, probably the biggest promoter over there at the time. So we go say, oh, it's time to rehearse for the tour.

00:19:17 - 00:19:42 Speaker 1

Okay. We're going to go to meet the opening act, which was a reggae band called King Ali. And the reasons is a bunch of guys, Jamaican guys. And, we go to an elementary school house and while school is in session, we're walking in there with our guitars. And, you know, there's six year olds running up and down the halls.

00:19:42 - 00:20:08 Speaker 1

We're and we're rehearsing in the basement of an elementary school during school hours. We get down there, there's these Jamaican guys. And, you know, we introduce ourselves and we look around and we're going, well, where's where, where are we going to play through, where's our gear? And, and he says, oh, are you using our gear, man? It's the best gear.

00:20:08 - 00:20:31 Speaker 1

It is. It's martial gear. It's. And it was like a marshall PA amp for a guitar. And, the drum set looked like something you would buy your ten year old for Christmas. Like with a palm tree on the bass drum. You know, it's about this big and, the organ. It was a plastic organ, like, for our organs.

00:20:31 - 00:20:51 Speaker 1

They made them, you know, little when we were used to playing with this big B3 organ, you know? So it's this little plastic organ, but it's run through a big wooden Leslie cabinet. But the cabinets broken and the. And then when it spins around, the horn whacks the side of the cabinet and it goes, cut them, cut them.

00:20:51 - 00:21:18 Speaker 1

Anyway, it's like this is the awful, awful gear. And we're going, oh my God. And we tried to play a song on it and it was just, just horrible. And, we, had one of those dreaded band meetings and, it was like, no, we can't do it. We cannot. It's our first time in England, and we're going to go out there and play on this crap.

00:21:18 - 00:21:36 Speaker 1

You know? And so we decided we're not going to do it unless this guy honors our contract and gets us the amps that we asked for, which were, you know, they could be fenders or they could be Marshall or Box, but they had to be real guitar amps, you know.

00:21:36 - 00:21:36 Speaker 3

Stage.

00:21:36 - 00:21:59 Speaker 1

Worthy. Yeah. And, then we called our manager and said, you got to talk to this art, which is not easy in 1969, in London, to make an international phone call, we got our manager on the phone. So he talks to Arthur House. Arthur House says, no, no, they're going to have to play on that gear. For what reason?

00:21:59 - 00:22:27 Speaker 1

I cannot imagine, he wouldn't let us get just decent, you know, quality equipment. So we said, nope, ain't going to do it. And so our bass player, who by that time was a guy named Harold Cloud, he's out in the van with King Ali and the raisins smoking the giant doobie. It's like up in smoke, Cheech and Chong, you know, like smoke coming out of the van.

00:22:27 - 00:22:53 Speaker 1

And they take off for Ipswich, which is our first gig. He doesn't know the rest of the band's not coming. So our bass player is in the van with King Ali in the raisins going to Ipswich and, so he found out the hard way that we weren't coming and he didn't know why we weren't there. He never knew why we weren't there till they get back to London early the next morning.

00:22:53 - 00:23:09 Speaker 1

And so we said, well, we're at, we're in London, you know, it's like Christmas season in London. This is pretty cool. So we hung out in London for two weeks, even though we'd never we never did the tour. We never played in Europe.

00:23:09 - 00:23:14 Speaker 3

Were there other international, dates for in the band other than that?

00:23:14 - 00:23:30 Speaker 1

No, that was the only thing that happen now when we got back together later, we did play internationally, but but in the 60s, that was our only. Well, I'm not going in Canada. We played all over Canada, which was fun.

00:23:31 - 00:23:34 Speaker 3

That's a that's a place where the cities are even further apart.

00:23:34 - 00:23:44 Speaker 1

They are. And you got to drive a long way to get from like Winnipeg to Saskatoon or whatever, you know.

00:23:44 - 00:23:56 Speaker 3

If you ever see that movie Festival Express. No, the band's on a train. It was like, Woodstock on on Rails kind of concept. Oh, really? You're after Woodstock? And they had buddy Guy and the Grateful Dead and Joe Joplin in the band.

00:23:56 - 00:23:57 Speaker 1

I would like to see that.

00:23:57 - 00:24:05 Speaker 3

Yeah. It is, it's worth seeing. But they they kind of realized that the stops were too far apart. And then they ran out of alcohol on the train.

00:24:05 - 00:24:22 Speaker 1

Oh, man. Yeah. We drove all the way across Canada in the winter on a bus. A bus without bunks, a bus that you had to sit up in. So we, we I mean, there was a lot of crazy stuff that happened on the road.

00:24:22 - 00:24:25 Speaker 3

So can we throw in a little music interlude? Play something.

00:24:25 - 00:24:44 Speaker 1

Okay, so on the radio on our very first tour, we, we heard this song on the radio called Whiter Shade of Pale, and it was the,

00:24:44 - 00:24:45 Speaker 3

Procol Harum?

00:24:45 - 00:25:20 Speaker 1

Yeah. Procol Harum. And this is an interesting story. Before the letter was before our version of the letter was released in England, some English band. And I think it might have been Wayne Fontana and the Mind Benders. I'm not sure an English band heard it in the in the U.S. or somebody heard it in the US, and they tried to cover it in England and get their version out in England before ours came out.

00:25:20 - 00:25:48 Speaker 1

Because we didn't have the license to release it in England. Right. At first it was out in the States and nowhere else, actually. So they put out a version of the letter actually copying ours, and it was out a few weeks before our version, and, it really pissed that pen off. And he said, well, we're just going to take a song that some of those English guys did, and we're going to cover that and put that out.

00:25:48 - 00:25:53 Speaker 1

So we did Whiter Shade of Pale anyway. But

00:25:53 - 00:26:05 Speaker 2

So we skipped the light fandango. Turned cartwheels, crossed the floor.

00:26:05 - 00:26:12 Speaker 2

I was feeling kinda seasick.

00:26:12 - 00:26:18 Speaker 2

The crowd come out from all.

00:26:18 - 00:26:31 Speaker 2

The room was humming harder. As the ceiling flew away.

00:26:31 - 00:26:36 Speaker 2

We called up for another drink.

00:26:36 - 00:26:40 Speaker 1

Kept saying that. How in the world.

00:26:41 - 00:26:48 Speaker 2

And so it was good to.

