Cat Tales

CAT TALES FROM SAILCAT

JOHN D. WYKER
ERIC BURTON AND THE ANIMALS: In about 1966 The RUBBER BAND went to see The ANIMALS at Boutwell Auditorium.....and after the show some teenie boppers thought that I WAS ERIC BURDON....and this swarm of sweaty little girls descended on us …and I say unto you I WAS SCARED FOR MY LIFE...they wanted anythang....your glasses...a finger...a hand full of hair...a lung....maybe an eyeball... We all made it to my car and got in and locked all the doors and these little clawin' boppers jumped on the car...on top of the hood…and truck... So I decided the only thang I could do was to start drivin' and slang em' off he car.......I had to be careful not to hurt anybody ...but some of these girls road halfway across B'Ham before I slung em' all off my car ! It scared the hell out of me...! And I never looked at girls this age in the same way after that.. God Love them little savages..! RUBBER BAND I think the RUBBER BAND was considered too much of an R&B or Soul band to be included on that "PSYCHEDELIC STATES ALABAMA" compilation you mentioned....however after about 3 years of playin' straight R&B and Soul music we did finally decide to add some psychedelic type songs to our show and I switched from playing trumpet to playing bass guitar.Like so many other bands of that era in the mid to late 60's we had started to smoke alot of grass and experiment with a few other thangs...all in the name of "ART"....the reason being that we had heard through the grapevine that Bob Dylan smoked a lot of weed and that's where he got a bunch of the ideas for some of his unique songs and lyrics....then when The Beatles came out with Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band it was a well know fact that they were dropping LSD and doin' some heavy trippin'....SOOOOOOO we thought that these substances just might improve our ablitity to become better songwriters and musicians.....I think the grass and the uppers may have helped a little but the acid open a few doors that maybe should have stayed shut....that's a whole nuther can of worms...back in thise days there was real LSD-25 and it was some mighty powerful stuff....and a totally unknown force.... Anyway when The RUBBER BAND started to get stoned we were all wearing matching uniforms and our Ford Bus was painted a nice neat light blue and on the sides we had a professional sign painter hand letter our name and logo in silver shaded with black....it simply said; The RUBBER BAND "The Hardest Working Band In Show Business !" Of course we modified James Browns logo which was JAMES BROWN The Hardest Workin MAN in Show Business....but few of our fans ever saw the similarity...or if they did they did not mention it.....as I said after about 3 years we were heavy into smoking mass quantities of grass and listening to The Byrds and other groups like that ....plus we were also playing shows with them and other hit acts that were big potheads at THE W-VOK SHOWER of STARS Shows,etc.... So one day we all showed up at the gig without our matching uniforms......we had switched from Beatle Boots to sandels that were made in India out of Water Buffalo Hide and of course the faded Levis' and whatever the strangest lookin' threads we could find.After that gig we took our nice neat light blue Ford touring truck and someone handed out a bunch of cans of bright Day-Glo spray paint of all different colors and we all smoked as much grass as we could hold and went to work on the transformation of that Ford truck...we painted it alll over ...wheeels and all....in fact it looked a lot like the truck that Louie drives these days where he has let everyone go wild on the paint job... we really made a mess out of that truck...but it gave us a since of freedom to do it....and folks could see us comin' for a mile away ! Anyway The Rubber Band did go through a pretty heavy PSYCHEDELIC period and when the Army drafted Joe Sobotka and then later Tippy go drafted we really went off the deep end...I hired a very young Jim Coleman to play keyboards and guitar and Lou Mulleniex on drums and for a while Tippy still played guitar and sometimes Ronnie Brown and Frank Freidman and I played bass with my back to the audience because I was so busy watching the pictures come out of the bass amp speakers...trippin' my arse off....by this time Johnny Townsend had long left the band and moved to LA to form The Sanford Townsend Band with Ed Sanford from that great old Mongomery,Alabama band The Rockin' Gibraltors.....that was about the time that The James Gang from Atlanta also broke up....they had the hit GEORGIA PINES so for a while Wilbur Walton who was The James Gang singer joined us on some gigs...it was a crazy mess ....but it was a hell of a lot of fun... To make a long story a little shorter... I do not think the RUBBER BAND's version of LET LOVE COME BETWEEN US ever made it to a CD release...not that I'm aware of anyway.It is available by Delbert McClinton and James & Bobby Purify on CD and also Mavis Staples on an album titled "OH WHAT A FEELING"... I'm really not sure if the Mavis' album was ever released on CD but it is really fine version recorded in The Shoals at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios down by the river and co-produced by Jerry Wexler & Barry Beckett and it features most of The Swampers.Seems like it was recorded in about the early 80's. Well Barn and everyone...I'm sorry to ramble on like this... but by now.... ya'll know it's my nature....some day soon I hope to be able to hook all these ramblings and Cat Tales up together and spice them up with some good old pictures and turn em' lose on the unsuspecting world.... The tribe has been kinda of laid back in the last few days but when you have beautiful weather outside like we have been havin' in Bama'Lama Land it makes a body want to get some yard work done that's been piling up all winter....I think we will have quit a bit of rain this comin' week cause I can feel it in my bones and I can hear the thunder rollin' in the distance right now...sounds like it's comin' from up around the Tennesee Line... I would also like to take this opportunity to WELCOME all of the new MFV Tribe members and say "please make yourself feel right at home and just jump in the middle of it all when ever you feel like it....you will make some good friends and contacts here and all in all we are a pretty good bunch of nuts ! Man ! It's rainin' like pourin' piss out of a boot on a flat rock right now ! How's thangs in Tulsa......I'll try to find that file with the photo of The Rubber Band for you...You listed all of the people that recorded "Let Love Come Between Us" except for one that I'm aware of and that is MAVIS STAPLES.....it's on her solo titled "OH WHAT A FEELING" When the the US ARMY drafted Joe Sobotka (Keyboards with The Rubber Band) that was the beginning of the end for that group......I hired Jim Coleman to take his place on keyboards...and our drummer Jackie Sims got married and dropped out so I hired Jackie's new brother in law LOU MULLENIX...I hope I spelled that right.....Lou and Jim were a lot younger than most of the other members but they were very extremely talented.... About the same time that the Rubber Band was on it's last leg the same thang was happening to The James Gang...the Southern James Gang...which featured Wilbur Walton as their singer...the other members also doubled as The Candymen when they backed up Roy Orbison....most of those cats later formed The Atlanta Rhythm Section...Buddy Buie from Dothan produced both The James Gang and ARS...I used to go to Hotlanta back in the 60's and stay with Buddy and Robert Nix...Nix was the drummer for these groups in those days...and now all of a sudden I just remembered where I lost my first wedding ring...and that was at Nix's apartment..damn I'm firing some old memory cells tonight...amazing how the old human mind can be inspired to recall events in the long lost past ..... Anyway...when the Rubber Band finally snapped and broke up I still had a bunch of gigs lined up to play and no band to do it....the Christmas party session was about to happen and Wilbur Walton was also left with all of the gigs that James Gang had contacted to play....I had know Wilbur for years...when I was in high school I used to go down to Tuscaloosa and attend all of the fraternity rush parties and Wilbur was in college then and he was a member of The Sex Above Everythang Frat...in laymen's' terms that would be The SAE's......anyway Wilbur called me one day and said that he was holding a bunch of James Gang gigs and that he would pay me to put a band together...I think he offered me some pretty good money too...so I told him that I had the same problem...gigs and no band...so the best way to solve the problem was to put one band together to cover ALL the gigs...... One night we were The Rubber Band and maybe the next night we were The James Gang......I played bass and I hired Court Pickett to sing....and Lou Mullenix on drums...and I think Jim Coleman was on keyboards...and Tippy Armstrong played guitar on some of the gigs and Ronnie Brown played guitar...and on some gigs Frank Freidman played a second guitar....Frank was a founding member of THIS SIDE UP.... Court sang lead when we were The Rubber Band...and Wilbur sang lead when we were The James Gang.......this worked out pretty well at first when the gigs were far a apart....and in different towns.....we were all making great money and having a ball doin' it.....except when Wilbur had to do the singin'.....by this time he was a real big drunk...and would not sing until he was totally juiced up...it took us a while to get his M. O. down...he would say the PA was broken and tell us to stall with more instrumentals....we finally figured out what he was up to...and we just played a bunch of freeform jams...remind me to tell the cat tale of how we brain washed a crowd in Auburn with a one chord groove that put