Category Archives: Music

Jazz Practitioner

Jazz Practitioner

By Ed Reynolds

Dr. Frank “Doc” Adams, the last of the old guard of local jazz musicians who played with legends Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, and Erskine Hawkins, among others, has written a captivating memoir with writer Burgin Mathews entitled Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man, by the University of Alabama Press. Adams is a brilliant story-teller, recounting life as a professional musician and musical instructor in segregated Alabama beginning in the 1950s. One of the first inductees into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, the 83-year-old musician will perform a free concert with the Birmingham Heritage Band on October 25 at 7 p.m. at the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa.

Adams was trained at Industrial High School [now known as Parker High School] under the tutelage of John T. “Fess” Whatley, whose discipline and devotion to musical professionalism made an early impression. The young Adams turned down an invitation in the early 1950s to tour with AdamsCount Basie’s orchestra, instead remaining in Birmingham to teach music at Lincoln Elementary. Adams’ family [his brother Oscar was the first black attorney to join the Birmingham Bar Association, as well the first black Alabama Supreme Court Justice] was somewhat prominent. His father published a newspaper, the Birmingham Reporter, in the early 1900s, and also wrote a column for more than 20 years for the Birmingham News entitled “What Negroes Are Doing.”

Black & White chatted with Dr. Adams in his office at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame on a recent October afternoon.

“I got a chance to [travel] around with my Dad. He was one of those dads that said, ‘Come on. Go with me, boy!’ And I’d go with him,” Adams recalled. “And I found out a lot of things about people. One was that people are more alike than they are different.”

Reflecting on the evolution of musical styles he’s played during his lifetime, Adams grabbed a sax next to his desk to demonstrate different variations on the melody “Tea for Two” during our interview. “The big bands were evolving. First, we had Dixieland,” he explained. “You had a trumpet, maybe a clarinet, maybe a bass and a guitar or mandolin or whatever you had. It was everybody for himself. The clarinet going one way, the bass going one way, the
trumpet going one way. That’s Dixieland. But when you start adding two or three saxophones, you had to have harmony. You had to read music. Everybody couldn’t play what
they wanted to play.”

As a young teen, Adams played sax with Alabama’s Sun Ra. “Sun Ra
was a known character in Birmingham. To some people he’d be frightening because nobody knew where he came from and nobody knew his parents,” said Adams, who
writes in his book that Sun Ra would warn Bull Connor’s henchmen that they would be “paralyzed” if they tried to harm him when the jazz maestro wore his colorful robes on
the street. “Sun Ra lived over by Terminal Station in a raggedy house. He was ‘flower power’ before ‘flower power.’ He was before Dr. King. He was defiant back in the 1930s when
nobody was thinking about civil rights. And he had this thing about where he was from—the Sun or the Moon. And his bands were terrific. He picked up people [to play] that were just unusual folk. They didn’t have the discipline [musically] . . . They never played a place like the Birmingham Country Club. They played little dives and stuff.”

Sun Ra asked Adams’ mother if her son could join his band. “One day he called my Mom, he wanted me to play in his Intergalactic Arkestra. My Mom just said, ‘OK.’ What it was about him was this mystique; He would look at you and say, ‘Well, do this.’ And you might say, ‘I can’t.’ And he would say, ‘You’ve already done it. It’s in your mind.’ Those weird things, you know? He would wear these clothes down on Fourth Avenue and everything. And people admired him for his band. He was just a weird guy. He could play Count Basie but he also had this other weird stuff he was playing. And he talked more than he would really practice.” &

Originally published in Black & White, Oct 18, 2012

Buddy Miller

By Ed Reynolds

Buddy and Julie Miller have been harmonizing for 20 years with a passion not heard in country music since the heyday of A.P. and Maybelle Carter. Julie’s little-girl voice contrasts with husband Buddy’s sandpaper howl in an eerie yet soothing style that brings to mind the grand duets of Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton; Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty; and George Jones and Tammy Wynette. As a guitarist Buddy Miller is widely considered a musical wizard, his unique “less is more” style earning him the role of lead guitarist and bandleader for Emmylou Harris as well as contributions to Lucinda Williams’ classic album Car Wheels On a Gravel Road. The couple recently released their first “official” recording under the family name, “Buddy and Julie Miller,” which was up against the likes of Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, and Gillian Welch for best contemporary folk album.

Black & White: Where did you and Julie meet?

Buddy Miller: In Austin. She’s from there, and I auditioned for a band that she was the chick singer in. In trying to be discriminating, she told them not to hire me. They hired me anyway, and we became pals after that.

B&W: Did she give a reason for not wanting you in the band?

Miller: She was a teenager and she wanted to appear like she had good taste. So she just said, “No, he’s no good.” But they hired me anyway.

B&W: I was impressed to see that Little Jimmy Scott had recorded one of your songs.

Miller: Yeah, one of Julie’s songs. In Nashville, a lot of the things that get recorded are by Nashville artists, and we’ll hear about it in advance. People that have our songs will be real excited and call us up and say, “Hey man, so-and-so’s cutting this song.” So I was on a gig out in L.A. with Emmylou and somebody said, “Hey, Little Jimmy Scott cut Julie’s song ‘All My Tears,’” and I just looked at him and said, “Nah, you must be wrong.” And later on at the gig, the guy went out and bought the record and brought it to me, and I flipped. It was such a cool version of the song. I took a red-eye home, and got back at seven in the morning. Julie was still asleep, and I just put it on the record player in the bedroom, and she didn’t even recognize her song until about a minute into it.

B&W: Is there anyone who you would like to hear record one of your songs?

Miller: It sounds funny to say it ’cause he’s so fashionable, but we’ve always been such huge Ralph Stanley fans. That was one of the things that we had in common when we met way back when. Julie actually wrote that song “All My Tears” with Ralph in mind. And we did get to sing it to him on this last “Down From the Mountain” tour back in his dressing room. We were in Emmylou’s band for that whole tour.

B&W: Has the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Down From the Mountain been a boost to your career?

Miller: I don’t think so. Things were going OK before that kicked into high gear, and they’re going OK now. It probably is, and I just don’t know it. I think it’s helping everything a little bit. If people hear good music, I think that can only be a good thing. I don’t know if it’s changed country radio. When I’m flipping television channels — I don’t watch that CMT thing — I see the little 15-year-old video disc jockeys talking about bluegrass every once in awhile.

B&W: Nashville has a pretty vibrant scene that’s apart from the typical country stars.

Miller: Yeah, we live right down the street from all that. We’re real close to Music Row. We’re so disconnected from that. There’s such a great community of singer/songwriters and folks that are so like-minded with us. It’s a great town; there’s so much going on.

B&W: Do you and Julie have similar tastes in what you listen to?

Miller: It’s funny. Julie can write a great country song and sing great. But she just wants to rock if left to her own devices. Whenever she comes down into our music room when we’re working, she wants me to put on Social Distortion. So, we kind of have our little feuds, but I love singing with her.

B&W: I heard someone say that you can play guitar every bit as well as Richard Thompson, but you’re funky.

Miller: [Laughs] Well, I wish I could play like Richard Thompson. He’s just unbelievable. I did get to meet him once, but I’m sure he wouldn’t remember. We’re huge fans of his songs and his guitar playing. I love guitar players who go out on a limb and don’t even think about it. It’s just what they do. They get out there and if they get back, great. If not, great. Richard Thompson, Daniel Lanois. Dave Rawlings, I think, might be my favorite guitar player. He plays with Gillian Welch.