00:26:48 - 00:27:02 Speaker 1

Anyway, so we. Our version of that was on my first album, and I thought it was a pretty good version, but, it never.

00:27:02 - 00:27:11 Speaker 1

We didn't do anything. Of course. You know, the The Letter was the first single and Neon Rainbow was the second single, which.

00:27:11 - 00:27:25 Speaker 1

You know, didn't do that. Well. And that's why it was, that's when Dan Penn and Spooner were going, we had to get another hit, you know, we got to get another big hit. And, so they wrote like a baby.

00:27:25 - 00:27:33 Speaker 3

Yeah. How good was it seeing those folks back in, Alabama? I know I met you down there in Muscle Shoals. The at the church. Met met him in church?

00:27:33 - 00:27:57 Speaker 1

Yeah. And the funny thing about it is I love that record. You know, that's of course, it's a Dan Penn song. And we that was the single and that when didn't do well on the charts. I don't know why. I always liked it. And, but the, the thing about it is, is that my parents exact story that's there, they met in church exactly like that song.

00:27:57 - 00:28:01 Speaker 1

So I thought that was pretty cool.

00:28:01 - 00:28:08 Speaker 3

So we talked a little bit about some of the, I guess, the lowlights of touring. What were some of the crazier, zanier moments that you remember?

00:28:08 - 00:28:31 Speaker 1

Touring with the Beach Boys was just a blast. We did three, about three tours with the Beach Boys, and we got to know him pretty well. And, you know, we'd hang out with him and play to touch football with him and yeah, now this was one of the maybe the first tours that Brian was in on.

00:28:31 - 00:28:35 Speaker 1

So we didn't tour with Brian, but,

00:28:35 - 00:28:38 Speaker 3

Who did they have in there in lieu of Brian?

00:28:38 - 00:29:06 Speaker 1

Bruce Johnston joined the band, and at this time they were traveling with a 16 piece orchestra and just hearing hearing Carl saying God Only knows was just almost a religious experience. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard in my life. And, and we'd hang out with them and they had all the horns and everything, and they had a whole other rhythm section, you know, bass, drums and keyboards.

00:29:06 - 00:29:28 Speaker 1

So that even Dennis could get out and sing in front, on some of the things. And I remember Dennis would always break a snare drum on every show, every single show, because he it was like a game to him. He wanted to see if he could hit the snare drum hard enough to break it in. And he did it every time.

00:29:28 - 00:29:29 Speaker 3

It's part of the attack.

00:29:29 - 00:30:01 Speaker 1

Yeah. And and and Dennis and and Mike love didn't get along at all. There was friction between them, and, Dennis was really the only real surfer in the band. You know, he really was a surfer. And Dennis had. I bet he had 50 girls following him, following him all around the country and all over Canada. He had the biggest bunch of groupies I have ever seen in my life.

00:30:01 - 00:30:38 Speaker 1

But they were just nice guys, especially Dennis and Carl. Oh, I turned 21 on a Beach Boy tour on the road in Indianapolis, and we played a gig and, after the gig, I'm in my hotel room alone, which was usually the case. And, I hear a knock on the door, and it's our bass player, Bill Cunningham and Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson standing at the door with a with a birthday cake with the candles lit and they sing me happy birthday.

00:30:38 - 00:30:46 Speaker 1

So on my 21st birthday, the the Beach Boys saying happy birthday to me, which was really, really cool.

00:30:46 - 00:30:54 Speaker 3

And then, you know, we were talking a little bit about the British Invasion coming into play around then. Did you end up like un other interesting, double bills for the bands?

00:30:54 - 00:31:04 Speaker 1

Most of the bills we were on were with American groups. But.

00:31:04 - 00:31:31 Speaker 1

In, in 68 we played the Miami Pop Festival, which was huge. And it was wonderful. Fleetwood Mac, the original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green when they were still a blues band. They were on the show, another guy named Terry Reed was big there, and he was on the show. Procol Harum was on the show. There were three stages.

00:31:31 - 00:31:34 Speaker 1

Well, two, two big stages, and it went on for three days.

00:31:35 - 00:31:36 Speaker 3

Was Hendrix there that year?

00:31:36 - 00:31:59 Speaker 1

Hendrix was there. I think he was there on not on the night we played. But, Anyway, so, Richie Havens was there on the day we played. It was the Grateful Dead. Steppenwolf flattened Scruggs in the box tops, in that I think it was in that order to.

00:31:59 - 00:32:03 Speaker 3

Steppenwolf was it was the band that coined the term heavy metal.

00:32:03 - 00:32:04 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:32:04 - 00:32:06 Speaker 3

You know, like Vegas. They didn't have a name for that before. Yeah.

00:32:06 - 00:32:27 Speaker 1

And in fact, I think it was that show they they played the same day we did that. John Cage comes out in like a troopers uniform and they don't know who he is. You know, because he's wearing this like, I don't know, a Florida State trooper uniform or something like that. Anyway, we played the Miami Pop Festival.

00:32:27 - 00:33:06 Speaker 1

No, no, the Fort Worth, the Dallas Fort Worth Pop Festival, which was right after Monterey, and the doors were the headliners. And so, we get called into the production trailer the morning of the night we play, and it's the doors manager who is some big L.A. attorney who I can't remember his name now. And the doors all for him were standing in there in this little production trailer room, and they said, hey, we we got, can we use your equipment on the first show?

00:33:06 - 00:33:27 Speaker 1

Because our, our equipment van broke down on the way from L.A., and it's not going to make it. So the manager says to me, who's who's the guitar player? And I said, me. And he said, what kind of guitar do you play? I say the Telecaster, but I gotta set the scene here. So he's sitting down at a desk.

00:33:27 - 00:33:50 Speaker 1

Everybody else is standing up. So Robby Krieger is like looking at the ceiling like this, like he's watching a movie on the ceiling. So, Jim Morrison is drunk on his ass. He can't even stand up. He's leaning against the wall with a fifth of whiskey in his hand. John Densmore and Ray Manzarek seem to be pretty present, you know?

00:33:50 - 00:34:07 Speaker 1

Whatever. Anyway, so he says, Robby, he plays a Telecaster. Is that okay? And Robby never takes his eyes off the ceiling. The whole timing is, I'd rather have a Gibson look it while he's still looking at the ceiling and.

00:34:07 - 00:34:08 Speaker 3

Give me half of what he's taking.