the whole place in a trance dance..... Anyhow......thangs were going fine until about the middle of the Christmas session and we played a gig in Mobile as The Rubber Band....then the next night in the very same building we came in as The James Gang...we got away with it until the third night when we played the same place for a different girls club as The Rubber band again.......it was really scary to be on the bandstand and to watch people in the crowd whispering to each other...you could read their lips..."Was'nt that the same guy that played with..so and so band.the other night......well.... I don't know how we ever got out of there alive that last night...but we did......I'm sure their was some fast talkin' involved and some fast cars too.....! THE LAND DOWN UNDER I'm at the Bigun's pad ..worked up 3 strong song starts using the E -Bee- Be tuning on my black Willie T Fogtar...produced powerful lifting Fog that will make the Ethion's suspension stable and out of sight high above the Chinaberry Tree in John Mudflapum's Shaw, Mississippi backyard....Blim and several other mad Ethion's came down from the sky ridin' a green carpet of Fog...their Fogtar's grew quieter as they lightly touched down in the alley behind a large grocery store located near the banks of The Mighty Tennessee River...Cable and local news reporters were there with their hungry digital video camera's......they were completely unaware of this unplanned contagious action on the part of Blim and his artist friend's....The news media was mainly there to capture the sale and interview the person that was about to buy the one millionth can of Beenie Beenie's that is grocery store had sold that particular day.....the self that contained the continental canned beans and weeners was located right across from all the gondolas that held the fruits and vegetables....which is exactly where Big Blim and his squad of Ethion's best Brainstormers were headed....they were on their way to make a statement in order to satisfy their need to be different and to make people wonder...and ultimately think...not just to think but to think for themselves....and the news crew was about to queue the announcer....he was a very large dark skinned man almost the same shade of brown paper bag tan just like the invading Ethion's.... The news crew brought spots and cameras and pencils and pads and they all seemed so serious about what they were doing...and a big bunch of local people gathered around and as the news was about to be broadcast LIVE and in living color to homes and huts and shacks and mansions and government building and corporate meeting rooms as well as trains and boats and planes located all over world and even beyond to space stations and shuttles that were secretly and seriously working to prepare and escape route for those that were responsible for devising a plan to convert and direct all the earth's great abundance of natural resources in to massive landfills that rise high up in to the polluted sky like the great pyramids of ancient Egypt...these mountains of trash were not just one or two here or there and limited to rural areas outside the cities and towns...there were no more real rustic rural areas in this era and age of man made trash and consumption.. Soon there would be no place left to hide the unsightly mass of mess made mostly of packaging..this was also long after the Czar of manufacturing was commuted to the insane asylum and his governmental office and presidential authority had long been voted and vetoed out of existence....except in the memories of all reasonable people trying to live with unreasonable circumstances....the chain had to be broken at some point ...the cycle was not working and the markets were all taking note but not able to offer anything but false hopes that things would ever be the same...that is before the system was exposed... and the exposed were systematically selected to be imprisoned on islands of deserts dedicated for that specific purpose in The Land Down Under. THE ALLMAN JOYS Thank You for that great information on Dr. Feelgood...I was pretty sure it was a young Jimi Hendricks that was playin' in Dr.Feelgood's band..I've seen a lot of cats do crazy thangs with a guitar ...but that was the first time I ever saw anyone play it with his teeth and behind his back and also behind his back......years later those kind of moves became a popular gimmick with many guitar players...... In the mid 60's my band The RUBBER BAND used to hire The ALLMAN JOYS as our opening act...we really did not need an opening act but we thought we could help promote Gregg and Duane's band...and they needed the money...I went to military school with the cat that was playin' bass with the ALLMAN JOYS at the time..his name was Mike Alexander..from Memphis..he later committed suicide......anyway the crowds in Tuscaloosa would boo The Allman Joys and they were giving them a hard time ...so Duane pulled out all the stops and played his guitar behind his head and with his teeth and he even got down on his knees and did a back flip while he played...I thought it was a gas...but the crowd would not give them a chance...Gregg was playin' a little Vox organ..I think it was...it was red with chrome legs...and after Duane did his flip and all that stuff Gregg laid down on his back and pulled the organ over on top of him while he played...they were all dressed up in some crazy clothes that they had gotten in The Village in New York....wild patterns of hip hugging bellbottoms...I think Duane's were black & white hound's-tooth...and the shirts were what we called Tom Jones shirts...the movie not the singer...the sleeves were big and baggy...and we called the type of collars the shirts had ..airplane collars...the collars were so long and wide...and everyone wore those big wide belts with buckles the size of a horse shoe.....man they were a bunch of cool dudes ! DAN PENN Conway Twitty's version of "Is A Bluebird Blue" was real important to Dan Penn...or should I say Wallace Pennington..It was the first real money he made as a songwriter ! I was lucky enough to have been at Spar Music above City Drug Store in Florence,Alabama the day that young Dan Penn got his first check from that recording...it was also the first time that I ever laid eyes on Penn...I was writing songs for Spar and Tom Stafford was giving me some positive criticism on some of my lyrics..and then he started telling me about this great new songwriter and singer that he was workin' with..he said he had just come up from Vernon,Alabama...and his real name was Wallace Pennington ..but he was using the pen name..Dan Penn...I believe Dan was 16 years old at the time...Stafford was going on about what a cool cat Penn was....it was about that time that I heard footsteps climbing the inside stair well...and the door flew open and BAM ! In walked young Dan Penn.. He was dressed in a brown leather jacket..I call them bomber jackets ..but without a fur collar...he had a white T-Shirt on and blue denim jeans.probably Levis..and a pair of brown leather house shoes..Penn was famous for years later for wearing house shoes instead of regular footwear...Somebody once asked Dan what his definition of funky was and he said "Funky is anythang that you ain't supposed to do... but you can get a way with "...For me those house shoes were the beginning of FUNKY ! I hungout with Dan and Spooner a lot back in The Time and I'd drive up to visit them years later when they both moved to Memphis and the house shoes were still apart of his dress code and Penn's funky cool thang... Back to that first sighting a at Spar...we were formally introduced later that same night...Dan was also wearing a hat..it was what we called a black stingy brim hat ..much like The blues Brothers would make famous many years later...Penn wore sunglasses at night..and it inspired me to do the same thang for the next 40 years ! In his mouth he had a tooth pick in one side...a cigarette in the other and he was also chewing gum at the same time...now he was a very talented cat ...to be able to juggle all that stuff in one mouthful...I was amazed...Penn's right hand was all bandaged up...gauze covered 2 or 3 fingers and wrapped up around his wrist...He was walkin' down the hall of Spar..which was a real small place and somebody...I think it was Norbert or Briggs or Carrigan yelled at Dan and asked him "What happened to your hand Dan ?...Penn replied " KNIFE FIGHT !..and never missed a beat as he spit his gum like a bullet from the barrel of a pistol into a waiting metal garbage can...PING ! The gum hit the can ! Tom Stafford picked an envelope up off of his desk and looked at Dan and said "Come here Dan..I 've got your first check for Conway's cut on "Is A Bluebird Blue"...again Dan never broke stride as he fired back.."Good I need to buy me a new car cause that old used car I'm drivin' just blew an engine ! " Tom ask him how that happened and Dan fired back..Draggin' for pink slips !" Dan Penn was one of the original inventors of cool ! He had an attitude that made him stand out from the rest of the pack ...and back then he seemed to be much older and wiser than his years ! A DUANE ALLMAN CAT TALE: Heres a Cat Tale about Duane Allman that took place back in the late 1960's at Rick Hall's FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama: Rick Hall was famous for intimidating musicians that were playin' on his sessions. There are many stories about how Rick would book musicians "3 or 4 deep" for some of his sessions....3 drummers....3 bass players, etc. If the first picker didnt come up with a great part in a certain amount of time Rick would throw him off the session right there on the spot and call in the next person to see what they could come up with. Meanwhile the cats on the bench would sit out in the lobby and play cards waiting on their chance to shine. I'd say Rick had kind of a Bear Bryant type of attitude. Well ole Duane Allman turned