B&W: Ever see George Jones and Tammy Wynette perform together?

Miller: Yes. The night I saw them, they closed the show with “The Ceremony” [a 1970s hit where George and Tammy basically sing wedding vows to one another], and when he got to the line about “I’ll take this woman” he pointed to a girl in the front row. When I got in my car to drive back home, the news came on and said, “Tammy Wynette filed for divorce today.” [Laughs] It must have been 1972 or 1973 and they still had the bus that had “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music” on the side.

B&W: You’ve done the Grand Ole Opry with Emmylou?

Miller: Yeah, a couple of times. I did it at the Ryman and did it at the new Opry. It was a real thrill. I’m a big Porter Waggoner fan. He was so far ahead of his time. When I went with Emmylou to play the Opry, I was really sick. I told her, “I’ve never asked anything of you, but I want to meet Porter Waggoner.” But I was too sick and I think she spaced out. She was having a gig and her drummer kinda disappeared. You know, the Opry is a tightly run ship, and she has her 10 minutes or whatever on stage. When it’s time, you’re on stage and playing, whether you’re there or not. She’s introduced and we’re up there, and we’ve got no drummer. She was a little upset at him after that. Well, actually, she wasn’t. She’s very forgiving, but she had to tell a joke on stage while [the drummer] was chitchatting with Grandpa Jones at the Coke machine. &

Buddy and Julie Miller perform on the Blockbuster Stage on Saturday, May 18, at 6:35 p.m

The Alabama Music Office

The Alabama Music Office

The Alabama Music Office documents local music history.

February 09, 2012
Several years ago, musicologist Jerry Henry was backstage at a Willie Nelson concert in west Texas where he worked in radio. Nelson asked Henry where he was from and when he replied, “Alabama,” Willie introduced him to his guitarist Jody Payne, also from Alabama. “It got me to thinking about how many Alabama musicians are out there,” says Jerry Henry. “In virtually every genre of music, from sacred harp music to opera, you’ll find Alabama musicians, and they’re near the top of whatever genre that you want to choose.”

Inspired to document and contribute to Alabama’s musical community, Henry—a 65-year old Tuscaloosa native—launched the Alabama Music Office (AMO) in July 2011. The AMO is an online music resource site listing musicians, bands, clubs (and schedules), music festivals, and in-state publications that include music-related stories and performance listings. “It’s a clearinghouse—it’s a database for the things that we feel musicians need to further their music . . . It has all the publications as well as radio stations—anything that might have anything to do with music, we’re trying to cover it.”

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Soul singer and guitarist Eddie Hinton (right) chats with Wayne Perkins in Muscle Shoals. Perkins, who went on to play with the Rolling Stones and Leon Russell, among others, replaced Hinton as lead guitarist for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section around 1970. (click for larger version)

The site also features blogs, including Henry’s memorable ode to a Channel Master pocket transistor radio that he took everywhere as a kid. The radio introduced him to Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmy Reed, among many others. “We’re trying real hard. There ain’t no money at it yet but hopefully there will be some day,” he says, laughing. Those who wish to be listed in the database may consult the site’s FAQ

section for instructions. “We want musicians to give us as much information as they can because we’re a platform where they can sell their music,” Henry explains.

On the AMO site, Jonalan Wright blogs about music in Central Alabama while Sylvia Parker writes a historical blog. “My area of interest and expertise really is history, probably from the mid-’70s on back,” says Parker. “That’s really my focus in terms of what I do on my blog. I discovered tons of great music and musicians that I didn’t know about. That’s one of the reasons that I wanted to be involved in this—was to learn more about that kind of stuff.”

Indeed, Parker knows her “stuff” well. She turned me on to Birmingham’s Dinky Harris—a dynamo performer born in Cordova, Alabama, in 1938, whose earth-shaking rock and roll was shockingly primitive in 1959. His fabulous “She Left Me Crying” that he recorded with his band the Spades can be heard on the AMO site. Parker writes that the song was written by one of the Spades who raced a car at Birmingham International Raceway in the late ’50s. The car was numbered TV6 because Woodward played for Country Boy Eddy on his WBRC 6 TV broadcasts in those days. Dinky later had a band called the Draft Dodgers, as well as recording under the name “Dinky Doo.”

We want musicians to give us as much information as they can because we’re a platform where they can sell their music. –Jerry Henry, Alabama Music Office founder

The Alabama Music Office site includes its own Youtube channel featuring music, videos, and interviews. The Reverend Fred Lane can be heard, as well as “Greyhound Blues” and “Lonesome Old Jail” by D. A. Hunt—bare-bone, raw blues recorded by Sam Phillips on Sun Records in 1953. Parker also interviews Larry Parker of local greats Larry and the Loafers, who had the regional hit “Panama City Blues” in 1960.

“Basically, right now part of what we’re doing is trying to create affiliate relationships through the website so we can fund the work that we’re doing,” explains Sylvia Parker. “So then with each listing we’ll have an affiliate link where you can purchase the artist’s music, which of course helps the artist and helps us maintain the site.” Parker sums up Alabama’s rich musical legacy and how the AMO can contribute to its preservation: “Past and present there’s so much great music in Alabama, and Alabama had such an important role in so many different kinds of music that’s appreciated as American music, and appreciated all over the world. But there’s no place where you can really go to really find out about that in detail.”

The Alabama Music Office website is http://alabamamusicoffice.com. &

Billy Joe Shaver

Billy Joe Shaver

Country music’s original outlaw singer talks about dogs, Jesus, and what it’s like to have a heart attack on stage.

November 24, 2011

“Oh, it’s you again,” says Billy Joe Shaver, laughing into the phone when I had to call him back to resume our interview after being disconnected. Shaver was right in the middle of an anecdote about riding around for a week with Waylon Jennings and songwriter, poet, and artist Shel Silverstein. Before we got cut off, he had begun the story: “Me and Waylon and Shel Silverstein were out [on the road] for about a week just ridin’ around. We got to tellin’ jokes, and we told so many of ‘em we started numberin’ our jokes!” When I got him back on the phone, I tried unsuccessfully to get him to finish the yarn but he just laughed and said, “Man, I got in trouble last time I told that one.” Regardless, a brief chat with the man hailed as the king of the honky-tonk singers as he drives from Texas to the Flora-Bama Lounge is warm and hilarious.

Billy Joe Shaver’s life has been one of trial, tribulation, and heartache. His father tried to kill his mother while she was still pregnant with Shaver. Later, she left him to be raised by his grandmother. He lost two fingers in a sawmill accident at age 28 and had a reputation as a drinker and brawler. He arrived in Nashville in 1966 to break into the music business. The singer eventually sobered up and changed his wild ways, but troubles continued to haunt his life. In 1999, Shaver buried his mother, then his wife Brenda (He divorced her twice and married her three times.), who died of cancer a month later. On New Year’s Eve 2000, his son (and guitarist/collaborator) Eddy died of a heroin overdose. The next year he had a heart attack on stage at a July 4 show in New Braunfels, Texas. Then in 2007, at Papa Joe’s Saloon in Lorena, Texas, near Shaver’s Waco home, he shot a man who had been harassing him while wielding a knife (Shaver said he thought the man was carrying a pistol as well.) The man was not severely injured, but Shaver was arraigned for aggravated assault. The jury concluded that the singer had acted in self-defense despite prosecutors’ shamelessly ridiculous attempts to portray him as a “honky-tonk bully” for going outside to confront the victim and not simply leaving the bar, according to reports from the court transcripts. His pals Robert Duvall, with whom he co-starred in The Apostle in 1997, and Willie Nelson appeared in court on his behalf. Earlier this year, Shaver penned a song with Nelson about the shooting incident called “Wacko from Waco.”

