Digging Up Bones
Special to The Review
Jim Dickinson: Americana Master

I did not hear the unfortunate news of Jim Dickinson's passing until Tuesday when I sat in on a recording of the Back Row Baptists. Connor Christian and Jim Barber are co-producing the new album, and they placed a vinyl copy of Dickinson's first release Dixie Fried on the console to respectfully persuade his specter to somehow intersperse with the recordings.

How fitting it was that the Back Row Baptists were laying down a most particular interpretation of Rolling Stones' "Sway" that day. Looking back on it, I wondered if Jim's dancing ghostly fingers helped to ballet on the piano or tweak the console
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Most folks remember Dickinson for his brilliance in the studio as engineer, producer and sideman. From his work on the timeless Big Star recordings, to the Albert Collins and Ry Cooder albums, Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, Arlo Guthrie, John Hiatt, Betty Lavette, to his own sons Cody & Luther of the North Mississippi Allstars, Jim put his magic pixie dust on many classic recordings.

You know the keys on the Stones' "Wild Horses"? That's Jim.

It wasn't just Dickinson's studio wizardry that caused my admiration for him. I found it very easy to fall in love with "James Luther Dickinson". One of my first experiences with him as an artist was his album Free Beer Tomorrow. From his oscillating drawl on "Well of Love", or his charming look at adversity in "Bound to Lose", he had this magnetic way of explaining the world - he draws you in to his songs with a booming, almost subterranean burr. He sang the way he talked, and talked the way he sang. He was natural.

Fellow music devotee Judson Henry and I saw what may have been Dickinson's last solo show in Memphis at this year's Folk Alliance. They carted in a piano just for him. It was just slightly out-of-tune. Perfect. That's the way Jim liked it. He carried on for over half an hour telling stories, singing songs, playing the piano and painting pictures with his Memphis narratives. Jud and I drank it in - as if it were the last of the best of the good stuff that had been bottled and saved for a special occasion. Little did we know that this would be the last of the best of the good stuff.

Bob Mehr of Commercial Appeal says, "A gifted raconteur, musical philosopher and cultural historian, Dickinson was a veritable treasure trove of pop arcana and profound theory, capable of finding the cosmic and literal connections between deejay Dewey Phillips and former Mayor Willie Herenton, wrestler Sputnik Monroe and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." As a fan of Jim's once marveled, he's the quintessential "maverick badass". And so he was.

Jim was real, and still is. His stories, his music, his memory are all available on hundreds of recordings for us to savor. The epitaph he chose for himself sums it up: "I'm just dead, I'm not gone."

Click a glass to Jim, and go out this weekend and get a copy of his album, Free Beer Tomorrow. You'll be glad you did.

Yer pal,
PETE KNAPP

Ed: Pete Knapp is the Roots Music Association’s Promoter of the Year (2008), and Founder and President of Shut Eye Records & Agency in Atlanta. He’s also a tireless champion of excellent music, everywhere.

More information at http://www.shuteyerecords.com/

The Musical Concern
Robert Pollard
Elephant Jokes
(August 11, 2009 – GBV Inc.)

Imagine you’re a rice farmer in rural India – a young, second-generation farmer with a family to feed and scary story to tell. Your father told it to you just as his father told it to him. Once every 48 years the gates of Hell swing wide, unleashing an uncontrollable horde of ravenous rats. They appear suddenly, and in the space of a few hours ravage your crop, leaving your paddy stripped clean, your prospects bleak.

As much as it might appear to be a plague straight from the Bible, truth is, it’s all about bamboo. Once every 48 years the bamboo plant makes a grand play at reproduction. The stalks fruit, the fruit drops, and the seeds therein scatter; thus the circle of bamboo life continues. This fruit is abundant; it’s been 47 years since the last drop! And since bamboo reproduction only gets two shots per century, "abundant" may be construed as an understatement.

The rice farmer’s wife gathers a basketful, cuts it into chunks, and boils it in a soup – a soup that is also a powerful aphrodisiac. There’s still plenty to be had, so the rats get in on the fodder. They literally gorge and screw like there’s no tomorrow. With extra-sexy food at the ready, the rodent population sores to a bazillion overnight, and guess what? All the bamboo fruit is soon devoured; leaving a swarming, hungry, flood of vermin to do what they must: eat the rice.

So goes the handiwork of Nature: repulsive, magical, and awesome.

It’s a proven, scientific fact that the natural forces at play in the rice fields of India are the exact same as those swimming in the chemical soup of Robert “Bob” Pollard’s brain. Even so, many would prefer a blind eye in the face of science. Many would love a single-word study.

Prolific.

Now we’re talkin’!

Bamboo, the Pied Piper of Famine (A year ago today)

JH

The Gulf Coast Dispatch
Disproportionate Things

Michael Jackson’s passing came damn close to crashing the World Wide Web or the Internet. I’m never clear on what is who when you get down to it. What I am clear on is that things are quite unbalanced.

In the last week Les Paul and Jim Dickinson died. And the Internet didn’t even shrug.

It’s not that you shouldn’t love Wacko-Jacko, to each his own, and there’s no accounting for taste, as the sayings go, but, Jesus Christ, shouldn’t there be a little less cult of celebrity and a little more music appreciation, especially since we can learn so much and venture so far online?

I think of MJ and Quincy Jones in the studio for the Thriller recordings. Theses guys chained a dozen 48-track machines together in search of the ultimate album! The sound was literally so dense that it wouldn’t fit on the vinyl: the pressing plant returned the masters for a redo.

That kind of wild story doesn’t happen without Les Paul, 40 years earlier, in his garage with a screwdriver and a reel of tape…

Jim Dickinson was an American icon, as well. I had the great pleasure of seeing him perform in a Memphis hotel room earlier this year. My friend Pete from Shut Eye Records was in the audience that evening. Pete has a thought or two on Jim that we’ll publish here on Friday, so be sure to check back for his piece and the accompanying playlist. It’s sure to be informative, entertaining, and most important, pertinent.

JH