the tables on Rick....that was back in the early days of over dubbing or multi -tracking and sometimes quite a bit of work and set up time was involved in getting the tape and the machines set up to over dub a lead guitar part or somethang like that. They would get the main basic track recorded on tape and then maybe the next day come back in and overdub Duane's lead guitar part. I remember one time....I think it was on a Wilson Pickett session, when Duane was asked to come in record his guitar part and I drove him in to town that day. I think Jimmy Johnson was running the board and he already had everythang set up and ready to record when we got there. The track sounded great and he had all of his levels set. After Duane made sure his guitar was in tune and he had the settings on his amp just like he wanted it and his headphone level was satisfactory...he asked for a short break before actually recording his part. Duane and I disappeared to one of our many secret places out behind FAME and he began to "get his head right". That's all I can say about that but ya'll know what I mean. After all Duane had a motto that he lived by ..."Whatever it takes TO HIT THE NOTE !" Anyway when he was finally ready Duane strolled back into the studio with that sure footed cocky attitude that was so famous for....shook back his long flamin' reddish hairslipped his headphones on and picked up his magic guitar and slung the wide leather strap across his shoulderclosed his eyes and nodded to the engineer in the control room that he was ready! A voice came from the playback speakers, "OK WE ARE ROLLING"...and the red recording light flickered to like indicating the seriousness of the moment. The track was came on strong. It was a funky hot piece of music although I'm not sure exactly which title it was but as the track began to play it was cookin' so much that the walls in the studio seemed to be breathing in and out of time with the pounding rhythm of this masterful Muscle Shoals track. Duane still had his eyes closed, but his feet and his body were moving in perfect time with the music he was hearin' in his headphones...he was in total concentration almost like a Buddhist monk meditating on this pulsating moment that he was now living and recording in. As the place in the song that required his talent for lead guitar approached the tension began to grow....after all this was what this day was all about....those few magic moments of recorded sound on magnetic tape where Duane Allman knew that he could forever become immortal...and unforgettable...simply by playing his heart out for a few seconds on this guitar ride. When the moment came to play, Duane's eyes were still tightly closed but his face looked totally released as if he knew exactly what his fingers would do to steal the spotlight and he began to play...or should I say burn with an intensity that bordered on recklessness. It was like watchin' someone attempt a high dive that they had never done before...maybe a quadruple triple back flip with 2 and half turns of sideways twist before the diver finally cleanly entered the water with his toes perfectly pointed towards the sky. It was the kind of action that everyone holds their breath for and silently prays to be allowed to witness this kind of unique and rare perfection. Duane was totally playin' his ass off and it was obvious not only to me but by the look on Duane's face that he was even surprising himself with his own extension of his guitar genius. I call it playin' over your head...where someone really does not have a cut and dried plan for what there are goin' to play. That would be too dull for someone like Duane...too boring and predictable. Duane was goin' for the kind of solo that would not only surprise all of the listeners but it would also be a surprise to him as well....the kind of thang that when you listen to it back...you go...."How the Hell did I do that" You know that you may only be able to do it once but as long as you get it on tape that it will live forever. That's one of the beauties of recorded sound and also what makes some people legends! That's not the end of this story.... or the end of that solo that Duane was smokin' his way through at FAME Studio that day. Everythang was goin' totally fantastic and right then he blew a line...and everythang just stopped. The tape came to a halt and Duane was not only mad at himself but you could also see the hurt and disappointment in his face...and then he did somethang I had never seen any other musician do at that time. He the just stripped the guitar strap off of his back and yanked his cord out of the amp and then he slammed his guitar down and said "OK THAT'S IT !...I"LL COME BACK and TRY IT AGAIN TOMORROW...I AIN"T FEELIN' IT ANYMORE!" And then he strolled out of the studio....as everyone looked on in amazement! I had never seen anyone do anythang like that in my life and I thought it was pretty cool! THE SEACAMPER: The day I bought the Seacamper - I was comin' back from Huntsville and a boat dealer in Rogersville...I think his name was Lynn Greer...he later ran for somethang government in MonkeyTown. Anyway...Eddie was livin' with me then...this would have been the end of 1972 or around 1973 and I was livin' in my Grandparent's house in North Florence...my grandfather had gotten real sick and they moved him to Decatur for better care. Anyway...the house was filled with antiques and 40 or 50 years of livin' and raisin' kids and grandkids....the house had several magic attics...filled with hunting gear and stuff from the wars and a bugle...you never knew what you'd find next. And Eddie was like the Top Sgt. or Mess Sgt. in charge of the kitchen. He always wore white pants and a white T-shirt and a pair of Brown Wing Tip Shoes...he loved to challenge people to a foot race if they had on athletic shoes and he never changed - run in those Wing-Tips...won in those Wing-Tips! And Eddie would always have a white apron on and he'd hang all kinds of roots and mushrooms and strange lookin' skulls and turtle shells all around my grandmama's kitchen.....looked more like a Witch Doctor lived there and he had some pretty powerful medicine too. Back in those days when I had just come off of a summer of tourin' with SAILCAT, I dressed real shabbily I guess you could say. My Levis always were full of holes and my Levi Jacket and my jeans had my sweet grandmother's old costume jewelry sewed on the sleeves and shoulders and the bottoms of the bell bottoms... Back then I always had 5 or 10 grand on me...it was right after BMI certified Motorcycle Mama with a Million radio airplays... So I figured if I looked broke...folks would leave me alone. Well this day I wanted to buy that SEACAMPER I saw on the side of the road. It was the same one I had seen at the Birmingham Boat Show and I had almost bought it then. So I drove home and picked up Hinton...all dressed in white with a big cigar...a Tampa Sublime or Nugget stickin' out of his mouth. We drove my old white 1965 4 door hard top Cadillac Sedan Deville back to Rogersville and the boatyard of Lynn Greer. He was out on his boat yard busily writin' in a book and talkin' to potential victims. Every time he'd walk past me...I'd say somethang like "Man...I'd love to have this boat!" and he'd give me this look like "I'll bet you would... you poor ass hippie...I'll just bet you would !" So I did that for a little while....let him think I was a fool that is...and then the game started gettin' old so I adjusted my nuts and went and found Eddie and I said "Eddie give me a couple of those big cigars and you light up a couple...and we found Lynn Greer's office and we went in and sat down... And I told Eddie to make as much smoke as he could and that was a lot...cause he had about 5 of them lit up and I was puffin' on a couple myself. I said "I want him to think his office is on fire!" I the meantime I kicked back and propped my feet up on his desk....I'd always heard these stories about the first cars that The EVERLY BROTHERS bought. I heard that they also paid for the glass in the store front window and they just drove right through the glass ! So this was the rock n' roll frame of mind I was in. So I'm sittin' there in his office with my feet propped up puffin' on a couple of cigars...and I took a wad of hundreds out of one of my pockets and I started waddin' these nice crisp hundred dollar bills up and lobbin' them into a big pile on The Bossman's desk ! Lynn finally saw the smoke but found out that there was more money than fire to be found in his office. Then he came runnin' in all "Yes Sir" this and "No Sir" that... I was in the Catbird's Seat! And damn it felt good! But not as good as puttin' that 24 foot twin engine Lear Jet of a boat in the Tennnessee River THAT day and drivin' it down river...home to The Shoals! LITTLE EGYPT PLANTATION: I grew up listening to John R. and Hoss Allen on WLAC's powerful 50,000 watt station. John R and Hoss were white cats with black voices and they blasted black music all night long to every dark and remote little crevise in that magic land we call The South. The music that they played was soulful and full of rhythm. The songs that they released out into the night air were about love and lost love and good times and hard times and the music doctored those feelings we had that we called "the blues". These white cats with their black voices at WLAC knew how to spread the news and it was the soundtrack to my young life. It was a time in my life when it seemed that history was made at night and all a man needed was a fast car with a loud radio. My friends and I would drive around the back roads of Alabama and listen to that station and the soulful music would make us feel things that we were too young to really know about. It helped us in our quest to become men. We would follow the broken white lines of the two lane blacktop road and go to "Little Egypt Plantation" outside of Courtland, Alabama