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(click for larger version)

 

 

The tunes Shaver writes are brilliant, melodic gems that tell stories about how tough but beautiful life can be. He’s been covered by numerous artists, such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1973, Waylon Jennings recorded an entire album of Shaver’s songs called Honky Tonk Heroes. That album launched the “outlaw” genre, which heavily influenced country music for the next couple of decades. Although Shaver never became as big a star as his musical buddies, he embraces life with a grateful, enthusiastic fervor and never hesitates to share with audiences how happy and blessed he is to still be alive at age 71; especially after the rough and tumble “outlaw singer” existence that so long defined him. One of the best songs ever written is “Live Forever,” which he wrote with his son Eddy. With a smile as warm as Texas sunshine, Shaver often introduces the song by telling audiences, “Live forever, y’all, whether you want to or not.” Billy Joe Shaver and his band will perform at The Nick on Friday, December 9, with local heroes Caddle opening. Call 252-3831 or go to www.thenickrocks.com for details.

Black & White: Have you still got your dogs? I heard a story about you and your buddy Kinky Friedman (singer, songwriter, and novelist who ran for governor of Texas in 2006 with Shaver as his “spiritual advisor”) rescuing a three-legged dog named Momma.
Billy Joe Shaver: Well, one of my dogs died but I’ve still got a pit bull—black one that’s six years old. When I was young we were too poor to have a dog. When I started gettin’ dogs I started out with pit bulls. They’re just as sweet as they can be. It just depends on how you raise em, you know? Her name is Honeybee . . . But yeah, Momma (the dog) had one leg torn off ’cause she had been in a fight. Kinky picked her up and brought her on in to his place (Friedman has a no-kill animal shelter on his Texas ranch) and kind of worked on her a little bit and she got real healthy. So I paid money to put up a pen for her and she didn’t have but three legs. We called it Billy Joe Shaver’s “underdog pen.” (Laughs) Finally, a Vietnam veteran who’d had his leg blow’d off came out there and fell in love with her and now she’s got her a nice home. Kinky’s got a big heart. We’ve been friends a long time, since about ’66.

How did you meet Kinky?
His father introduced me to him. His father was a big fan of mine, Tom Friedman. He was a World War II pilot and also head of psychiatry there at the University of Texas. Tom used to come to my shows. Tom and Kinky’s whole family would come to my shows when I was playin’ in Austin, and Kinky would be playin’ across town. Kinky came over to my show one time kind of mad and said (to his family), “Why don’t y’all come to see me?” And Tom would say, “Well, Kinky we can see you any time. Besides that, you need to get some new jokes. (Laughs) I’ve got Tom’s old jacket—it says “God Bless John Wayne” on it and everything. I’d pretty much do anything for Kinky. Kinky was the first one of us that hung out at (unintelligible) Bar that got to go on the Grand Ole Opry. He sang “Sold American.” Then he went on tour with Bob Dylan. Now he writes books and stuff.

When you played the Opry, how’d you get along with the establishment there in Nashville?
I never had any problems. I’ve been on it many times. I got along with ol’ whats-his-name—that tall, skinny guy— uh, uh, Porter Wagoner. He didn’t get along with very many people but he got along with me pretty good. One night he was tellin’ (the audience), “Billy Joe Shaver has songs recorded by Elvis Presley, Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, and Bob Dylan (Wagoner pronounced it “Die-lan”). And I said, “Naw, it ain’t ‘Die-lan’, his name’s Dylan!” And Porter said, “I said his name was ‘Die-lan!’ And I said, “Naw, it’s not either, it’s Dylan!” And people were laughin’ like hell, and Porter got a kick out of it, too. So we became pretty good friends.

I saw a picture of you at George Jones’ 80th birthday party this past September. How has George stayed alive so many years with all the drinking and hard living that he did all his life?
(Laughs) I don’t know, I think they ran a (George Jones) substitute in on us (from time to time). I love George. I’ve known him about 30 years.

You gave up that lifestyle years ago, didn’t you?
Yeah . . . I got in a shootin’ incident down there (in Texas) and I had to shoot an ‘ol boy—well, he was tryin’ to shoot me. But I was innocent; I was just tryin’ to defend myself. He’s the one who started the fight. I finally got off. I wrote a song about it called “Wacko from Waco.”

I read that when the prosecuting attorney asked why you didn’t just leave the bar after the man you shot had earlier appeared threatening, you replied, “Ma’am, I’m from Texas. If I were chicken shit, I would have left, but I’m not.” Is there anything that you’re scared of?
Naw. (Pauses for a few seconds) Naw, I’m not, but that’s kind of stupid of me. But I’m not ’cause I’ve got Jesus in my heart. I don’t care one way or the other. If it’s my turn to go, I’ll go.

How long ago did you find Jesus?
Oh, way back yonder. When I wrote “An ‘Ol Chunk of Coal” I got born again. I still make mistakes and stuff like that but that’s part of it. You get to start all over again with a clean slate.

You used to be a rodeo cowboy, didn’t you?
Yeah, I used to do that enough to know that I wasn’t cut out for it. (Laughs)

Tell me about having a heart attack on stage in 2001.
Yeah, I had a heart attack in Gruene Hall on stage. That was after my son Eddy had passed away. Jesse Taylor, an old friend of mine, was playin’ guitar for me. When Jesse was a child, they had a car wreck and one of his ears was kind of messed up and he couldn’t hear very good out of it. It would just be my luck: that ear was toward me and every time I’d put my finger up and say, “This is the last one,” he’d think I wanted to do one more. And this elephant is sittin’ on my chest and I’m tryin’ to get him to quit startin’ them durn things [songs]. I finally got off stage and I thought, “Well, God, you’re gonna let me die in the oldest honky tonk in Texas. Thank you very much.” Sure enough, I didn’t die. Then my T-shirt (merchandise) girl, she come and got me and took me down to Waco. They checked me out and I only had one artery workin’ and it was only 10 percent. So I was almost dead.

I didn’t realize until recently that “Live Forever” was originally your son Eddy’s idea.
Yeah, it was Eddy’s melody. I carried it around for durn near a year before I could figure out what to put with it. Then I put with it what I thought was right and I went to Eddy and we finished it together.

Did you ever see Hank Williams, Sr. play?
I saw him that one time when I was a kid. I walked down the railroad tracks about 10 miles to see him. I didn’t know he was goin’ to be on the show, he was a surprise guest. I crawled up a pole to keep people from sittin’ on my feet. They introduced Hank and said (to the crowd), “You ought to listen to this ‘ol boy. He’s gonna be alright.” This was before he was a star. He didn’t play but one song. People was doin’ their bootleggin’ and stuff during that time and wasn’t payin’ no attention to him ’cause they never heard of him. And that’s the way people are. But he saw I was listening and he looked up at me straight in the eye and just sung to me.

I guess you’ve been on Willie Nelson’s bus a few times. I don’t think anybody was surprised when Willie got arrested for pot during a bus search a few years ago but they might have been surprised about the funny mushrooms the cops found.
Yeah. (Laughs) I don’t imagine they [the police] went too deep into the bus before they kinda about half passed out. &

Mr. Record Man

Mr. Record Man

The real gospel, according to record geek, gifted vocalist, and true gentleman Jimmy Griffin.