00:34:08 - 00:34:37 Speaker 1

Yeah. And, anyway, so that was our little encounter with the Doors, and Ray Manzarek was very complimentary. He said he really liked the letter and everything. He was the friendliest one of them. I thought, but but we saw Jim Morrison, you know, I saw him like three times during that day, and every single time he was leaning against a wall with a fifth of whiskey in his hand, just drunk on his ass.

00:34:37 - 00:34:42 Speaker 1

And, but their show was great. They did a great show doors.

00:34:42 - 00:34:50 Speaker 3

They, they achieved their, their, their stated aim was to become like America's answer to the Rolling Stones. Yeah, yeah. And to build that blues rock sound.

00:34:50 - 00:34:53 Speaker 1

Yeah. They were. Yeah.

00:34:53 - 00:35:07 Speaker 3

Oh. So let's let me ask you one question about going back to the letter for one second here. The video that appears on the internet. Now, I don't know if it was an Ed Sullivan show or something. Are you in that? They barely. They never like Pan left, I think. Yeah, I think you're in it. But they don't show you on the camera very much.

00:35:07 - 00:35:13 Speaker 1

Yeah. I'm in, all the videos of the letter and cry like a baby. Yeah, I'm in all those and.

00:35:13 - 00:35:17 Speaker 3

Yeah. What kind of TV appearances were you able to obtain back then?

00:35:17 - 00:35:42 Speaker 1

Well, the biggest thing was we did The Tonight Show. And the sad thing about it is they didn't keep those. I don't know what what media they were on back then, but they didn't keep them. They threw them away. Even the ones where L. Garagiola interviewed the Beatles or something like that. They don't they don't have them unless somebody taped it independently anyway.

00:35:42 - 00:35:49 Speaker 1

But the network threw them all the way up. So we don't have a copy of us being on the Tonight Show.

00:35:49 - 00:35:59 Speaker 3

So that's know like part of our, like point of view, looking back at this history is like, well, these are like monuments of history. But at the time like pop culture was much more disposable, right?

00:35:59 - 00:36:23 Speaker 1

Oh yeah. And we I had a habit of yawning when I got nervous. And so we did. We did a song. We did The Letter and Cry Like a Baby on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. So on the break, Johnny Carson looks over and sees me yawning and goes, are we keeping you up? You know, because everybody, everybody, the whole studio audience just laughed.

00:36:23 - 00:36:28 Speaker 1

And I was, yeah, you know, embarrassed. But but I can say that Johnny Carson actually spoke to me.

00:36:28 - 00:36:34 Speaker 3

That's right. It could take on it. So cried like a baby on that one. Is that actually a sitar or is that a sitar sounding good?

00:36:34 - 00:37:07 Speaker 1

No, that's an electric sitar. It's not. It's not the Indian instrument that you see, you know, like Ravi Shankar with the big long neck that sits on the floor. That's a real Indian sitar. Are they a guy? A studio guy in New York named Vinnie Bell invented a way to get that sound within a, like an electric guitar that you play just like an electric guitar with the graphite bridge, and it kind of vibrates against the bridge and makes that kind of boring, boring you sound.

00:37:07 - 00:37:16 Speaker 1

And so that's Reggie Young playing that on car like a baby. And I've got one, but that.

00:37:17 - 00:37:20 Speaker 3

Gave me maybe when I throw that in too, if it works. Is that something hard to tune?

00:37:20 - 00:37:22 Speaker 1

Yeah. Oh, no. No, it's easy actually.

00:37:22 - 00:37:28 Speaker 3

Okay. Yeah. Because I going to say that that was a, that was an era where everybody was reaching for the sitar is the sound.

00:37:28 - 00:37:29 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:37:29 - 00:37:38 Speaker 3

Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about the sitar especially made a sitar in the, largely the form of a guitar.

00:37:38 - 00:37:42 Speaker 1

You do. Is that volume okay on that?

00:37:42 - 00:37:46 Speaker 3

Give me one more look.

00:37:46 - 00:37:53 Speaker 2

At this. That's good. Oh.

00:37:53 - 00:37:57 Speaker 3

So introduce that that piece of equipment there again.

00:37:57 - 00:38:25 Speaker 1

So this is an electric sitar made invented by a guy named Vinnie Bell. This is the kind of guitar that was used on Cry Like a Baby and, hooked on a feeling. BJ Thomas a lot of pop records. Use this electric sitar in the, in the 60s, and, anyway, on Cry Like a Baby, this is Reggie Young playing it.

00:38:25 - 00:38:25 Speaker 1

Like.

00:38:25 - 00:38:33 Speaker 2

When I think about the good love, he gave me a cry like a baby.

00:38:33 - 00:38:34 Speaker 1

It's that boing you sound.

00:38:34 - 00:38:39 Speaker 3

You know, it's a kind of a straight up blues turn. Yeah, I'm kind of thinking.

00:38:39 - 00:38:49 Speaker 1

You know, it's got that sound. And it was a lot of records. I mean, Stevie Wonder used it and the Philadelphia guys used it on the Spinners. And,

00:38:49 - 00:38:57 Speaker 3

So it starts off with, like, George Harrison and his lessons for Ravi. And then, you know, Brian Jones hears that and he's played played on the. Yeah. Painted black or something.

00:38:57 - 00:39:22 Speaker 1

Yeah. And those had a real Indian sitar. The big the big kind. It's made out of a gourd with a big long neck. This one, this one wasn't invented until, I believe, 68. So then you started hearing this guitar on records. You you would hear an electric sitar, and you would rarely hear a real Indian center on the record, but this, like,

00:39:22 - 00:39:24 Speaker 2

And you.

00:39:24 - 00:39:26 Speaker 1

You you know that Paul Young.

00:39:26 - 00:39:27 Speaker 3

Every time we go.

00:39:27 - 00:39:30 Speaker 1

We go away. Yeah.

00:39:30 - 00:39:32 Speaker 2

Did you, did you hear.

00:39:32 - 00:39:34 Speaker 1

Jane Southall play Joe.

00:39:34 - 00:39:36 Speaker 3

South? Yeah. He did you say he had a raga on that album?

00:39:36 - 00:39:37 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:39:37 - 00:39:39 Speaker 3

He was he was really a progressive kind of.

00:39:39 - 00:39:40 Speaker 1

Right? Yeah.

00:39:40 - 00:39:48 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. The time when it wasn't a sitar, I believe, was on the steely Dan, record where they found an effect to use on the regular electric guitar.