and buy wildcat whiskey from an old black man named "Curlee" that lived on the plantation. "Curlee" was famous for makin' his wildcat whiskey. His "cat" was considered to be the bestTHE prefered drink of the local gentry. After pullin' off of the hard road and bumpin' down some little narrow rutted out dusty dirt roads you finally came up on "Curlee's" little sharecropper shack. We always went at night and it was kind of spooky cause ole "Curlee" had a pack of real mean dogs that kept a watch out for him. He would have to calm those "dogs from Hell" down before I could get out of the car. I'd usually take the money up to old Curlee and say Mr.Curlee I need a jar of yo' famous cat". And even though I was barely a teenager Curlee would say "Yes Sir mister John you knows I makes da bess cat dat they is ! "We respected each other. It did not matter about our age or our color difference, we both knew we were good people and we both appreciated good wildcat whiskey and real music. Anyway the old man would take his lantern and I'd follow him over to a Chinaberry tree that stood out to the side of his shack. As we got closer to the tree chickens that were roosting in the branches would be startled and start squawkin' and flyin' out in all directions of the night. Old Curlee would whip out his knife and reach up into the darkness at the center of the tree and just like magic a quart jar of clear wildcat whiskey that was tired to a branch with a string would drop down out of the tree and into his waiting hand. He'd take his blade and cut the string with loose with one swift slash and hold the jar up to his lantern and eyeball it. Then he'd shake it up good so you could see how it beaded up. He'd smile his old broken toothed smile and we would observe an almost religious moment of silence as we watched the thousands of tiny little beads swirlin' around inside that Mason jar. That's one way you can judge good "cat". By the amount of beads and how long they last. Anyway I'd thank old Curlee and shake his tough leathered hand and crawl back in the car. We'd turn the radio back up and pass the jar around and get high as a kite ! And we'd even put some "cat" in our Zippo lighters so we could take it to school the next day and suck on it in class to keep the buzz goin'. Real quality wildcat is some powerful high octane stuff.It'll light your cigarette and if you run out of gas in your car you just can pour a little "cat" in the tank and keep on sailin' down the highway. We'd just drive around all night long listenin' to John R and Hoss Allen and sometimes Wolfman Jack who was broadcasting out of Texas but the station was so powerful that the actual broadcasting tower had to be located in Mexico. Man, those were the days ! I don't drink anymore because it slows me down too much, but that's about all that has changed over the years. I still love that old soulful music and the way it makes me feel way deep down inside and I'm gonna keep on writin' and playin' that sweet soul music as long as there are stars in the southern sky ! RHYMIN' SIMON'S LAST JOINT: Back when the Rubber Band was recordin' in NYC, Paul Simon asked us to hire him to play guitar on a session. We really did not need Paul Simon's guitar part...he and Garfunkel had only had one hit at that time so he was no big deal to us....but I'd had been tryin' to find some grass for over a year with no luck. I had read somewhere that Bob Dylan smoked pot and came up with all these great songs so naturally I wanted to try some. I had looked for over a year in The South and never found anythang at all to try. So when Paul Simon came in he had a button on his Navy P coat that said "Legalize Grass"...so I thought that if I hired him to be on the session it might give me an in with him and he might help me find somethang to try. So, I told Calleo to hire him....and we gave him a little while to tune up and work up a guitar part...which turned out great....but as soon as I felt comfortable I ask him if he knew where I could get any grass and he said "I just smoked my last joint before I came over here !" I felt like he was not tellin' me the truth and I wanted to fire him on the spot...but I let it ride....this was in about 1966. The next morning I was still in bed at the hotel and all of a sudden Johnny Townsend and Tippy Armstrong came runnin' into my room all excited and they told me that they had spent the night in The Village and they found some grass. Well I sat straight up in bed with excitement as Townsend pitched the cigarette to me....I caught it and didn't even look at it good as I lit it up and took a long deep drag. And then I started coughing like I had the Whopping Cough...the sound of my coughing was only surpassed in volume by the sound of Townsend and the rest of the band rollin' in the floor laughin' themselves silly! The joke was on me! I found out later that they had taken a cigarette called a Turkish Oval and put after shave lotion and some other thangs on the cigarette and then dried it out with a hair drier. It was almost another year of searchin' before I ever got to try grass and it was given to me by Gregg Allman in Tuscaloosa the night that Bill Connell joined up to play drums with The Allman Joys. Years later after Paul Simon got to be a big star and dropped Garfunkel he came to Muscle Shoals Sound to record the LP's KODACHROME and THERE GOES RHYMIN' SIMON and he asked me if I had any grass. Well I reminded him of that night long ago in NYC...so I told him that "I had just smoked my last joint" and reminded him that what goes around comes around! We had a good laugh and then I pointed him in the right direction. SAM THE SHAM AND LAWYERS: That reminds me of some advice I got on an elevator in downtown LA in the summer time of SAILCAT...and I was lookin' for lawyer because the record company said it's the thang to do... Well I had met Sam (the Sham) many years ago on those WVOK and all their sister stations SHOWER OF STARS SHOWS and also at The Old Dutch even before they had a hit record...Sam ain't no sham he's a riverboat pilot and a Cajun free spirit.... But that day on that elevator I needed some advice bad...I was tired of talkin' to all these old fools about how to shelter this money and invest that money. Screw a bunch of meetings, I just wanted to go somewhere and get as drunk as I could ! The LA Sky Scraper elevator door opened and there in the flesh stood funky Sam The Sham...lookin' as funky as he wanted to with his pants legs rolled up like pedal pushers and a pair of Flip Flops for footwear and a white tank top or really an under wear shirt....and a rag tied round his head ! And he had that bid ass Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Ridin' Hood look on his face with his shape shinny white teeth....and he was smilin' ear to ear when he saw me... And I told Sam that the record company told me to hire a lawyer to take care of certain details in my career...I did not really look at it like a career as much as I did a way to get money to buy stuff for my head...and when it was fixed all it wanted to do was to create...music, art,my movie ideas and makin' thangs that have never existed before.... And Sam's advice to me about a lawyer...this is all he said...and it was enough...Sam The Sham said "It's hard enough to get down river without draggin' snakes in the boat with you !" THE REPLACEMENT: I went to low school and high school in Decatur Alabama which is 45 miles east of Muscle Shoals. The high school girls had sororities or girls clubs with names like Sub Deb and The J.U.G. Club (that stood for JUST US GIRLS and not what it sounds like!) Several times a year that held dances called "Lead Outs" and great bands were always a major part of these events. A few of the acts that played these dances included Bowlegs Miller, Rufus Thomas, an albino cat named Dr. Feelgood and The Interns, The Tams, Dann Penn and The Mark V (Five), Hollis Dixon and The Keynotes, The Delrays, Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs and many many more great bands of that time. One year, a bunch of my friends and I decided to form a high school fraternity so WE could rent the Country Club and have a dance. We collected membership dues from everybody and bought a keg of beer and we were in business! I was voted social chairman and I set out to book a band for our dance. I had heard that there was a new bookin' agent in Macon Georgia that booked a lot of bands from The Carolina's and a bunch of other great black bands. I got on he phone and booked a band and mailed in a 25% depot. I can't remember who the act was now but I had everything set for the night of our dance. On the morning of the date of our dance I got a phone call from the office of the fledgling company Phil Walden and Associates. I was informed that the bus that was carrying the band that I had booked had broken down and we would have to accept a replacement. I was told that the replacement band would arrive by car in time for the dance and that I was to go and meet the afternoon Southern Airways flight and pick up the singer whose name I was told but immediately forgot. I was assured that we would love this new singer and the problem was all worked out. That afternoon a couple of car loads of us drove across The Tennessee River to the small airport called Pryor Field. We sat on the hoods of our cars and listened to the radio in the lazy hot Alabama sun while we scanned the skies for the airplane. Finally someone picked out a tiny little silver speck in the immense blue sky and we all watched it grow larger until it made it the final approach and touched down and taxied to the edge of the tarmac. The flight attendants rolled the tall metal steps up to the side plane and we watched as the door of this shiny silver winged tube opened up and the travelers began to deplane. One by one we watched them all. The Businessmen in their business suits with their briefcases and buttoned