 

October 13, 2011

For 34 years, Charlemagne Records in Five Points South has been a sanctuary for record fanatics, indifferent shoppers looking for birthday presents for friends, lonely souls desperate for conversation, and the occasional celebrity. Jimmy Griffin, a sweet, congenial 61-year-old fellow smitten with music, has worked at Charlemagne for three decades. (He looks 41 and has the spirit of a kid in awe of the world around him.) He’s Clint Eastwood-cool when under fire. He simply cannot be rattled, maintaining a Captain Kangaroo-calm bolstered by a teenage enthusiasm with a subtle charm capable of soothing the most savage customer. “The one thing that I remember is that no matter how hectic the store got, especially at Christmas or whatever, I never ever saw Jimmy lose it,” says local artist Marjorie Clark Boykin, who worked at Charlemagne from 1986 to 1990. “I might see him get a little flustered and inside he might be freaking out, but even if there was somebody who was being difficult, he would always deflect it with some kind of humor.”

Jimmy is indeed one of the funniest fellows in the universe. If forced to express himself to a disgruntled customer, he does so with his customary savvy and hilarious style. During a Christmas shopping season 15 or 20 years ago, a customer came in with a noose necklace and matching noose bracelets on each wrist. The store was packed and the gallows-obsessed guy was having a difficult time getting waited on. The fellow was hunting for a particular piece of classical music. As he grew more impatient, he addressed Griffin by saying: “You know, Jimmy, a scream is a terrible thing to hear.” Jimmy Griffin didn’t miss a beat and coolly responded, “I tell you, man, I bet your family will get you a portable radio for Christmas and you can listen to classical music on WBHM.”

Charlemagne Records opened for business in July 1977 at the Garages, now a popular Southside bar called the Garage Café. Launched by local singer deluxe Marian McKay Rosato, her brother Mike McKay, and Gary Bourgeois, the funky new and used-record store moved to Five Points South four months later, where it set up business sharing the first floor with a used bookstore in the structure where Charlemagne currently operates. (Bourgeois is no longer with Charlemagne. He owns Renaissance Records in Five Points South.) The record store moved upstairs in 1978 when the building’s owner decided to open an apothecary in the ground-floor space. Rosato had been in record sales before starting Charlemagne. “I worked at Sears in Vestavia; I was the record department girl,” she says with a smile. “I sold Gary (Bourgeois) a record there, James Taylor’s Walking Man, and that’s how we met.”

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For 30 years, Charlemagne Records employee Jimmy Griffin has been been an iconic source of knowledge for music lovers. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

Charlemagne has definitely seen its share of famous customers. Tom Waits stopped by and bought an armload of albums in 2008 when he was in town playing at the Alabama Theatre. Gary Busey stopped by when he was in town filming his role as Bear Bryant in The Bear a few decades back. Busey selected a Beatles box set and threw down a $100 bill. He picked up the Beatles package with one hand and grabbed Rosato with the other. “Well all of a sudden, Gary Busey hoisted me up over his shoulder,” she recalls. Under protest from then-employee Gary Bourgeois (“I told him he couldn’t have her.”), Busey began to walk out of the store. The actor/madman eventually released Rosato and set her down at the top of the stairs that lead up to the store’s entrance. She also remembers the afternoon Carlos Santana visited the store. “He asked for Baaba Maal, an African musical artist,” she remembers. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any Baaba Maal but we know who you’re talking about.’ So, he was looking around and then the mail came. And so we opened up the mail and there was a promo package in it and it was Baaba Maal. So we said to Carlos Santana, ‘Well, I guess this belongs to you,’ and we gave it to him.”

“What’s really interesting is how Jimmy started working at Charlemagne,” recalls Gary Bourgeois. “He had been working at some big mall store. I think they had closed and he was living right up the hill from Charlemagne. So he just started coming in, and he was helping us do this and do that. People started knowing who Jimmy was. After a while, we might be short-handed and Jimmy happened to be there, because, you know, Jimmy ain’t going to be happy unless he’s working in a record store. Next thing you know, Jimmy’s ringing up customers and we put him on payroll. Soon Jimmy was coming in everyday and helping us. Then you realize, ‘Wow, this guy’s really good, he really knows his stuff.’ You don’t even have to look this stuff up, he already knows what artist, what song title someone was looking for. Before you know it, Jimmy’s like an everyday fixture.”

“It was a gradual thing. I was working at an OZ franchise,” recalls Jimmy. “I was helping Gary at Apple Books and he said, ‘Well, come over and help some at Charlemagne, too.’ So I would spend afternoons going from one to the other, just working my way into the organization. I think at first I was working for record credit. But these were the days of post–hippie, post–peace, and post–whiskey, if you know what I mean,” Griffin says, laughing.

As a child, Griffin had an uncle who would bring over 45 rpm records. “We had a Louis Prima 45. And I would buy classical and Broadway; like I had Camelot. I didn’t get serious—and this is almost embarrassing—but I bought hootenanny (records). So I also bought Peter, Paul, and Mary, and New Christy Minstrels records,” he says. “And when the Beatles came out I bought a Beatles record, like everybody else. But at the same time, I bought the Rolling Stones’ Out of Our Heads the year it came out. And once I got the Rolling Stones record I didn’t buy any more Beatles records. And then I got Dylan records, and me and my buddy across the street, that’s all we did was find Dylan and Stones records and play ‘em. The Stones were coming from the blues base and the R&B base. So from listening to the Stones and Dylan, I dove off into blues and jazz.”

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Charlemagne Records has changed little since it moved into its current locale in 1978, maintaining its jam-packed, comfortable environment. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

“I’ve always felt that Jimmy had a big impact on me,” says Brad Quinn, former singer and bassist in the band Carnival Season, who currently lives in Japan when not playing bass with underground pop hero Tommy Keene. “Back in the late ’70s, when I was about 14 years old, I used to hang out and talk music with Jimmy at a record shop in the Riverchase Galleria. I was listening to jazz—or at least I thought I was—but Jimmy quickly expanded my horizons from Bob James and Weather Report by sending me home with Coon Bid’ness by avant-jazz alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill. As I recall, it was a pretty free-blowing album and probably a bit beyond my scope. But I also really liked that Jimmy had treated me like an adult by trying to turn me on to such heavy sounds.”

Quinn also recalls getting a lesson from Griffin about the relevance of singer Freddy Fender. “I remember making some crack about Freddy Fender, who to my mind was just some kitschy cowboy singer who sold records on TV,” he says. “I knew Jimmy as a guy who was deep into jazz and blues, so I was really surprised when he came to Freddy’s defense. It was a small thing, but it made me realize that I maybe didn’t know quite as much about things as I thought I did. It also revealed how open-minded and big-hearted Jimmy was about music. I later went on to spend 13 years or so toiling away in record shops in Birmingham and Atlanta. So I suppose you could say that Jimmy was a bit of a role model. He certainly is a role model for how people should think about and listen to music.”

Tommy Stevenson, a columnist and blogger who has worked at the Tuscaloosa News for 35 years, claims he introduced Griffin to the local community. “I discovered him,” says Stevenson, laughing. “It was at a party that we crashed . . . There was this little skinny guy sitting there strumming on a guitar. I said to myself, ‘This is going to be one of my friends for the rest of my life.’ Allen Ginsberg was in town for a speaking engagement at Birmingham-Southern in 1968 and showed up at the party. Everybody was trying to impress the famous poet, playing ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore’ or whatever. Jimmy picked up the guitar and started doing old Hank Williams songs and Ginsberg shot across the room and sat down beside him and made Jimmy play song after song, and Ginsberg sang along with him.”

