In the fall of 2006, my friend Matt Farmer called with an improbable boondoggle: grab your horn, we're all going to hang out in Memphis in the Sam Phillips Recording Studio (Sam's next studio after Sun Records--they recorded Mr. Bojangles and Son of a Preacher Man there, among others) while a CD is being cut. Matt's good friend Mark Morse had hired a working rockabilly band (Rockin' Billy & the Wild Coyotes) and decided to cut a CD. They were the real deal (and so was the production team), complete with pompadours and multiple tattoos, and grabbed Neal and me when we came in ("The horn section's here!!"). While they didn't need us on much (maybe less than they imagined after they heard us play), we did make it on to one track (guess which one when you read the tunes). If you want a copy of the CD, Top Dead Center, go to CD Universe (online):It's really a fun rockabilly CD! My favorite cuts are "Ain't No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down)" and "Shake Your Hips."
P.S., Matt tells me that's a picture of Billy Favata (the slap bassist and one of the "Wild Coyotes") whose likeness appears on the CD cover.
2 comments:
For my money, the best part of the whole deal was getting to meet and "work with" the studio's manager and engineer, Roland Janes.
Now in his 70s, Mr. Janes was the guitarist on most of the great Jerry Lee Lewis sides from the late 1950s and early 1960s.
He is also an exceptionally nice man.
Robert Gordon's excellent book "It Came From Memphis" provides some highly entertaining stories about Mr. Janes and the many fascinating folks who contributed to the once-thriving Memphis scene.
And the best part of Matt's best part was watching Mr. Janes try to squeeze a bari sax sound from Neal's tenor--classic.
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