00:39:48 - 00:39:49 Speaker 1

Oh. Could be, could be.

00:39:49 - 00:39:55 Speaker 3

That was, Did it did. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, he's on most of their records. They piled other guitarists above him, but he was kind of.

00:39:55 - 00:39:56 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:39:56 - 00:39:57 Speaker 3

He ran. He's the train that sailed through the night.

00:39:58 - 00:40:17 Speaker 1

I saw the maybe I don't know if it was the first tour they ever did or not, but in 73, I saw him play at the Electric Ballroom in Atlanta with the original guys, with Jeff Baxter and Danny Diaz and Michael McDonald on keyboards. And,

00:40:17 - 00:40:19 Speaker 1

It was an amazing show.

00:40:19 - 00:40:21 Speaker 3

Right? Yeah. He gave him some more heft on the backup vocals.

00:40:22 - 00:40:33 Speaker 1

Yeah. He did. Yeah, he did. Interesting. He wasn't he wasn't singing, any lead with him? He just sang backing vocals and played keyboards.

00:40:34 - 00:40:39 Speaker 3

To to the doubled up on keys and then, big and stone on organ versus pianos. Yeah.

00:40:39 - 00:40:40 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:40:40 - 00:40:45 Speaker 3

Yeah. They really figured out a lot of stuff. Yeah. I'm still impressed by their records.

00:40:45 - 00:40:48 Speaker 1

Oh me too. I love that band.

00:40:48 - 00:41:02 Speaker 3

So yeah, we talked about sitar. That was the track I was mentioning from Lee Dorsey with Allen Toussaint was, Give it Up, which, takes off on that like that whole. It doesn't fit with that. It just kind of, you know.

00:41:02 - 00:41:03 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:41:03 - 00:41:05 Speaker 3

It wasn't happening to India, but anyway.

00:41:05 - 00:41:06 Speaker 1

Right. Yeah. Right.

00:41:06 - 00:41:08 Speaker 3

It's tapping into the British sound. And then.

00:41:08 - 00:41:14 Speaker 1

Remember this one?

00:41:14 - 00:41:18 Speaker 1

Know,

00:41:18 - 00:41:29 Speaker 1

Band of gold. But you to pay. It's got it's got here and there and, anyway, it's it it's in that record too.

00:41:29 - 00:41:34 Speaker 3

Yeah. That became so that was going on for about 3 or 4 years, right. It was like this, the sitar guitar era.

00:41:34 - 00:41:35 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:41:35 - 00:41:45 Speaker 3

So we talk a little bit about Wayne Carson, also known as Wayne Carson. Thompson wrote the letter. And then I noticed later on in your discography, you're on the You're Always on My Mind album. Was that the connection or is that just coincidence?

00:41:46 - 00:42:18 Speaker 1

It was really kind of a coincidence. I was doing this. It was in, I guess, 82 maybe. I was doing sessions. I had moved to Nashville. Chip's moment actually asked me to move. I was in living in Atlanta in the 70s, but, so I was doing doing sessions with Chips Moman, and I would hang out at the studio a lot of times, even if I wasn't doing anything that day, you know, because it was just fun to do.

00:42:18 - 00:42:48 Speaker 1

So. I was there when they were recording, Willie Nelson, a lot of the Willie Nelson stuff. Anyway, so I go by the studio and they've cut always on my mind, and they haven't put the backup vocals on it yet. So, I'm sitting there with chips and his wife, Tony Wine and Bobby Wood, the keyboard player, and they're waiting for Johnny Christopher, who is one of the co-writers of the song, to come and sing the backup parts.

00:42:48 - 00:43:04 Speaker 1

Well, Johnny never shows up and I'm sitting there and they go, well, guess Johnny's not going to make it. You want to sing backup on this? And I said, sure. So it just happened to be I was just hanging out doing nothing. And I said, do you want to sing on this.

00:43:05 - 00:43:06 Speaker 3

Show because it's good to hang out at the studio then.

00:43:06 - 00:43:07 Speaker 1

Yeah, really?

00:43:07 - 00:43:10 Speaker 3

So what was Willie Nelson like? Did you get the panel around with him at all?

00:43:10 - 00:43:31 Speaker 1

Oh yeah, he was great. I just love Willie Nelson. He is one of the coolest guys in the world. And he's so laid back. I mean, I never really a meeting a couple of times, but I never really sat there and had a long conversation with him. But everybody just loves the guy. I mean, he's the sweetest guy in the world.

00:43:31 - 00:43:54 Speaker 1

And, I knew Jody Payne, his guitar player, for, like, 28, 20 more than 20 years. I knew Jody pretty well, and, I recorded some at his studio. Willie. Studio personnel was, at the golf course there, and, because Chip's designed that studio for him.

00:43:54 - 00:43:56 Speaker 3

In downtown Austin somewhere.

00:43:56 - 00:44:30 Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, it's outside of Austin. That was a big thrill just recording in that studio, and I got to play his guitar trigger. You know, the one with the hole in it? That was great. And, Darrell Royal, the coach of Texas football coach and and, Jeannie Seely were there hanging out with Hank Cochran, who wrote so many country hits, make the World Go Away and, a lot of others, we did a record on Hank Cochran that I played on that never got released.

00:44:30 - 00:44:46 Speaker 1

It never got finished. But that was a big thrill, you know, hanging out at Willie's studio and seeing him on the road a few times and had lunch with Ali MacGraw and Mickey Rafael one time.

00:44:46 - 00:44:55 Speaker 3

So that nice, Willie, of course, an icon. He's still putting out great records to this day. I mean, it's yeah, he's within 90 now and I, I can't gosh.

00:44:55 - 00:44:57 Speaker 1

Yeah, he's he's up there, but,

00:44:57 - 00:45:00 Speaker 3

What about Willie and Whalen? Were you there at the same time as both of them?

00:45:00 - 00:45:47 Speaker 1

Yeah, I played on the WW two album and sang backup on a little bit of that. And Waylon, he had this, black acoustic guitar made by this guy named Danny Farrington. You know, handmade, beautiful guitar, black with beautiful inlays in it and everything. And I was playing it on the the couch in the studio and Barry Hill, where, it was Chip's moments place there for a while, and, where we did the backup vocals for Always on My Mind, and I was sitting there playing his playing his guitar, and he called everybody hot, you know, he says, well, hot.