Bart Grooms, a local writer, singer, and host of a jazz radio show on Samford University’s campus radio station WVSU-FM 91.1, gushes at the mention of Jimmy. “My initial impression—which I still have—is that he’s just one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. Friendly to everybody who comes in and seems to know an enormous number of people who come in,” says Grooms. “He’s incredibly musically literate. He seems to have an amazing memory for what is in the store, what he can access, what needs to be special ordered, and also stuff that he likes and can recommend. He’s never pushy about that but has often been able to say, ‘I really enjoy such and such,’ and I think is really helpful to a lot of people coming into the store. Jimmy’s been a real blessing in a lot of people’s lives and that means a lot to me and it’s meant a lot to a lot people. And I count him a friend.”

“I’ve always thought of Jimmy as a gentleman,” says Boutwell Studios co-owner Mark Harrelson. “Not only does he have an encyclopedic knowledge of his inventory, he also remembers what his customer’s individual areas of interest are.” Musician Don Tinsley worked at Charlemagne for a couple of years in the late 1980s. “When it comes to music, Jimmy Griffin seems to remember it all, I’ve never stumped him with any question as to who, what, when, or where,” says Tinsley. “I’ve heard some people refer to him as Saint Jimmy because he NEVER loses his patience or blows up at Charlemagne even when trying to help the most hard to please customers who are asking the most impossible questions. He genuinely tries to help people get the music they want, and he seems to make extremely astute observations and suggestions to aid them in finding what they are searching for and also to help broaden their musical palette.” Tinsley has played in bands with Griffin and has always been impressed with his talents as a singer and player. “He’s sings true and means it, and is a serious roots-style threat on bass drum and maracas. I played a couple of gigs with Jimmy and John McKay on harp as the Drape Vulcan Boys,” he recalls. “I couldn’t make the practice so we ran some songs by telephone and then played what I remember as a very cool and successful gig.”

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When actor Gary Busey was in Birmingham filming The Bear nearly 30 years ago, he tried to heist Charlemagne Records co-owner Marian McKay Rosato in addition to the Beatles box set he purchased. (click for larger version)

 

 

 

Besides his day job working at Charlemagne, Jimmy Griffin played for several years with one of the greatest bands to ever come out of Birmingham, the bluesy, roots-based Trains ‘N’ Trouble. He’s modest about his fabulous, distinctive vocal talents but admits that he never lacked confidence singing for an audience. “No, I wasn’t self conscious. Like with Trains ‘N’ Trouble, playing with LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, and John McKay, I was like sort of an amateur with three very professional people,” he says. “Plus the fact that with the improvisational aspect, we would rehearse a song but that wouldn’t necessarily be the way it would go when we played it. I was not on the level of creating new music; I was trying to be true to the nuance of the singers I admired, like Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson. When I was young just playing the guitar, I loved Woody Guthrie.”

Jimmy has memories of famous performers dropping by Charlemagne. “Gene Simmons came in. He was looking for British Invasion CDs, but he had everything we could find,” he recalls. “But he ended up buying Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and Greatest Hits by Bobby Darin. Chris Robinson, formerly of the Black Crowes, came in and a customer asked him if he should buy Robinson’s new record and he said, ‘No, don’t get that, man.’” Griffin doesn’t hesitate when asked who his favorite musician is. “Sun Ra is my favorite because he does so many things. He invented a whole new language of music. I call it ‘the lope,” it’s got a loping sound. It’s like swinging or it could be totally abstract.”

Sun Ra may have invented a new musical language but Jimmy Griffin coined a new phrase for the retail record business. “We call the store business ‘psycho retail,’ because you never know what people are going to ask you in person or on the phone,” he says. “I’ve developed this thing of taking everything literally until I find out otherwise. Because you never know exactly where the customers are coming from. Psycho retail means the insanity of the different ways that people communicate or don’t communicate. And we also have the circular reasoning. There’ll be three thoughts and they’re rotated. They ask you question A. As you answer question A, they don’t respond, they ask question B. As you answer question B, they don’t really respond or make a decision, but ask question C. And as you answer question C, they go back to question A. And you could be on the phone maybe 15 minutes trying to nail down which of these three points is pertinent to the call, and what exactly we can do for them. Some of our customers, we already know who they are as soon as they say hello, and we know it’s going to take a minute.”

Jimmy has devised his own method for remaining calm under fire when business is jumping at Charlemagne. “Well, I do get rattled and I think it comes with age. I used to say that my mind is on ‘erase’ and I would kind of go from one point to the next,” he explains. “Or maybe it’s kind of like a game not to get rattled because maybe you can do a better job. I used to have a motto: ‘People didn’t realize it but I live in fear.’ The other thing is, now that I’ve been in counseling for a while, I realize how much co-dependence I’ve had since I was a young child,” he admits with laughter. “So in a way, I’m in the worst possible job for someone who’s co-dependent with the world. Passivity and co-dependence are like good traits for a retailer, but you might never get well. I have a theory about retail, that it should be democratic. Because one of my jokes is, in the Bill of Rights they have to now include the right to shop. People feel very strongly about their right to shop. That’s why you have yard sales; that’s why you have people with no money actually looking at discarded things on the side of the road, because that’s a form of shopping. So, to me, somebody buying a dollar cassette is just as important as someone buying a $200 box set. Because they might be a regular customer and they may buy 200 one-dollar cassettes over a couple of years but you may never see the box set person again. We’re trying to match people with their musical needs but the customer kind of has to run the show.”

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Charlemagne is a museum of concert posters, with some dating back to the store’s inception. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

Griffin has a personal philosophy for why people are drawn to certain genres of music while rejecting other styles. “It’s like a music festival. If you don’t like an event, you just change stages. I’ve developed this theory that started years ago at a chain store while I was running the cash register and playing Professor Longhair. And I’m all exuberant and I said, ‘Isn’t this great!’ And my customer said, ‘Not particularly.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, Professor Longhair’s not great.’ The thing about music is that it’s sound waves. When somebody’s receiving their pleasant sound waves, it’s a physiological and environmental and memory, all combined. So, deriving pleasure from music is something everybody can do and you can’t say that one pleasure source is any superior to another. But you can say that certain musicians are more skilled at making new statements.”

Gary Bourgeois told me that if I wanted to drive Jimmy crazy, I should lock him in a room with the first seven Moody Blues albums. Griffin responded: “Well what happened with the Moody Blues is that when I lived in Boston I had a roommate and he lost his girlfriend. He played this Moody Blues song over and over about a quiet day in the park and being sad. It’s just too lush for me. I can see they’re good musicians. It’s taken me years to get over the fact, for example, that Jim Morrison’s approach to a song is more dramatic than Mick Jagger’s. Or David Bowie’s approach is more dramatic. There’s something in Morrison’s voice tone to where I prefer Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. And also, I prefer great non-singers. When people tell me Bob Dylan can’t sing, I say, ‘I guess you’re right but he’s so musical. So it’s not necessarily if you can hit the note, it’s how you approach the note. When I brought Dylan’s Nashville Skyline home, my Dad said, ‘Oh, you mean that fellow finally decided to start singing?’”