down collars and neck ties and the women in their bubble hairdoes. Just about the time we thought that the plane was empty we saw him standing in the doorway! The Replacement! BEHOLD! The Replacement had arrived!The Replacement had been delivered to us from way out of the clear blue Alabama sky by this shiny silver tube with the propellers still spinnin' in the center of each silver wing. The Replacement had arrived to save our day and turn our dance that night into a magic event that none of us would ever forget. The Replacement appeared to be ten feet tall and he was dark and he was handsome. The Replacement wore a blue shark skin and he had a quiet strong countenance about him. Our savior for the night had arrived and we all felt safe. I finally made my way over to The Replacement and in my usual manner I extended my right hand and said "Hey Man! It's good to see you! My name is Johnny Wyker". The Replacement tried his best not to smile but he did anyway as he shook my hand and said "I'm Otis Redding and I'm gonna sing for ya'll tonight!" Later that night on a break between sets Otis and I sat on a stainless steel table in the kitchen of the country club and we talked. I remember tellin' him how much I liked his singing style and Otis was very humble and he thanked me he said that all he wanted to do was to be respected and be as good as his idols were. I asked him who his favorite singers were and he named a bunch of them but the name that I remember most was Jackie Wilson! I was lucky enough to hangout with Otis on several other occasions after he became a star and he was the same gentleman that I met that night except he had a lot more confidence about him and he seemed to be a lot happier. THE STONING: Injun Don's band was openin' for Bachman Overdrive or somebody at the fair grounds in Muscle Shoals and I somehow talked my way into playin' that borrowed guitar.. That was back when the word "boogie" used to drive me crazy...it was so over used...don't bother me at all now that I have a song titled The HOOKER BOOGIE..or as it says on SOUTHERN LIGHTS HOOKER's BOOGIE.. Either way I like the word boogie now days ...but back then someone... one too many rednecks yelled "Lets' Boooooooooooooogie"....when are we gonna hear some BOOOOGIE.... Sometimes back then due to the booze I had a major attitude problem on stage, between me and the crowd. I used to like to see how far I could push them....it's that playin' with fire thang.....pokin' the Brama Bull in the balls with a sharp stick at the sale barn when he's in a pen that he could run through like Popsicle sticks if he wanted to. But the main thang that was my pet peeve back the was... I was not gonna be ignored. I'd rather have every chair in the place thrown on stage rather than be mistaken for wall paper or a picture on the wall....and often I'd curse the audience. I kind of understand where Andy Kaufman was comin' from sometimes......I had a mic....I had the power. Anyway this was durin' a period when Folk Rock and Country Rock and that stuff was what I was listenin' too and writin' and playin' and the crowd kept on yellin' "when are ya''ll gonna play some BOOOGIE ." And I stepped up to the mic and said "BTO will be here to Boggy for you all right after we finish. But before we finish we are gonna play you rednecks some stuff that might do you some good to listen to and then you can have your Boogie !" That's when a shy and slight sprinkling of small rocks or more like little pea sized pebbles pelted the personal in the band. It would have been easy enough to ignore and go right on with our show but that old Al K. Hall had a grip on me back then so I threw my hands up in the air... skywards towards the Heavens and I grabbed the mic that was closest to me and in my best Biblical voice I delivered that famous line in the sand from the BIBLE ..."LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE !" There was a short silence ....while the people or semi-drunk rednecks in the crowd considered this challenge and inspected the language contained in this verbal gauntlet that I had just thrown down before hundreds if not thousands of all these gooneded clowns.who just happened to be sittin' on the perfect ammo dump for a real worldclass and old fashioned by the book biblical stoning ! Most of the folks in the crowd were blessed with the average amount of sin... which would allow them to be free from be obligated into castin' the first stone. But the vast majority of this crowd seemed to be totally without sin....this crowd most have been one of the most righteous and perfect groups of souls that have ever been gathered together in one place at one time. I'm surprised that a team of The Pope's Miracle and Saint Squad did not appear to certify and verify the amount of totally sin free people that were gathered at this particular musical concert and religious stoning ! The concert was being held on a gravel parking lot so a body did not have to look too far to find some ammo for this sanctified religious stoning that me and the band where about to receive ! The next day there was a review of the concert in The Shoals paper that said "More than just the band got stoned at last night's BTO concert...people sittin' in the first dozen rows near the stage also got hit in the back of the heads !" I remember hidin' under a baby grand piano with Injun Don and a few others makin' the statement "Man this is the most righteous bunch I've ever seen in my life !" "DUCK !" THE STORY OF BABY RUTH: Yeap, BABY RUTH is ONE Chord.... I remember thinkin' while I was writin' it that I wanted to write a good and easy to play Jam song that anybody could sit in on and Jam without havin' to worry about chord changes.... I wrote the song in Open E...and I did not know how I manged to get the guitar tuned in this weird (at the time.tunin') tunin'. I was very stoned at the time in 1969...takin' the famous songwriting pill "SPECKLED BIRDS " And I got this groove goin' on the guitar and with the sound of my bare foot keepin' time on the hardwood floor of The Wyker Lake House.....BECKY ROBBINS and her little daughter KATRINA were there.,..I don’t know if we were married then or not... KATRINA was at that magic age of about 6 and I was always tryn' to entertain this wonderful little girl....I've found that if a young child will start dancin' to one of your songs ....then it's a sign that the song is goin' in the right direction ! Anyway...I had this one chord groove goin' and I knew that if I stopped I would never be able to find it again....about that time SMITH, PERKINS, & SMITH and CHARLIE FELDMAN walked in The back Door....Charlie was playin' with them at the time...Charlie later went on to work for BMI's NEW YORK office...He's still there... And Tim SMITH and Wayne PERKINS and STEVE SMITH and Charlie came in the back door of my lake house and since the last time I had seen them they had all let their hair grow longer...so I just started makin' up words that would fit the moment...and acknowledge the fact that my friends had just walked in the door and still keep my groove goin' on the guitar... So I opened my mouth and out jumped the words to BABY RUTH... "It's sure good to see you But my how you've changed since the last time I saw you You've been rearranged I always said yo' people was just like my kin when ever I was down and out They would always take me in ! I'm glad I kept on with that song because it's been one of my most recorded songs and has been recorded by the likes of DELBERT McCLINTON and BONNIE BRAMLETT, JOHN PRINE, ALEX TAYLOR, DICK'S HAT BAND, The WALL BANGERS, DENNIS CLIFTON, FOSTERMON and others That is just a few of the people that have recorded it....it has been recorded and made it to wax or disc about 100 times...but it has made less money than any other song...but their could be reasons for that…like publishers never payin' Other of my Heroes that mastered The Art of using One Chord on a song are JOHN LEE HOOKER…BO DIDDLEY…JAMES BROWN and RUFUS THOMAS... Like LITTLE DAVID said "All them other Cats are lookin' for it...I've found it !" THE 50 MILE PLUS BEER WALK A TRUE EDDIE HINTON CAT TALE PART ONE: The main facts in this true story were personally told to me by Eddie Hinton in about 1984 or 85' after I had borrowed a thousand bucks from an old high school friend to buy Hinton a little 15 foot RV Scotty Camper Trailer to live in because winter was settin' in and he had no other place to go. He later accidentally (I think) burned the trailer down to the ground out behind my families Hardware Store...everyone thought Eddie was still in it at the time but thankfully he was' not...the only important and hard to replace thang that was lost in that fire that day was my favorite Fender Telecaster that I played on Dick Clark's AMERICAN BANDSTAND and also at our Carnage Hall performance. Once in 1985 after Eddie Hinton had fallen on real hard times he walked the 50 miles from Decatur to Muscle Shoals, Alabama in the middle of July...I'll bet it was 110 degrees in the shade....he told me that it took him 12 hours to make the walk...he said mean dogs started chasin' him and he was attacked by those big birds that lived back when the Dinosaurs did.....I think he called them Terodactyls....he said they were swoopin' down out of the sky and chasin' him..... Eddie saw and heard many strange thangs that others luckily never have to see or hear... To paraphrase a line from a DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS song off of their first CD titled SANDWICHES FOR THE ROAD ......."He had visions in his head ....mighty fields of visions... and sometimes his visions could be a little unkind from time to time"...and then another line says "But I've got friends in DECATUR AAAAALLLL----AAAAHHHH-BAAAAAMMMM--MAAAAAA.... It's a great tribute song to Hinton's musical genius by another generation of musical genius... Patterson Hood and The DBT's....That DBT CD is titled GANGSTBILLY