00:45:47 - 00:46:06 Speaker 1

We're going to let you play on this next record here. I think it was birds of a feather. Remember that song? I think it's another Joe South song, but anyway, so he says, but if you play better than I do, I'm gonna have to kick your ass because he was like that, you know, he would do that, say stuff like that.

00:46:06 - 00:46:14 Speaker 1

He was good. But, Anyway, that was my only time really hanging out with Waylon. Just.

00:46:14 - 00:46:29 Speaker 3

You know, I'd have to say it for the, soul country, brand. He's so on brand for the program that we're doing because he's got the country and this rhythm and blues and. Yeah, yeah, remember, he's on Letterman. They're like, what do you call the music he plays? I still call it rockabilly, you know? What about Tammy Wynette?

00:46:29 - 00:46:31 Speaker 3

And so you all say that Tammy.

00:46:31 - 00:46:44 Speaker 1

Oh, yeah. You know, the weird thing is, well, Chip's got me, too. Moved to Nashville. And was at 81, I guess it was 81. And,

00:46:44 - 00:46:52 Speaker 1

So, I'm in town for about three days. I mean, I just literally got here and,

00:46:52 - 00:47:17 Speaker 1

He calls me up, says, hey, you want to play on a Tammy Wynette album? It's like, what? Are you kidding me? Yeah. So I played on, the only album chips ever produced on her was called, I think You Brought Me Back or something like that. So we so I played on that album and, she didn't have a hit off that album, though I'm sure she was disappointed because it's the first album she did.

00:47:17 - 00:47:44 Speaker 1

I think with anybody besides Billy Sherrill, everybody wanted to have heard about it, but she didn't. But anyway, it was yeah, she was real nice. And when she'd already done all of her vocals, when I came in there to do guitar overdubs, so I didn't hang out with her that much. That was a big thrill getting to play on a Tammy Wynette album when I just literally been in town for 2 or 3 days.

00:47:44 - 00:47:46 Speaker 3

So, what about Billy Preston? I saw he was also in the,

00:47:47 - 00:47:47 Speaker 1

Oh.

00:47:47 - 00:47:48 Speaker 3

Man in his lineup at some.

00:47:48 - 00:48:17 Speaker 1

Point. Yeah, well, I played with Sam Moore from Sam and Dave, and then Sam and Billy. They were friends, you know, they'd been friends for a long time. And then, and then Sam's wife, Joy started managing Billy Preston. And so, we did some touring with Sam and Billy, and so I got to play with Billy.

00:48:17 - 00:48:42 Speaker 1

And what year was it? Late 90s, maybe 97 ish. Anyway, so I got to play with Billy Preston, which was probably the biggest thrill of my entire life because he was so, just like the embodiment of music, you know, just the most joyful person onstage I have ever seen. And he would get out there and dance and just.

00:48:42 - 00:49:07 Speaker 1

It was just like he was in heaven, you know? And the whole band felt like that. It was just like infectious joy, you know? And we would play, so he would come out and play on some of the Sam More stuff, and we did, I guess it was so me. Yeah. And, there's that little place where, I'm a Soho man.

00:49:07 - 00:49:30 Speaker 1

And then there's that little answer that Steve Cropper does. And on the record, Sam says Pickett's Dave or play it, Steve, or something like that. Anyway, so I'm playing the Steve Cropper lick, and every time, like, Billy would be sitting on the keyboard and either was like, so he had his bright side to me. Or sometimes the way the stage was set up, he had his back to me.

00:49:30 - 00:49:55 Speaker 1

Even if he had his back to me, every time that part came, he would just turn around and look at me and grin that big grin. You know, like every single time. Even if he had to turn all the way back around in his chair, and, and, and we did a, jingle, a TV jingle for the Phoenix Suns because Sam lived in Scottsdale and and Billy produced it.

00:49:55 - 00:50:08 Speaker 1

And so I got to be in the studio with Billy, and he produced it and played the organ and everything, and and that was a big thrilled to be in the studio with him and get to play with him live. And he was the nicest guy in the world.

00:50:08 - 00:50:11 Speaker 3

Yeah, he has like career highlights that are higher than anybody else's highlights.

00:50:11 - 00:50:12 Speaker 1

Oh yeah.

00:50:12 - 00:50:14 Speaker 3

Yeah. Nobody gets to be in the Beatles instant.

00:50:14 - 00:50:15 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:50:15 - 00:50:28 Speaker 3

Good grief what a but yeah. Was also that pure talent like you're talking about. There's like one documentary that opens up where they play that thing and he's dancing and he's wearing a colorful suit in the. Yeah, late 60s or whatever. It's like the dancing was good too. Yeah, yeah. The whole entertainment package.

00:50:28 - 00:50:36 Speaker 1

Yeah. He would come on stage just dancing and he would, he would just dance around for a while before he sat down at the keyboard.

00:50:36 - 00:50:45 Speaker 3

Yeah. I guess in addition to the, you know, the talents of playing and being a sort of band member is the encouragement of the audience and the other band members sort of being a band leader.

00:50:45 - 00:50:46 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:50:46 - 00:50:53 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. It's like it's all the talents. That's pretty incredible. Yeah. And then he started writing his own songs. He had some hits hit some number one.

00:50:53 - 00:50:55 Speaker 1

Oh man. Yeah he sure did.

00:50:55 - 00:51:03 Speaker 3

But yeah I saw him play in the context of a Ringo Starr All-Starr band. The first time they ever did that, like 89.

00:51:03 - 00:51:03 Speaker 1

Oh, wow.

00:51:03 - 00:51:16 Speaker 3

And they hit a lot of stars on the stage. Levon Helm and and, a couple guys from the E Street Band after John. But. Yeah, floored at all. Like when he came on, it was just like everything else just stepped aside and, like, that was what you had to pay attention did.

00:51:17 - 00:51:41 Speaker 1

Yeah. I got to play with Doctor John, too. I was playing with Tracy Nelson and she did a, a gig with Doctor John, and I don't know why, but he didn't bring his band. And so we got to be Doctor John's band for that show. And of course, we rehearsed with him and we did all his all his stuff.

00:51:41 - 00:51:51 Speaker 1

And that's, I found out that he he started out as a guitar player in New Orleans, and I didn't know that before, but he played guitar on a couple songs. But,

00:51:51 - 00:51:56 Speaker 3

Yeah, I think he had a hand injury at some point which made him want to go to piano, which obviously still uses your hands, but in a different way, I guess.

