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Post by TRK on Aug 16, 2009 15:43:51 GMT -5
R.I.P. Jim Dickinson, who died yesterday at age 68. He was not a household name but exerted an amazing number of influences on American music on many levels. He was a Memphis musician, producer of many great albums, and a great storyteller. The piano part in the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses": Jim Dickinson. Billy F. Gibbons considered him a genuine shaman. This article/interview gives some insights into this gifted, unique character: swampland.com/articles/view/title:dixie_fried_with_the_high_priest_of_memphis_mojo_jim_dickinson
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Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 18, 2009 8:10:13 GMT -5
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Post by TRK on Aug 18, 2009 10:49:10 GMT -5
Allen, thanks for posting that obit. It makes mention of Dickinson's 1972 album "Dixie Fried," which Nick Tosches raved about in his biography of the minstrel man Emmet Miller, Where Dead Voices Gather, calling it full of "wondrous conjurings."
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Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 18, 2009 12:04:42 GMT -5
Toches is an interesting writer, although I haven't read a lot of his stuff. Did you read his book about the country influence on rock & roll? He made some interesting observations in there. IIRC, he showed that black blues musicians in the south took some stuff from white blues singers, including Hank Williams; it wasn't all a one-way process. I've always thought that country music had an effect on early rockers like Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee; you hear them cover a lot of that era's country songs. When I interviewed Ringo, I asked him who his earliest music idols were and he immediately mentioned Gene Autry and Hank Williams, before Elvis really lit him up. I think Hank Snow may have had a lot more influence on those guys than most people realize.
Allen
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Post by TRK on Aug 18, 2009 12:28:50 GMT -5
Allen, I read Tosches book on C&W music, and both in that book and in Where Dead Voices Gather, he touched on how influenced some if not most of the early blues guys were by country music. They'd listen to it on the radio, and play it along with blues and current pop songs in front of audiences. IIRC, Tosches illustrated this by mentioning some of the C&W songs Robert Johnson was known to have played. Back in the 1920s and '30s, I bet a lot of black musicians were listening to Jimmie Rodgers, because that stuff was all over the airwaves down South.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 18, 2009 14:09:49 GMT -5
Tom,
Yeah - I forgot Rodgers; he was a big influence and Sam Phillips told a friend of mine that he thought "All Around the Water Tank" was a seminal song that influenced him and a lot of other people. Gene Autry virtually immitated Rodgers on all of his early recordings, all blues in the Rodgers style and some of them a tad off color too!
Allen
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