Comment by Edd Hurt on August 16, 2009 at 8:06am

This is sad news. I have written a lot about Dickinson and related music, for half my life, and I had the pleasure of talking to Jim Dickinson in Memphis a couple of times, just in passing. Hat-shopping on Beale Street, and I ran into him at a Memphis record store, where we talked about stuff like Fleetwood Mac's drum sound and the impossibility of recording good music in Boulder, Colorado--"not enough oxygen," he told me. The last time I saw him was at an Americana Music Ass'n shindig in Nashville, where he told a funny story about the reason he became a producer (he saw Shelby Singleton in action and decided that, whatever it was exactly that Singleton was doing, that was what he wanted to do with his life).

The obits talk about the achievements, but for me (and many of my friends who were already dissatisfied with the "new wave" of the late '70s and early '80s and somewhat skeptical about "roots" music and so forth), Dickinson represented another way. His expressionist production of Big Star's Third bent my head around in 1978 and continues to do so to this day; his work on Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert hipped me to the possibilities of actually inhabiting "roots" music without making everybody sick of it, with humor and, for goodness' sake, real rock 'n' roll attitude. (Compare the reverent attitudes many younger musicians these days take toward, oh, the Carter Family to Chilton's dismantling of "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena." Reverence was never exactly part of the arsenal of what Dickinson and fellow insurgents such as Chilton and the late Lee Baker brought to their re-imagining of American music.)

Yet Dickinson was also, oddly enough, somehow who obviously loved the old stuff and found power in it, as his solo records demonstrate. His last record was a collection of songs from the '40s and '50s, done with just piano, bass and drums. Old-style. Too, with the Dixie Flyers, Dickinson backed Aretha Franklin on her best record, Spirit in the Dark, and did work with Albert Collins and many, many others in Miami, back when Jerry Wexler was ensconced down there. So he had a sense of history.

But for a Memphian like Dickinson, history meant something far different than the canned version you get in Nashville. Since the history of that region's music is a little, er, more fraught than the Nashville country scene (you have black and white down there, racism to deal with, and the currents have always been conflicting in Memphis whereas Nashville is about an imagined consensus), getting the bigger picture has always been difficult for folks who insist on simplifying American music and denying, as we've succeeded in doing up here, r&b, blues and soul, unless it's been predigested for people who can't deal with it in its full-blown form. Jim Dickinson attempted to deal with it as he saw it and mostly succeeded. He was a funny man who understood that rock 'n' roll was already a bastardized version of something far deeper; that was true in 1958 and in 1967 and it's true today, although I'd argue there's very little rock 'n' roll left on the planet. Unless you think Kings of Leon represent that spirit. I like the old stuff. Jim Dickinson taught me, and I'm sure, many others, that your insights are your own, and that it's imperative to put your own twist on history--something to remember. He was great, and he'll be missed.

Comment by Paul Cantin on August 16, 2009 at 8:10am

Thanks, Edd. I flinched when I saw this line in the early obit "Perhaps best known as the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson...". I'm sure the boys were extremely proud of the old man's musical achievements you outlined here, and would be happy their pop was celebrated for something greater than their paternity.

Comment by Stu Reid on August 17, 2009 at 6:15pm

For some more great Jim Dickinson remembrances, make sure you check out Chuck Prophet's latest blog at www.chuckprophet.com and the following tales from North Carolina's great Jeffrey Dean Foster, who almost made a record with Jim in the '80's in The Right Profile...

Jim Dickinson's long, tall shadow.

When we got out of the van in Memphis it must have been 125 degrees and it was the week before "Death Week", ten year anniversary to be exact. It's the week that the people from all over the world come to Memphis to celebrate/mourn/cannibalize Elvis. Dickinson said it always seemed appropriate that they celebrated Elvis' death date and not his birthday. A couple of months earlier Jim had flown to NYC to meet Clive Davis and talk about producing The Right Profile's record. He showed up wearing a burgundy satin jacket and looking more like a professional wrestling manager than a semi-legendary southern redneck artist. I knew that coming to NYC to be interrogated by Arista Record's suits was only slightly less painful than a root canal for Jim but he did for us. He got the nod to at least commence with some pre-production experimenting with us. He always thought it was because Clive thought he was Jim Dickson that had produced Byrds records!

We moved back to NC where we belonged and we loaded up the van and we drove to Memphis. We landed first at Sam Phillips studio. It was the time capsule of a room that Sam had bought when he sold Elvis to RCA. Wooly Bully was made there and The Cramps "Gravest Hits" too. Roland Janes was our engineer and besides being Jerry Lee's guitar player he was a big chunk of sanity in the middle of it all. Once when we broke the strap on a kick drum pedal, Roland came out and surveyed the situation. In the "big city" the studio secretary would have called the drum doctor to come out and do surgery but Roland undid his belt, pulled it out of the belt loops around his sizable girth, produced a pocket knife and cut a 8" piece of leather off of his belt and fixed the pedal on the spot. Right on! All kinds of older fellows would wander through the studio all day. One skinny handsome fellow picked up my Telecaster one day and picked on it a little bit. After he left I found out that he was Paul Burlison of the Rock and Roll Trio, and depending on who you ask, the inventor of guitar distortion!