00:51:56 - 00:51:57 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:51:57 - 00:52:01 Speaker 3

And but yeah, you still play guitar on stage. Does some or did some.

00:52:01 - 00:52:04 Speaker 1

Yeah. And I got to tell you my Jimi Hendrix story too.

00:52:04 - 00:52:05 Speaker 3

Oh yeah. Good.

00:52:05 - 00:52:26 Speaker 1

Okay. So we're playing in New York and there's a club called The Scene. It's owned by this guy named Steve Paul. And all the big stars used to come hang out there, you know, and he told us that, Jimi Hendrix was going to come in that night and sit in with this Canadian blues band called Kensington Market.

00:52:26 - 00:52:51 Speaker 1

I think. Anyway, so, you know, our equipment guy, Cleve, we go down there to the scene. It's a little club like the Bluebird and we sat right in front of the stage. It's also a little stage, like the Bluebird, you know, it's like a ten inch stage. It's not a big stage. So we're right there at the foot, at the foot of the stage.

00:52:51 - 00:53:18 Speaker 1

And, so this band does their set. You know, everybody's kind of like looking around as they come in, as you come in. So Hendrix comes out on stage during the break. He's got a white Stratocaster, and he's got a fuzz face distortion pedal and a wah wah pedal, and he hooks him up there, hits a couple of licks in, the band comes out, and they do the whole you experienced album and they just nailed it.

00:53:19 - 00:53:50 Speaker 1

They had obviously rehearsed with him and he did, you know, Purple Haze and and all that stuff from that first album. And I was like eight feet away from him, just like looking up at him. We were mesmerized. I mean, just and a lot of stuff that he was doing on guitar I thought was overdubs, but it was it because his hands were so big, you know, he could put his thumb down here and reach way up here with this pink.

00:53:50 - 00:54:18 Speaker 1

I mean, he had this huge hand and, anyway, so we he did the show and we were just literally in a trance, you know, we were like, oh my God, did that just happen? And we're standing in the lobby and, and, there's a door that leads to backstage. And we thought, oh, he's in a limo. He's he's gone, you know, so we're sitting there, he comes, the door opens right beside me, and Jimi Hendrix comes out.

00:54:18 - 00:54:44 Speaker 1

And I just look at him, and I just stuck out, man. I said, oh, Jimi, you're the greatest or something. I was just like, I don't know what I said. I just babbled like, oh my God. And he shook my head, thanks, man. You know, just very humble and walked on. But, that was a huge thrill for me, not just to get to meet him, but, to see him play that close, you know, like, that was.

00:54:44 - 00:54:49 Speaker 3

Amazing. You can learn a lot of the guitar players from watching it, right? Yeah. You can do his left hand on it.

00:54:49 - 00:55:04 Speaker 1

Yeah. And he was doing that stuff, you know, where he would put it on one pick up and then do that little machine gun thing they do, that little thing you can do on a Stratocaster with them, with the pickups, selector switch and stuff, just doing all this stuff. It like.

00:55:04 - 00:55:07 Speaker 3

Wow, well, he had it upside down too, so he could like ride the ball.

00:55:07 - 00:55:08 Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:55:08 - 00:55:09 Speaker 3

He was doing this, you know.

00:55:09 - 00:55:14 Speaker 1

Yeah. He could do all this stuff that I'd never seen anybody do before.

00:55:14 - 00:55:20 Speaker 3

Yeah. So he had he had started off his career in a lot of ways in, in, Nashville because he was in the Army. Yeah.

00:55:20 - 00:55:22 Speaker 1

Playing on, Jefferson Street.

00:55:22 - 00:55:28 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. Cause that is, another little epic of history. That was the part of the evolution of his style.

00:55:28 - 00:55:45 Speaker 1

Yeah. And we actually. And he played with Wilson Pickett right before we did a, a tour with Wilson Pickett in 67. And, and Jimmy, I think he had just played with him right before that.

00:55:45 - 00:55:51 Speaker 3

All right. So we talked a lot about collaborations that you've already done. What would you say it would be on your your wish list of collaborators?

00:55:52 - 00:56:07 Speaker 1

Steely Dan is like one of my favorite. Gosh, you could play with Steely Dan would be great. Well, Michael McDonald, he's great. I'd love to play with him. I know his, his guitar player that's doing it now, but,

00:56:07 - 00:56:31 Speaker 1

Of the newer people that I haven't played with, I like Bruno Mars a lot. He's cool. And, but I think my favorite artist of all time is probably Stevie Wonder. And I probably won't get to work with Stevie, but I saw him last time he was here, like at Bridgestone, you know, 7 or 8 years ago, I guess.

00:56:31 - 00:56:55 Speaker 1

So I'd love to work with Stevie Wonder. And I also love to work with, again, I would love to work with Spooner and Dan, you know, I got to play with Spooner a little bit at Reggie Young's kind of memorial thing, and, those guys, they're still my heroes. I mean, Chip's moment, he's gone now.

00:56:55 - 00:57:04 Speaker 1

But working with Chips and Spooner and Dan and Wayne Carson, he passed away to those guys.

00:57:04 - 00:57:13 Speaker 1

Just getting to work with them was great, but. But, you know, Dan and Spooner are still right at the top of my list.

00:57:14 - 00:57:16 Speaker 3

Did you get down to Muscle Shoals much? Either working or.

00:57:16 - 00:57:51 Speaker 1

No, but I, I had such a great time last time I was there, you know, I gotta get down there more often. The last time I was down there before that, as I went down and and sat in with the decoys when they were playing with Bonnie Bramlett. And so I got to play with them and Bonnie and, I've done several gigs with David Hood and, we did a Memphis Boys show, the rhythm section from Memphis that played on all the Elvis stuff, and BJ Thomas and a lot of our stuff.

00:57:51 - 00:58:07 Speaker 1

They were called the Memphis Boys, and they did a big show, and I got to play with them on that show. Of course, Reggie and Bobby Ammons and Chips were all still alive, and and Wayne Carson, that was like 20, I don't know, 11 maybe.

00:58:07 - 00:58:12 Speaker 3

All right. So let's talk about, in addition to that, you said there's some box type reunion shows coming up as well.