and when Patterson first sent me a promo copy I was totally in the dark about that song...and when I played the CD and heard those lines I almost fell out of my chair in a state of surprise and happy shock! Eddie told me that while he was makin' the first part of this 50 mile shoe leather express walk that the cops in Town Creek gave him a ride from one side of their city limits to the other...just to move him along" and get him out of their territory ! In the shape he was in that's quite understandable.... The Perpetually Walking Man Shoe Leather Express is how he traveled most places after about 1978....and when he walked he was not silent....most of the time.... he would talk to himself and sing at the top of his voice as he walked...and when he was really out there he would wildly swing his arms...and make dramatic gestures.....he said that sometimes when he felt that he was a little was too high and he was afraid that the cops mighty pick him up for Public Drunkenness he would walk with a slight limp...like he had a gimp leg or something I've seen him do it many times.......in fact I can do it almost just like him when I'm in the right mood ....he once told me that he thought that the cops might show him a little pity if they thought he was a poor cripple... And sometimes while he was walkin' he might just stop and freeze up... like a squirrel does... for not apparent reason...and he'd just stand there...stone still... like a statue... for no reason....and sometimes he'd just stand there like that for what would seemed like a half an hour...and then as if he had received some invisible green light he'd go again and start walkin and return to what he referred to as his "gate". He once signed a vinyl LETTERS FROM MISSISSIPPI album cover with these words "I'm glad you got to catch me in this "GATE"! And then he drew some weird alien lookin' symbols across the bottom of the album cover....some of those old autographs will someday be priceless on eBay ...and each one was as strange and different as the other. They are really rare but out of the 1000 Swedish Vinyl copies of LETTERS that I talked the record company in to sendin' me.... a whole bunch of them got personally signed by Eddie... Eddie did not seem to care much about hearin' from his fans or gettin' fan mail....I would always have to open it and I'd pick a time to read it to him when I thought it might register with him or he would at least remember it....those fan letters might have meant the world to him but if they did he would not let on like he cared...or was interested...but I guess to show any joy would have been a little out of character....I know feedback from people that like what I do means everythang to me ...to hear from someone that has taken the time to write you and tell you what you are doin' right is so important...with everythang I do...it's my fuel...and I keep tellin' myself that as long as their is just one person that believes..... then I'll keep tryin' to go that extra sundown mile to make it all mo' better ! Near the end of his short life.... after he had finally gotten a little recognition...I took him to Italy to do a little tour... including The San Remo Blues Festival on The Italian Rivera ..and also we played The SWEET SOUL MUSIC FESTIVAL up the southern foothills of The Alps... At both shows he was treated like a real Soul Music Star helpin' to headline a line up including Rufus and Carla Thomas, Jay Blackfoot, Ruby Wilson and The Memphis All Star Blues Band lead by Marvell Thomas...Hinton would try to be nice and sign somethang most of the time if someone ask him in the right way and he was in the mood for it.... I have some video footage of him signing autographs at The SWEET SOUL MUSIC FESTIVAL in Italy in 1991....and looks so uncomfortable...like he really rather be somewhere else...but there was a long-long line of people for all over Europe waitin' patiently to get his autograph on somethang...the most heard phase of the day from his European fans was " man I thought you were black and blind until a few months ago!" I'm sure that really pleased Eddie as much as anythang anybody could say to him as a compliment..... I remember back when we both had barely started playin' music and a bunch of use were sittin' around after a small gig at a club on Pensacola Beach and we were havin' a few beers and we were all talkin' about what we wanted to do in life and in the music biz....what we wanted to accomplish and Eddie was real quiet and looked like he was deep in thought and after everyone else told what their dreams were somebody said "Hey Eddie Bear...what about you man ?....What is your goal ?" And the young almost cuddly Eddie Bear very seriously stated that his ambition was to make music and records "that a black man would like and buy and not know that it was a white man makin' the music". BEER WALK - HINTON CAT TALE PART 2: With the 1978 release of his first solo album VERY EXTREMELY DANGEROUS I think that Hinton achieved his goal of wanting to sound as black as possible. It must have seemed like a dream to Eddie because he was signed to Capricorn which was the record label that was built on the back of his idol Otis Redding. But when Eddie's album came out they were goin' into bankruptcy at the time.....Eddie was a very bad risk at the time anyway and damn near impossible to manage even if The Walden's and their label had of been in their best prime workin' condition it would have been a nightmare if that record had of caught on ..Eddie or Sandra would have found away to drive everybody crazy at the label and someone would have probably killed them both before it was over..... The VED album purposely did not have a picture of Eddie on the album cover...it had a vague image of a what appeared to be a black man hidin' in an alley...while you see the lights of a Police Cruiser speed past his hidin' place....on the other side it's daybreak and all the garbage cans are turned over in that alley and there is a stray dog in place of where the black man was hidin' from the cops....the record did get played on some all black music stations...and few people had any idea that Hinton was a white cat. The Walden's only took Eddie on because they believed in him and wanted to try and help him....he was hired to sweep out the studio....that was his gig...but I never saw him sweep anythang in his life....workin' like that was not in his nature. By the time of this first album everyone that knew Hinton was sure that he had completely lost his mind....He would go months without bathing....he would eat dog food from the dogs bowl.....I've seen it happen...Eddie and Sandra kept these 2 big shaggy Sheep Dogs....these thangs were big as Volkswagen's and always slobbering...they had hair hanging completely over their eyes and were always knockin' stuff over and they always acted hyper and excited...just like Crazy Sandra. She was always squeallin' and sayin' "OH EDDIE !"....like a little teenage groupie and then she'd do one of her high pitched squeals.....Eddie was always tryin' to impress Sandra with some manly feat...and then she'd do her "Oh Eddie thang"...suppertime and Sandra would pour out some dog food and Eddie would get down and eat with them.... When it came to most thangs if anythang was a little too hard to do it wasn't for Eddie... I remember Eddie would take a few pokes at it and he'd say in a soft voice to himself "It ain't worth it!" and then he'd give up on whatever it was he was tryin' to do....except some thangs like this 50 plus mile walk he made....to me that would be hard but at the time I guess Eddie thought it was worth it. Ya'll can be the judge of that when you hear the sad ending to this Cat Tale... BEER WALK - HINTON CAT TALE PART 3: The reason Hinton made that 50 mile plus walk from Decatur to The Shoals was simple ......in his mind at least....he wanted a beer.... or some money to buy some beer ....and what we call The Whip Whiskey. It was the summer of 1984 and Eddie had just arrived in Decatur by bus a few weeks earlier. He ended up in Decatur because he had a disagreement with his mother in Birmingham ...he was stayin' at her house and when he was livin' there she had him workin' for a day laborer company and sometimes they found him some work unloadin' tractor trailer trucks that were loaded to the brim with cans of Dog Food....in the summer heat I can imagine what he thought about that job.....same thang all day...for almost no pay...but when he'd get off from work and get a little pay check he'd slip into a liquor store and get himself a pint or a half pint of PGA -190 proof - pure grain alcohol itd burn a blue flame and remove fingernail polish. Now there are always two sides to every story.....but the only side that's been told to me came from Eddie. He told me that his mother had a rule about no drinkin' in her house... but she was makin' him pay part of the rent and also part of the grocery bill with part of his little pay check. He said that he felt like the room that he was stayin' in was "his private space"...especially since he was payin' for it. Eddie told me that he'd get him a little bottle of "booze" and he'd have to hide it. So he would smuggle it into his room at his mother's house...he did this by tying the bottle to his leg...down by his ankle... using the laces from one of his high top brown brogan shoes.... He said that he thought that he had an agreement that his room was "his space" and no one had the right to "invade" that space....he told me that on the day he finally left for Decatur that his mother came into that room he was "stayin'" in and she found some empty alcohol bottles...and that caused the big fight that resulted in him spendin' the last of the little money he had to catch a bus to Decatur which is almost 100 miles away...It was summertime in Bama-Lama Land....and hot and humid....make you sweat so bad you fell like you are livin' underwater... Eddie said that a few