The final word on Jimmy Griffin comes from the second greatest musical icon in Birmingham’s storied history. Spike, former singer of punk legend GNP, believes that Jimmy Griffin just might have clairvoyant powers: “I never bought much punk stuff from Charlemagne. There are just too many other cool genres of music to choose from there. It was mostly Grateful Dead-related stuff, or reggae, or ska. It seems like every time I walked up those stairs and Jimmy was there, he would say, ‘Hey, I got this new Dead thing . . .’ or he would have some obscure ska compilation to show me. It was like he knew I was about to walk in the store. I’m pretty sure he’s that way with everyone. He must be psychic. I love that guy.” &

Rock ‘n’ Roll Memories

 


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Rick Nelson was declared a teen idol at age 16, and continued his singing career as an adult.

Room 106 of the Guntersville Holiday Inn is a hallowed shrine along rock ’n’ roll’s sacred trail. It’s where one-time teen idol Ricky Nelson spent the last two days of his life before his untimely death on January 31, 1985. Nelson and his Stone Canyon Band were killed during the emergency landing of his blazing DC-3 (at one time owned by Jerry Lee Lewis) in a Texas cow pasture.

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The International Rick Nelson Fan Club will celebrate the life and final days of the acclaimed singer October 19 and 20 at the Guntersville Holiday Inn.

Nelson had stopped in Guntersville for impromptu shows at PJ’s Alley, co-owned by his former guitarist Pat Upton. The Stone Canyon Band had just finished a Citrus Bowl appearance in Orlando, and decided to stop in Alabama for a couple of nights before a scheduled New Year’s Eve appearance in Dallas. That final show in Guntersville was eventually immortalized as the “Rave On” show by fanatical Ricky Nelson devotees, as Nelson closed the night with Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.”

America grew up with Ricky Nelson in the 1950s through television’s “Ozzie and Harriet Show.” By age 16, Nelson had scored a Top Ten hit with “A Teenager’s Romance.” A performance of Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” on the show yielded a million records sold in the week following the broadcast. Life magazine put him on the cover in 1958, coining the phrase “teen idol” for Nelson. By age 21, he had sold 35 million records, with nine gold singles.

Hailed by many as the only teen idol with any lasting influence on rock ’n’ roll, Ricky Nelson eventually dropped the “y” from his name in the 1970s and began recording country songs. He’s credited as a country rock pioneer, launching the careers of Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, and Poco. After a round of booing at a 1972 Madison Square Garden show while trying to perform new songs, Nelson wrote the timeless classic “Garden Party.”

The International Rick Nelson Fan Club will celebrate the life and final days of the acclaimed singer October 19 and 20 at the Guntersville Holiday Inn. Events include a Rick Nelson look-alike contest and plenty of Nelson music. A permanent wall shrine entitled “The Last Two Days” has been erected in the hotel lobby, complete with photos and memories of Nelson’s final show. And most sacred of all, Room 106 has been christened the Rick Nelson Room and will be available for viewing. Call 256-582-2220 for details.

Sizzling with Wanda Jackson

Sizzling with Wanda Jackson

The Legendary rockabilly beauty performs at Workplay.

 

 

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Bob Dylan called Wanda Jackson “an atomic bomb in lipstick.” (click for larger version)

 

 

September 29, 2011

Touted as the Queen of Rockabilly, singer Wanda Jackson was the first woman to sing in a seductive, growling rock ‘n’ roll style. Jackson was discovered by country and western singer Hank Thompson in 1954 at age 17, recording her first country hit “You Can’t Have My Love” with his band. A year later, she briefly dated a then-unknown Elvis Presley, who told her that she should start singing rock ‘n’ roll. In 1956, she took his advice and hit the Top 20 country charts with the rocked up “I Gotta Know.” The following year, she recorded the smoking “Fujiyama Mama,” which hit number one in Japan despite the opening verse: “I been to Nagasaki, Hiroshima too. The things I did to them, baby, I can do to you!” The sexuality of Elvis that had shaken up America appeared tame compared to Jackson’s sizzling style.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I sat in my car in the French Quarter in New Orleans and rang up Jackson at her hotel room in Del Mar, California, where she was scheduled to perform that evening. She graciously agreed to a short chat, sharing stories of her sexy, dynamic style, which, of course, upset the Grand Ole Opry in 1957 during her first appearance there. Earlier this year, she recorded The Party Ain’t Over with the White Stripes’ Jack White. Jackson will perform at Workplay on September 30. Visit www.workplay.com for details.

Black & White: When you met Elvis on the Ozark Jubilee tour in 1955 and he suggested that you sing rock ‘n’ roll, were you reluctant to give it a try?
Wanda Jackson: Oh yeah, because I didn’t think I could sing it. He convinced me that I could. As the music became more and more popular, it was sweeping the nation—and it was my generation’s music—so I loved it. I finally found a [rocking] song when a friend of mine wrote a special song for me, kind of a transition from country into rock. The song was “I Gotta Know.” It opens with a line that has a real country melody and then would break into rock ‘n’ roll, then back to that one line of country and then back into rock ‘n’ roll. It’s really a clever song. It’s still one of my most requested numbers today.

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Wanda Jackson poses with boyfriend Elvis Presley in 1955. (click for larger version)

You put glamour and sex appeal into country music. Is it true that your mother designed your stage clothes in the early days?
By the time I was 16, it was high heels and everything. I had gotten very tired of the cowboy outfits that the girls wore. I didn’t look too good in those and I knew it. My mother had always sewn for me since I was a little girl, and she sewed beautifully. So we just got our heads together and we knew that I felt better in the straight skirts rather than full ones. And I wanted no sleeves, I wanted spaghetti straps. Kind of a sweetheart neck, a little cleavage. I thought fringe would be good, it would still indicate kind of a western look. So we used the short silk fringe. It really shimmied and shook when I walked. I wore the long earrings and high heels and big hair. CMT (Country Music Television) did a series on the 40 top women of country music, the most influential. I think I was number 35 on that list. They said I was the first one to bring a sexy look into country music. So since that day, I’ve worn the fringe and the low-cuts and the sparkly outfits. I still do.

I read that your first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry didn’t go over too well. Was it your style?
Yes, the dress I wore was the problem. (laughs) I only did it [played the Opry] the one time because I just really didn’t care for anything about it [the Opry]. I had been used to working with Hank Thompson and the big bands with drums and horns and the whole western swing–type music. And, of course, the Opry was very country. They didn’t allow drums. They had a lot of rules. I wasn’t a member, I was just a guest. So when I showed up in one of the dresses that I wore, I was told that I couldn’t go on the stage of the Opry dressed like that. They said, “Women can’t show their shoulders.” So, I put on a jacket and covered myself up. And I was very unhappy with the whole situation, so I said I wouldn’t ever do it again. And I didn’t until earlier this year when I was given a lifetime achievement award. It took place at the old Ryman Auditorium. I got to go on with the kind of band that I wanted, and I did rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll. So I did go back but I had it my way when I did.

Were you singing in your seductive, growling voice at all before you started singing rock ‘n’ roll?
No, actually it took the right song to bring that out. I didn’t know I could do it. (laughs) But I just felt it that way and that’s the way I sang it. I don’t know where it came from but it took rock ‘n’ roll for me to find that I could do it.

What’s the story behind you recording with Jack White?
Well, he was interested in recording me, giving me kind of a fresh sound. Of course, it was all cover songs but they were hand-picked by Jack. And it makes for a really exciting album. I’ve had so much publicity around it. At this age, having an album in the Top 20 or Top 50 or something, it’s pretty exciting for me.