00:58:12 - 00:58:47 Speaker 1

We do a lot of things with the Buckinghams and the Association and the Grass Roots, and I think this one is going to be the Buckinghams in the Association. And, we did the 2017 Happy Together tour with the turtles, and that was just a blast. I love that. And so we got to tour with, Chuck Negron and the castles and the Association and Ron Dante of The Archies, and of course, Mark, from, from the turtles.

00:58:47 - 00:58:51 Speaker 1

And then,

00:58:51 - 00:59:17 Speaker 1

I don't know if Mark's health is going to be where he can do another one or not. So but, yeah, I love playing with those other groups because we, we met them back in the 60s, 55 years ago. And here we are again. Where these we were teenagers back then, and here were these old guys in our 70s and 80s, and we're still playing with the same kids we met back when we were teenagers.

00:59:17 - 00:59:20 Speaker 1

And in the 60s.

00:59:20 - 00:59:22 Speaker 3

Musical keep you young in a way.

00:59:22 - 00:59:42 Speaker 1

Well, yeah. I mean, it seems to, of course, doesn't keep everybody on you. Obviously, people die, but, I don't feel very much different than I did then. Really. And I'm actually way better as a musician. I'm way better than I was back then. So.

00:59:42 - 00:59:55 Speaker 3

So the atmosphere, I just wanted to go back to 2010. I have a friend, Collins Kirby, who booked you, and I think it was in Fort Payne, Alabama, and he said Alex showed up in like a three piece suit and a hat or something in the reverse, and the band was wearing t shirt and jeans or something.

00:59:55 - 01:00:12 Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah. He was. Alex is a weird guy. He was really into that. You know, as he got older, he was into wearing Brooks Brothers suits and stuff and, you know, playing classical guitar and just, you know, just you never know what he's going to do.

01:00:12 - 01:00:16 Speaker 3

So it was it was he hard to convince to come back to a reunion and seemed like he would be.

01:00:16 - 01:00:40 Speaker 1

I thought the first thing I said when Bill said, you want to come back and play again, this was in 60. I mean, I mean 99 to 96. We'd been broken up for like 28 years. And I said, well, yeah, I'd love to, but Alex will never do it. And he says, I already got Alex. He's the first one.

01:00:40 - 01:01:02 Speaker 1

I asked and I was shocked that Alex would do it. And I said, well, yeah, I'd love to do it. And so we, we toured with Alex. When the original lineup from 97 to 2010, when, when Alex died. And he was only 59 when he died.

01:01:02 - 01:01:04 Speaker 3

Yeah. And he was living down in New Orleans. Right.

01:01:04 - 01:01:05 Speaker 1

In New Orleans. Yeah.

01:01:05 - 01:01:09 Speaker 3

And you were talking about the the songs that were floating through the airwaves in the 60s.

01:01:10 - 01:01:34 Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, I loved it. I loved all the Allen Toussaint stuff. Ernie Cardo, Fats Domino, Lee Dorsey, Clarence Frogman Henry, all the New Orleans stuff I didn't know about, the piano players in Doctor John at that time wasn't an artist, but he played on a lot of the records that I liked. I didn't know at the time.

01:01:34 - 01:01:57 Speaker 1

And then later I got to play with Doctor John. But yeah, I loved all the New Orleans stuff. And Alex did, too. And he moved to New Orleans. I mean, there were years when Alex was basically unemployed. I mean, he worked he literally worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant in New Orleans for for years. He he loved New Orleans.

01:01:57 - 01:02:19 Speaker 1

They lived in New Orleans for a really long time. And he had a funky old house in the Tremayne neighborhood, and, you know, he just he just loved it. He was he rode his bike down and met me at the cafe du Monde. And we had been years. And, you know, he he just loved New Orleans.

01:02:19 - 01:02:34 Speaker 3

So let's go back to, like, when the when the band first broke up and he went and recorded an album that didn't really come out, I got it later, like in 96. But at the same time you're talking about which was just called 1970. Yeah. You know, you were you around at that time or.

01:02:34 - 01:02:55 Speaker 1

He did a song that Alex and I wrote, co-wrote. We only co-wrote one song together, and it's on that album that that called the 70s Sessions. It's called, it Isn't Always So Easy, and I wanted to call it It Ain't Always So Easy, you know. He said, no, we got to say, isn't it so it isn't always so easy or something like that.

01:02:56 - 01:03:16 Speaker 1

Anyway, so, yeah, he, he did that stuff and, but he moved to New York and I didn't see him during the time he lived in New York. And he then he came back and started Big Star. And I was living in Atlanta at the time. I moved to Atlanta in 71 and lived there till 81.

01:03:16 - 01:03:20 Speaker 3

What was your impression of Big Star? Do you get the records when they came out and all that?

01:03:20 - 01:03:42 Speaker 1

Yeah, I did and what I thought was. A lot like Alex's music is like, some of this stuff is great and some of it's awful. That was my first impression is like, how could these two songs even be on the same record? I mean, this one just sounds like shit and this one's brilliant. You know?

01:03:42 - 01:04:00 Speaker 3

But they became is like the the present day, criticism and then book writing talks about, you know, like the second most important underground band behind the Velvet Underground. Yeah. They got the cult following, the R.E.M.. Yeah. What happened later? Yeah. The world became more like they were.

01:04:00 - 01:04:10 Speaker 1

Yeah. And Alex would do that, too. He would do stuff that I just thought was just brilliant, and then stuff like, what the hell is that? You know, just totally eclectic and unpredictable.

01:04:10 - 01:04:16 Speaker 3

Well, yeah, a little uneven. Yeah. Yeah, I have, like, a few low starts in the main direction. Some of those solo records.

01:04:16 - 01:04:19 Speaker 1

Yeah. He was,

01:04:19 - 01:04:38 Speaker 1

He didn't. He learned to be all during the 70s and 80s, he became a really good guitar player. He would. He wasn't really good at. Well, neither. Nobody was any good. In the 60s. We were just kids. We were just learning how to play. But he became a really good player.

01:04:38 - 01:04:57 Speaker 3

Yeah. So yeah, the American scene didn't have as much of that. Yeah. Value on the musicianship. But that's one of the things that got noticed off the British scene, like little Stephen from the E Street Band, was like, we were looking up at the Yardbirds and the and then the, you know, the Beatles and all that. We're still looking up at them, you know, it's like, yeah, how did that happen?

01:04:57 - 01:05:02 Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah. What, what your where do you think they were able to get such a good grip on American music?