weeks earlier he had run into Johnny Sandlin at Boutwell's Studio in Birmingham and Sandlin had told him that if he ever needed a place to stay to come see him in Decatur. We all make offers like this from time to time, but most of the time you don't think anybody will take you up... and actually show up on your doorsteps. The story goes that Sandlin told Eddie that he was sorry....that he did not have room for him or whatever and he'd have to find some place else to stay. No one could blame Sandlin for that ...I'll bet even Mother Teresa would have turned him away in the shape he was in. Eddie was a wild man at that time and he never took a shower...and he always had that wild look in his eyes...the only other place I've seen that look is in the eyes of a wild animal that's been hurt or wounded...and he could scare you to death with his tone of voice ...and some of the thangs that he'd say or do were just too strange and weird to make any sense. BEER WALK - HINTON CAT TALE PART 4: In The Long Hot Stinking SUMMER of 1984 Eddie Hinton caught a Greyhound Bus back into my Hardware Store Hammer Swingin' Life...This was Hinton at his worst...No Nothin'...but a mean and bad attitude...and a bad body odor that was a mixture of human sweat built up in layers until their was almost a fine crust on him...fruit flies had built a few nests in his long unwashed hair and were continuing to live and breed in his hair right before your very eyes....I said somethang about we needed to get somethang to kill the fruit flies once and Eddie seemed to get so upset...he said "Even kill the little baby Ones Too ?" They were the only friends that Eddie had left at that time.....he looked so damned sad about it that I never brought the subject up again... HINTON'S smell or body odor was unique undo him...and it was the mixture of various types and proofs and percentages of Whiskey and Beer and Wine and Tequlia....and Gin...Did I mention Scotch...how about Bourbon ? PGA ? And I don't mean the Golf Tour either....you get the idea .....and mix all that with the pungent smell of cigar smoke...the Sweet Stink of a Big TAMPA NUGGET or TAMPA SUBLIME mixed with various brands of non filtered cigarettesEddie was all about Old SchoolPabst Blue Ribbon would do but he preferred FALSTAFF because that's what his singin' idol DAN PENN drank...and of course the old Baseball player turned radio announcer...DIZZY DEAN was also a FALSTAFF Fan ! But HINTON knew what he wanted on that long hot smelly Summer day in 1984...he wanted a drink...well that's not exactly The Truth he really wanted a WHOLE Damned Ocean of Whiskey and Long Tall Waterfalls of Wine and Shooting, PEWIN',SPRAYIN" Fountains or GEYSERS of BEER and Bubblin' Baths made out of the only the best of beads of Chilly Clear French Champagne...to paraphrase a quote of one of Eddie's songs from his first solo album "he did not want just a little bit ....Eddie wanted it ALL ! But on that seemly never ending Cat On A Hot Tin type Roof Day back in 84' HINTON found himself in The RIVER CITY with nothin'.....but a bad NEED for an illegal drink in Decatur...OK many drinks...he did not tell me about this adventure that I'm about to pass on to all of ya;ll until after he had been through the whole odyssey,,, or maybe he thought he had already tapped me for assistance one to many times.... So instead he did the next logical thang in his highly imaginative and creative mind.....He set out walkin' to Florence, Alabama...which is 50 miles away by hard road....he later told me that it took him 12 hours to walk that distance...he said that the small one horse town of Town Creek, Bama-lama gave him a free ride from one side of town to the other....just to get him out of their the City Limits....I don't blame them a bit,,,he would scare a Ghost back in those days...long side burns...looked like this Super Hero cat I think his name is The WOLVERINE or somethang like that...HINTON was a scary lookin' dude back in The Day...and scary actin' as well ! So after walkin' for 12 straight hours he shows up at DONNIE FRITZ'S HOUSE and asked him if he would lend him 38 Dollars and some odd cents....He told Donnie it was to pay for a weeks rent in a boarding House....So Donnie put Eddie in his car and drove him back to Decatur and gave him the money he asked for...at that time Decatur was Dry...which meant that you had to know a bootlegger if you wanted a drink or you had to drive 15 miles to Madison, Bama-lama and buy it and turn around and drive back another 15 miles and there was always a Sheriff that ran the County in between Decatur and Madison that tired to bust as many folks as he could for havin' booze in their car as they drove through his Dry County... So FRITZ drops Eddie off after givin' him the money he asked for and drives off into The Sunset....and Eddie immediately goes to where he has all of his stuff stashed away and he gets his small worn-out handless Brown Samsonite Suitcase and dumps out all the contents and closes the old suitcase back up and then he tucks it up under his arm like he was carrrying a football across the goal line for his all time favorite football team ....The Univeristy Of Alabama's CRIMSON TIDE ! One of Hinton's favorite fantasies was to own a football team like The ATLANTA FALCONS....it would be like Eddie was the teams Owner/Coach/and Player in critical times...like when his team NEEDED that big play EDDIE would hussle into The Big Game runnin' onto The Field still wearin' his Wing Tipped Sreet Shoes ! And he'd call and execute The Big Play of The Game and then he'd run off in Victory and go back to doin' more important thangs like havin' another Beer and another until the team needed him to save their asses again ! Anyhow Eddie out The siutcase up under one arm and adjusted his nuts with his other hand and then he sets out AGAIN WALKIN' ....destination MADISON COUNTY ALABAMA....and he never even missed a step...no tellin' how long that Cat had been up without any sleep at all at this point... He made the 15 miles that he needed in The burnin' Hot Steamin' Alabama Hell for Sunshine...Hinton had finally arrived at his Ultimate Destination and Goal The ALABAMA STATE LIQUOR STORE.....that was just about all there was in Madison back then...just a long row of Beer Stores on both sides of the highway and one big GREEN FRONT STORE...that is what both of my granddaddy's called it way, way back in The TIME.... And FINALLY after all of this endless walkin' and walkin' and sangin' and talkin' to himself outloud and walkin' some more and it gets light and then it gets dark and he's still walkin' ....FINALLY HINTON gets the Big Chance that he's been walkin' and workin' so hard to get to this point ...to be able to purchases all the Whiskey and as much Beer as either he had the money for or how much room he had in that little old brown suitcase. ? I never though about that small detail until just now...but Hinton had to make a hard choice ...maybe The Hardest Choice of his whole life at that moment....and he had to be practical as well because he could only buy what he could carry back on his long 15 mile walk back to The River City....and like I said it was even harder on EDDIE because the old suitcase did not have a handle to carry it with...truth is there was no easy way to carry that suitcase... it would make your underarms so sore and raw...and weighted down with whiskey it would have had to weight at least a Metric TON on that long hot endless Self induced Summer Death March in The Summer of 1984 ! Eddie did tell me later that he wanted a drink so bad ...anybody would if they had gone though all that Eddie did and when he finally got somethang to drink he went out behind The State Liquor Store...there was a little clump of trees out behind The State Store and he was able to find a safe place to sit for a little while and open maybe a bottle of 190 Proof Pure Grain Alcohol....but he couldn't get as "high" as he wanted too because he still had 15 miles to walk...before he could allow himself to really get DRUNK ASYOU WANNA BE...which is why he started all this walkin'' in the first place... The part of this Cat Tale that really broke my heart is that when Eddie was about halfway back to The River City...in fact he was right where I-65 crosses Highway 20 by The race Track Gas station right down the road...Eddie thought he saw a STATE TROOPER CAR comin' up from behind him to check him out so he quickly tossed the suitcase over in the high weeds beside the road....and Hinton kept on walkin' with a slight limp this time...he told me one time that he thought that The Cops would have a little pity or show a little more mercy for a crippled man...so he had developed a great little limp... Turns out The State Trooper did not even look Eddie's way much less even slow down...and Eddie said that when he got back to the suitcase and checked that there was not a drop of anythang left...it ALL broke when the suitcase hit the ground beside the highway ! All of this was goin' on when The Beer advertisements were all about stuff like "You've been shoveling miles of piles of pigmy shit all day long and now you deserve to get so totally wasted that you puke on your new cowboy boots tonight ! This Bud's for YOU and all that you do ! When Hinton told me that incredible story I knew what I HAD to do....I had to take him shoppin'....where? in Madison of course...30 more mile over there and back...but we were in The Hardware Store truck this time rolling on Rubber tires filled with air....not Shoe Leather Express. We were headed to get Eddie some groceries ....as I said earlier ...you could not get the kind of groceries Eddie needed in The River City because it was still a dry town and also a dry county ! TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE:
The song TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE was originally a track for The ROGER PLEMONS session that I produced at BIRDLAND STUDIOS...