You’ve got a birthday coming up on October 20. What’s it like being on the road at age 73?
Oh yeah, you would have to remind me. It’s coming ’round again (laughs). Touring is all I’m used to, I never have quit. I may have not been in the spotlight all those years or on the charts but I’ve never quit touring. It’s been 57 years that I’ve toured, so it’s my way of life and it’s all I know. &

Mr. Record Man

 

Mr. Record Man

The real gospel, according to record geek, gifted vocalist, and true gentleman Jimmy Griffin.

 

October 13, 2011

For 34 years, Charlemagne Records in Five Points South has been a sanctuary for record fanatics, indifferent shoppers looking for birthday presents for friends, lonely souls desperate for conversation, and the occasional celebrity. Jimmy Griffin, a sweet, congenial 61-year-old fellow smitten with music, has worked at Charlemagne for three decades. (He looks 41 and has the spirit of a kid in awe of the world around him.) He’s Clint Eastwood-cool when under fire. He simply cannot be rattled, maintaining a Captain Kangaroo-calm bolstered by a teenage enthusiasm with a subtle charm capable of soothing the most savage customer. “The one thing that I remember is that no matter how hectic the store got, especially at Christmas or whatever, I never ever saw Jimmy lose it,” says local artist Marjorie Clark Boykin, who worked at Charlemagne from 1986 to 1990. “I might see him get a little flustered and inside he might be freaking out, but even if there was somebody who was being difficult, he would always deflect it with some kind of humor.”

Jimmy is indeed one of the funniest fellows in the universe. If forced to express himself to a disgruntled customer, he does so with his customary savvy and hilarious style. During a Christmas shopping season 15 or 20 years ago, a customer came in with a noose necklace and matching noose bracelets on each wrist. The store was packed and the gallows-obsessed guy was having a difficult time getting waited on. The fellow was hunting for a particular piece of classical music. As he grew more impatient, he addressed Griffin by saying: “You know, Jimmy, a scream is a terrible thing to hear.” Jimmy Griffin didn’t miss a beat and coolly responded, “I tell you, man, I bet your family will get you a portable radio for Christmas and you can listen to classical music on WBHM.”

Charlemagne Records opened for business in July 1977 at the Garages, now a popular Southside bar called the Garage Café. Launched by local singer deluxe Marian McKay Rosato, her brother Mike McKay, and Gary Bourgeois, the funky new and used-record store moved to Five Points South four months later, where it set up business sharing the first floor with a used bookstore in the structure where Charlemagne currently operates. (Bourgeois is no longer with Charlemagne. He owns Renaissance Records in Five Points South.) The record store moved upstairs in 1978 when the building’s owner decided to open an apothecary in the ground-floor space. Rosato had been in record sales before starting Charlemagne. “I worked at Sears in Vestavia; I was the record department girl,” she says with a smile. “I sold Gary (Bourgeois) a record there, James Taylor’s Walking Man, and that’s how we met.”

 

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For 30 years, Charlemagne Records employee Jimmy Griffin has been been an iconic source of knowledge for music lovers. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

 

Charlemagne has definitely seen its share of famous customers. Tom Waits stopped by and bought an armload of albums in 2008 when he was in town playing at the Alabama Theatre. Gary Busey stopped by when he was in town filming his role as Bear Bryant in The Bear a few decades back. Busey selected a Beatles box set and threw down a $100 bill. He picked up the Beatles package with one hand and grabbed Rosato with the other. “Well all of a sudden, Gary Busey hoisted me up over his shoulder,” she recalls. Under protest from then-employee Gary Bourgeois (“I told him he couldn’t have her.”), Busey began to walk out of the store. The actor/madman eventually released Rosato and set her down at the top of the stairs that lead up to the store’s entrance. She also remembers the afternoon Carlos Santana visited the store. “He asked for Baaba Maal, an African musical artist,” she remembers. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any Baaba Maal but we know who you’re talking about.’ So, he was looking around and then the mail came. And so we opened up the mail and there was a promo package in it and it was Baaba Maal. So we said to Carlos Santana, ‘Well, I guess this belongs to you,’ and we gave it to him.”

“What’s really interesting is how Jimmy started working at Charlemagne,” recalls Gary Bourgeois. “He had been working at some big mall store. I think they had closed and he was living right up the hill from Charlemagne. So he just started coming in, and he was helping us do this and do that. People started knowing who Jimmy was. After a while, we might be short-handed and Jimmy happened to be there, because, you know, Jimmy ain’t going to be happy unless he’s working in a record store. Next thing you know, Jimmy’s ringing up customers and we put him on payroll. Soon Jimmy was coming in everyday and helping us. Then you realize, ‘Wow, this guy’s really good, he really knows his stuff.’ You don’t even have to look this stuff up, he already knows what artist, what song title someone was looking for. Before you know it, Jimmy’s like an everyday fixture.”

“It was a gradual thing. I was working at an OZ franchise,” recalls Jimmy. “I was helping Gary at Apple Books and he said, ‘Well, come over and help some at Charlemagne, too.’ So I would spend afternoons going from one to the other, just working my way into the organization. I think at first I was working for record credit. But these were the days of post–hippie, post–peace, and post–whiskey, if you know what I mean,” Griffin says, laughing.

As a child, Griffin had an uncle who would bring over 45 rpm records. “We had a Louis Prima 45. And I would buy classical and Broadway; like I had Camelot. I didn’t get serious—and this is almost embarrassing—but I bought hootenanny (records). So I also bought Peter, Paul, and Mary, and New Christy Minstrels records,” he says. “And when the Beatles came out I bought a Beatles record, like everybody else. But at the same time, I bought the Rolling Stones’ Out of Our Heads the year it came out. And once I got the Rolling Stones record I didn’t buy any more Beatles records. And then I got Dylan records, and me and my buddy across the street, that’s all we did was find Dylan and Stones records and play ‘em. The Stones were coming from the blues base and the R&B base. So from listening to the Stones and Dylan, I dove off into blues and jazz.”

 

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Charlemagne Records has changed little since it moved into its current locale in 1978, maintaining its jam-packed, comfortable environment. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

 

“I’ve always felt that Jimmy had a big impact on me,” says Brad Quinn, former singer and bassist in the band Carnival Season, who currently lives in Japan when not playing bass with underground pop hero Tommy Keene. “Back in the late ’70s, when I was about 14 years old, I used to hang out and talk music with Jimmy at a record shop in the Riverchase Galleria. I was listening to jazz—or at least I thought I was—but Jimmy quickly expanded my horizons from Bob James and Weather Report by sending me home with Coon Bid’ness by avant-jazz alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill. As I recall, it was a pretty free-blowing album and probably a bit beyond my scope. But I also really liked that Jimmy had treated me like an adult by trying to turn me on to such heavy sounds.”

Quinn also recalls getting a lesson from Griffin about the relevance of singer Freddy Fender. “I remember making some crack about Freddy Fender, who to my mind was just some kitschy cowboy singer who sold records on TV,” he says. “I knew Jimmy as a guy who was deep into jazz and blues, so I was really surprised when he came to Freddy’s defense. It was a small thing, but it made me realize that I maybe didn’t know quite as much about things as I thought I did. It also revealed how open-minded and big-hearted Jimmy was about music. I later went on to spend 13 years or so toiling away in record shops in Birmingham and Atlanta. So I suppose you could say that Jimmy was a bit of a role model. He certainly is a role model for how people should think about and listen to music.”