01:05:03 - 01:05:19 Speaker 1

You know I don't I don't know how that worked. I know they heard a lot of stuff in Liverpool because it was a big seaport, and they would have people coming from all parts of the world there to Liverpool. And so I guess they heard music.

01:05:19 - 01:05:42 Speaker 1

I mean, they were. Listening to blues and they were listening to Muddy Waters and stuff. And even though I grew up in Memphis, I didn't hear I didn't hear Muddy Waters until I was 20 years old. You know, I heard I heard the soul music, the R&B, but I didn't hear real blues until I was 20 years old.

01:05:42 - 01:06:15 Speaker 1

And by that I mean, well, the Beatles guys are like five, six, seven years older than I am. And so they they were turned on to the blues that was happening in my town down the street. You know it well, down in, Beale Street. They actually heard that music before I did, because I don't think most white kids were exposed to that music until the, the English groups, kind of introduced.

01:06:15 - 01:06:22 Speaker 3

I mean, like some of that had become like a minor hit in the 50s bands before your time even. Yeah, like Mojo working or whatever.

01:06:22 - 01:06:31 Speaker 1

Yeah. Like the stuff that the Rolling Stones did on their first two records were, were songs that were American blues songs that I hadn't heard before.

01:06:31 - 01:06:36 Speaker 3

Yeah, they discovered Slim Harpo already on the first album. Yeah, yeah, they were good at collecting, right?

01:06:36 - 01:06:44 Speaker 1

I did hear slim Harpo, though, because they did play scratch my back on, on the Memphis radio.

01:06:44 - 01:07:00 Speaker 3

Yeah. Jimmy Reed, you know, some of those guys they had, I was going to bring up the the blending of country. So Liverpool. But there's still the capital of country music in England. And, that was important to the Beatles sound. And even when they plug in Billy Preston, they're doing one after 9 or 9, he throws in, like the honky tonk piano bit.

01:07:00 - 01:07:06 Speaker 3

Yeah. All known. You got to know both halves to have the. Yeah, the whole egg of rock.

01:07:06 - 01:07:15 Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah. I mean, they were into the Carl Perkins and stuff, the rockabilly thing, you know, just like.

01:07:15 - 01:07:36 Speaker 3

I saw the stones here, play the outdoor show last year. And Mick introduced Ron Wood, and he's like, you know, he's like a professor of Tennessee stuff or something like that. Like, I think they focused more on another location. Chicago, Mississippi, whatever. Texas even. Yeah. But, yeah, it's amazing how much they can pull off of these records are so distant from them.

01:07:36 - 01:07:37 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:07:38 - 01:07:41 Speaker 3

So how about, wrapping it up with just a little outro music for the instrumental.

01:07:41 - 01:07:50 Speaker 1

Or,

01:07:50 - 01:07:58 Speaker 2

If you ever change your mind.

01:07:58 - 01:08:29 Speaker 2

About leaving. Leaving me behind. Oh, bring it to me. Bring your sweet, loving. Bring it on home to me. Yeah, yeah. You know, I left, when you left.

01:08:30 - 01:08:57 Speaker 2

But I only, only hurt myself. Oh, bring it to me. Bring your sweet love and bring it on home to me. Yeah, yeah.

01:08:57 - 01:09:03 Speaker 3

All right. Nice. Thank you very much, Gary. And if any final thoughts in the world of soul country.

01:09:03 - 01:09:33 Speaker 1

I gotta brag on my mom like my mom. We've been making these videos and putting them on YouTube, and she's 95 years old, and she sings like an angel, and. And her voice hasn't changed at all. And so if you go on YouTube to the Gary Talley YouTube channel, I got 30 videos of, my mom and I singing all kinds of songs gospel, country.

01:09:33 - 01:09:58 Speaker 1

And my friend Belinda Leslie sing in harmony. And, my mom is, being kind of exposed to the world now, and she's always been like the church lady in Memphis that played piano at church and stuff. And now she's getting cards and letters from all over the world, you know, saying how they love her voice and stuff.

01:09:58 - 01:10:09 Speaker 1

So I want everybody to check out, the Gary Talley YouTube channel and see my mom needed Nita Talley is her name.

01:10:09 - 01:10:12 Speaker 3

All right. Well, a solid recommendation on how music is the fountain of youth. Really?

01:10:12 - 01:10:14 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:10:14 - 01:10:33 Speaker 3

Thanks again to Gary and to Reed Mathis for our theme song "We Ride" a tip of the cap to film delicious. And don't forget to take a look at podcast Origin Story "Blues Rock Hits Soul Country" now available for free on YouTube and at on the BluesCenter.com It's a 28 minute romp through my interviews with Hall of Famers and Grammy winners over the last three decades.

01:10:33 - 01:10:35 Speaker 3

Check that out and we'll compare roots music notes next time.

Gary Talley

Soul Country #4

Airdate Apr 23, 2023

Podcast 70:38

Recorded in Franklin, TN

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Description

Gary Talley talks and plays through an amazing 6 decades in soul, rock and country in Soul Country #4. The Box Tops guitarist pulls out his electric sitar, recounts legendary encounters, gigs and sessions with Dr. John, The Beach Boys, The Doors, Billy Preston, Willie and Waylon, and, of course, former bandmate Alex Chilton. You’ll hear a rendition of The Letter, Cry Like a Baby and a few other chestnuts.

More about Gary Talley

Gary Talley is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter with a career that stretches back to the heart of the rock and roll era. Born on August 17, 1947, Talley first rose to fame as the lead guitarist for The Box Tops, a band that became iconic in the late 1960s with hits like "The Letter" and "Cry Like a Baby." His guitar work was central to the band’s distinctive sound, helping them achieve widespread success and earning them a Grammy nomination. After his time with The Box Tops, Talley didn’t slow down. He became a highly sought-after session musician, known for his ability to adapt his playing to fit any style. His versatility allowed him to work with a diverse range of artists, spanning genres from country (Willie & Waylon) to pop to blues (Dr. John). Over the years, Talley has contributed his guitar skills to numerous records, solidifying his reputation as a top-tier musician in the industry. Gary Talley’s impact on music is profound, rooted in his deep love for the craft and his relentless dedication to perfecting his art. From his early days with The Box Tops to his extensive work as a session guitarist, Talley has left an indelible mark on the music world, influencing countless artists and continuing to inspire with his timeless talent.

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