Jim was always building us up and comforting us in the studio but pushing and challenging us at the same time. He believed in us but believed we could be better.
With Arista records behind this record he even broke one of his own rules about picking up the phone in the studio. It was of course a lawyer from NYC telling Jim how our record should sound. He told me that it took him three trips to the record store to realize that I-N-X-S was "in excess", the Aussie band, one of the examples of how we should sound, according to the record company mouth pieces. He argued with Clive over fiddling with my songs too much. He told Clive that they were modern morality tales and should not be tampered with. We had always kind of hated our name (The Right Profile) and I dubbed us The Blue Lights and Dickinson took up for us and all of our tape boxes at Ardent were labeled "The Blue Lights".

Besides being a beautiful piano player and producer/conjurer Jim was known for his storytelling. Plenty of Joe Walsh, Alex Chilton. Ry Cooder,
Rolling Stones and Freddie Fender stories filled the hours waiting for music to happen. The best story for my money was about the Frat Rock band from around memphis that seemed to be kind of an Otis Day and the Knights kind of outfit. They would come out and do the regular party rock schtick until the crowd would start to chant "Bring out the Bullet, Bring out the Bullet"!!
From offstage they would carry on a tiny man with no arms or legs and set him on a stool in front of a mic and he would proceed to burn the place down with his soul stylings like a shrunken head version of Wilson Pickett.

JIm did not have much patience for some of our influences, from Bruce Springsteen to Johnny Thunders or even Kate Bush. He hated what Neil Young's Heart of Gold beat had done to make folks stop wanting to dance to rock and roll. He did say "now let's see your Johnny Thunders do that!" and if you wanna see a real "knee walker", come back next week when Joe Walsh is gonna be here! Jon Wurster, Tim Fleming and myself were casually playing Springsteen's "Racing In the Streets" one day. Jim got on the piano and began playing with the kind of soul that Roy Bittan only dreamed about. He stopped in mid song, and yelled ,"that's a goddamned Springsteen song isn't it?" He said "I can see liking Bruce if you'd never heard rock and roll". A year or so later Bruce started covering Jim's song Across the Borderline in concert and I imagine he softened his stance on Bruce a bit. Maybe not.

Being the insecure and self conscious sensitive songwriter that I was Jim was always trying to get me out of my head and make me stop thinking. He was right and I've been trying to do that ever since. He wanted me to come home with him and have his 12 year old son Luther produce some of my songs, thinking that that would loosen me up. He heard me singing some verses to Dylan's "Hurricane" in the headphones one day and quickly tried to get me to sing my songs with the same kind of detachment. Maybe his greatest and most cryptic instructions for vocals was to think of how Montgomery Clift spoke on the telephone. He thought Monty's acting was incredible when he was pretending to be on the phone with someone and creating his own reactions to the conversation on the other end.

At the end of our 3rd time in Memphis we had recorded some songs that probably could have been on a record. It would have been a bad record. It was probably one of the worst times in history for a scraggly southern rock band to try and make a rock and roll record. Computers and machines were just starting to dominate the way records were made and Dickinson was trying to embrace the new ways. He was a little caught between two worlds. He was trying to please the company men or at least fool them enough to let us finish a record and he really wanted to help us make a big rock and roll record. Not big in a commercial sense but big on ideas. We were young and too green to know how to stand up to the record company and we ended up with neither the great southern redneck masterpiece we wanted or the slick product that Arista wanted.

JIm loved rock and roll and had very strong opinions about what the term meant. It was all about soul and the space betweens the sounds and the distance between the band member's hearts. One morning Jim brought in a multi-colored brocade vest that he had bought the first time he stepped out of a car on the Sunset Strip in 1967. He also handed me a double LP "sold only on TV" of Roy Orbison's greatest hits. It had the ugliest cover painting of Roy imaginable but it had the most beautiful music ever.
He knew I loved Roy and would love the cover painting as well. Our band was a tiny blip on Jim's life of music but he cast a long shadow over us. I will never outrun it.
Thanks Mudboy.

Comment by JTD on August 18, 2009 at 7:18am

As a kid in the late 60's, I'd often go to Memphis with my best friend, Bernard, and hang out at Stanley Booth's home down the street from Bernard's grandma. Jim Dickinson was seemingly always there. I was thoroughly impressed by his energy and enthusiasm. Every topic he raised had a hint of southern preacher pushing behind the words.

I recall a magical evening when Jim described a project he was working on with Ry Cooder and Sleepy John Estes. Jim came up with the inspiration to put the bass drum in the hearth of a fireplace and mic it in the chimney. He played a tape and sure enough, there was a quality of reverb in the booming kick drum that I've never heard before or since. I've been involved in music for many decades, now, but I've never met another producer (or musician, really) with the heart, soul, and original-lightning-inspiration of Jim Dickinson.

Jim's passing is sad news, indeed. We've lost a great one.

Comment by Guy on August 18, 2009 at 7:44am

I'd have to say that part of the world collapsed last week, as though the swollen Mississipi washed away East Memphis and sent it crashing through my roof. I heard about Jim's death from Dan Stuart. And to have included links to reminiscences of Jim from Chuck Prophet and Jeffrey Dean Foster was very thoughtful, Stu. Thank you.

Comment by Ceci Gilson on August 18, 2009 at 8:17am

V sad. May all the stories, memories and tributes get written down and shared. Thanks everyone. "Best known as father of" indeed....

Comment by Elizabeth Swinney on August 18, 2009 at 3:42pm

Tune in to WEVL FM-90 out of Memphis tonight (Google it for a link to streaming). My buddy Paul, host of Bebe's Berserkathon, 8 to 10 Memphis time, 9 to 11 EST, will be doing a musical tribute to Dickinson with some interviews and other life and times stuff to follow in the coming weeks. This is the real deal... not to be missed. Unlike Mr. Jim.

Comment