That session produced BUZZ HUNT (Just Say NO! and DON'T LET GO!)

The words for TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE were written after Roger passed out from too much Vodka...we were originally cuttin' this track of Roger's version of my song LADY CONNIVER.

Stevie of The Stealers was on the session... as was Owen Brown and Drummer Dave Allen. Everybody got kind of mad because we were in The Zone except foe Roger.

So I said "Stevie I'm kind of tired of these old lyrics....why don't you see if you can put some to this track and we'll get two for the price of one !"

About 2 cups of coffee, Stevie Davis came in with the lyrics for TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE and sang it in one take!

My art is part plan and part accident!

For those that like to know! Another CAT TALE!

DAN PENN CAT TALE:

Conway Twitty's version of "Is A Bluebird Blue" was real important to Dan Penn...or should I say Wallace Pennington. It was the first real money he made as a songwriter!

I was lucky enough to have been at Spar Music above City Drug Store in Florence, Alabama the day that young Dan Penn got his first check from that recording...it was also the first time that I ever laid eyes on Penn. I was writing songs for Spar and Tom Stafford was giving me some positive criticism on some of my lyrics and then he started telling me about this great new songwriter and singer that he was workin' with. He said he had just come up from Vernon, Alabama...and his real name was Wallace Pennington but he was using the pen name...Dan Penn. I believe Dan was 16 years old at the time. Stafford was going on about what a cool cat Penn was. It was about that time that I heard footsteps climbing the inside stair well and the door flew open and BAM! In walked young Dan Penn.

He was dressed in a brown leather jacket...I call them bomber jackets ...but without a fur collar. He had a white T-Shirt on and blue denim jeans...probably Levis and a pair of brown leather house shoes. Penn was famous for years later for wearing house shoes instead of regular footwear. Somebody once asked Dan what his definition of funky was and he said "Funky is anythang that you ain't supposed to do... but you can get a way with." For me those house shoes were the beginning of FUNKY! I hung out with Dan and Spooner a lot back in The Time and I'd drive up to visit them years later when they both moved to Memphis and the house shoes were still apart of his dress code and Penn's funky cool
thang.

Back to that first sighting at Spar...we were formally introduced later that same night. Dan was also wearing a hat...it was what we called a black stingy brim hat...much like The blues Brothers would make famous many years later. Penn wore sunglasses at night and it inspired me to do the same thang for the next 40 years!

In his mouth he had a tooth pick in one side...a cigarette in the other and he was also chewing gum at the same time. Now he was a very talented cat ...to be able to juggle all that stuff in one mouthful. I was amazed.

Penn's right hand was all bandaged up...gauze covered 2 or 3 fingers and wrapped up around his wrist. He was walkin' down the hall of Spar..which was a real small place and somebody...I think it was Norbert or Briggs or Carrigan yelled at Dan and asked him "What happened to your hand Dan?...Penn replied " KNIFE FIGHT! and never missed a beat as he spit his gum like a bullet from the barrel of a pistol into a waiting metal garbage can...PING! The gum hit the can!

Tom Stafford picked an envelope up off of his desk and looked at Dan and said "Come here Dan, I've got your first check for Conway's cut on "Is A Bluebird Blue". Again, Dan never broke stride as he fired back. "Good I need to buy me a new car cause that old used car I'm drivin' just blew an engine!" Tom ask him how that happened and Dan fired back...Draggin' for pink slips!"

Dan Penn was one of the original inventors of cool! He had an attitude that made him stand out from the rest of the pack ...and back then he seemed to be much older and wiser than his years!

WALKING CANE:

Man you make me feel like a relic...but I know I've still got it!

Remember the Trail of Tears Show...when it was time for me come on and do Hooker Boogie I asked Lil Wing and Melissa who were dresses in black leather to lead me on stage like