Tommy Stevenson, a columnist and blogger who has worked at the Tuscaloosa News for 35 years, claims he introduced Griffin to the local community. “I discovered him,” says Stevenson, laughing. “It was at a party that we crashed . . . There was this little skinny guy sitting there strumming on a guitar. I said to myself, ‘This is going to be one of my friends for the rest of my life.’ Allen Ginsberg was in town for a speaking engagement at Birmingham-Southern in 1968 and showed up at the party. Everybody was trying to impress the famous poet, playing ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore’ or whatever. Jimmy picked up the guitar and started doing old Hank Williams songs and Ginsberg shot across the room and sat down beside him and made Jimmy play song after song, and Ginsberg sang along with him.”

Bart Grooms, a local writer, singer, and host of a jazz radio show on Samford University’s campus radio station WVSU-FM 91.1, gushes at the mention of Jimmy. “My initial impression—which I still have—is that he’s just one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. Friendly to everybody who comes in and seems to know an enormous number of people who come in,” says Grooms. “He’s incredibly musically literate. He seems to have an amazing memory for what is in the store, what he can access, what needs to be special ordered, and also stuff that he likes and can recommend. He’s never pushy about that but has often been able to say, ‘I really enjoy such and such,’ and I think is really helpful to a lot of people coming into the store. Jimmy’s been a real blessing in a lot of people’s lives and that means a lot to me and it’s meant a lot to a lot people. And I count him a friend.”

“I’ve always thought of Jimmy as a gentleman,” says Boutwell Studios co-owner Mark Harrelson. “Not only does he have an encyclopedic knowledge of his inventory, he also remembers what his customer’s individual areas of interest are.” Musician Don Tinsley worked at Charlemagne for a couple of years in the late 1980s. “When it comes to music, Jimmy Griffin seems to remember it all, I’ve never stumped him with any question as to who, what, when, or where,” says Tinsley. “I’ve heard some people refer to him as Saint Jimmy because he NEVER loses his patience or blows up at Charlemagne even when trying to help the most hard to please customers who are asking the most impossible questions. He genuinely tries to help people get the music they want, and he seems to make extremely astute observations and suggestions to aid them in finding what they are searching for and also to help broaden their musical palette.” Tinsley has played in bands with Griffin and has always been impressed with his talents as a singer and player. “He’s sings true and means it, and is a serious roots-style threat on bass drum and maracas. I played a couple of gigs with Jimmy and John McKay on harp as the Drape Vulcan Boys,” he recalls. “I couldn’t make the practice so we ran some songs by telephone and then played what I remember as a very cool and successful gig.”

 

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When actor Gary Busey was in Birmingham filming The Bear nearly 30 years ago, he tried to heist Charlemagne Records co-owner Marian McKay Rosato in addition to the Beatles box set he purchased. (click for larger version)

 

 

 

 

Besides his day job working at Charlemagne, Jimmy Griffin played for several years with one of the greatest bands to ever come out of Birmingham, the bluesy, roots-based Trains ‘N’ Trouble. He’s modest about his fabulous, distinctive vocal talents but admits that he never lacked confidence singing for an audience. “No, I wasn’t self conscious. Like with Trains ‘N’ Trouble, playing with LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, and John McKay, I was like sort of an amateur with three very professional people,” he says. “Plus the fact that with the improvisational aspect, we would rehearse a song but that wouldn’t necessarily be the way it would go when we played it. I was not on the level of creating new music; I was trying to be true to the nuance of the singers I admired, like Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson. When I was young just playing the guitar, I loved Woody Guthrie.”

Jimmy has memories of famous performers dropping by Charlemagne. “Gene Simmons came in. He was looking for British Invasion CDs, but he had everything we could find,” he recalls. “But he ended up buying Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and Greatest Hits by Bobby Darin. Chris Robinson, formerly of the Black Crowes, came in and a customer asked him if he should buy Robinson’s new record and he said, ‘No, don’t get that, man.’” Griffin doesn’t hesitate when asked who his favorite musician is. “Sun Ra is my favorite because he does so many things. He invented a whole new language of music. I call it ‘the lope,” it’s got a loping sound. It’s like swinging or it could be totally abstract.”

Sun Ra may have invented a new musical language but Jimmy Griffin coined a new phrase for the retail record business. “We call the store business ‘psycho retail,’ because you never know what people are going to ask you in person or on the phone,” he says. “I’ve developed this thing of taking everything literally until I find out otherwise. Because you never know exactly where the customers are coming from. Psycho retail means the insanity of the different ways that people communicate or don’t communicate. And we also have the circular reasoning. There’ll be three thoughts and they’re rotated. They ask you question A. As you answer question A, they don’t respond, they ask question B. As you answer question B, they don’t really respond or make a decision, but ask question C. And as you answer question C, they go back to question A. And you could be on the phone maybe 15 minutes trying to nail down which of these three points is pertinent to the call, and what exactly we can do for them. Some of our customers, we already know who they are as soon as they say hello, and we know it’s going to take a minute.”

Jimmy has devised his own method for remaining calm under fire when business is jumping at Charlemagne. “Well, I do get rattled and I think it comes with age. I used to say that my mind is on ‘erase’ and I would kind of go from one point to the next,” he explains. “Or maybe it’s kind of like a game not to get rattled because maybe you can do a better job. I used to have a motto: ‘People didn’t realize it but I live in fear.’ The other thing is, now that I’ve been in counseling for a while, I realize how much co-dependence I’ve had since I was a young child,” he admits with laughter. “So in a way, I’m in the worst possible job for someone who’s co-dependent with the world. Passivity and co-dependence are like good traits for a retailer, but you might never get well. I have a theory about retail, that it should be democratic. Because one of my jokes is, in the Bill of Rights they have to now include the right to shop. People feel very strongly about their right to shop. That’s why you have yard sales; that’s why you have people with no money actually looking at discarded things on the side of the road, because that’s a form of shopping. So, to me, somebody buying a dollar cassette is just as important as someone buying a $200 box set. Because they might be a regular customer and they may buy 200 one-dollar cassettes over a couple of years but you may never see the box set person again. We’re trying to match people with their musical needs but the customer kind of has to run the show.”

 

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Charlemagne is a museum of concert posters, with some dating back to the store’s inception. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

 

Griffin has a personal philosophy for why people are drawn to certain genres of music while rejecting other styles. “It’s like a music festival. If you don’t like an event, you just change stages. I’ve developed this theory that started years ago at a chain store while I was running the cash register and playing Professor Longhair. And I’m all exuberant and I said, ‘Isn’t this great!’ And my customer said, ‘Not particularly.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, Professor Longhair’s not great.’ The thing about music is that it’s sound waves. When somebody’s receiving their pleasant sound waves, it’s a physiological and environmental and memory, all combined. So, deriving pleasure from music is something everybody can do and you can’t say that one pleasure source is any superior to another. But you can say that certain musicians are more skilled at making new statements.”

Gary Bourgeois told me that if I wanted to drive Jimmy crazy, I should lock him in a room with the first seven Moody Blues albums. Griffin responded: “Well what happened with the Moody Blues is that when I lived in Boston I had a roommate and he lost his girlfriend. He played this Moody Blues song over and over about a quiet day in the park and being sad. It’s just too lush for me. I can see they’re good musicians. It’s taken me years to get over the fact, for example, that Jim Morrison’s approach to a song is more dramatic than Mick Jagger’s. Or David Bowie’s approach is more dramatic. There’s something in Morrison’s voice tone to where I prefer Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. And also, I prefer great non-singers. When people tell me Bob Dylan can’t sing, I say, ‘I guess you’re right but he’s so musical. So it’s not necessarily if you can hit the note, it’s how you approach the note. When I brought Dylan’s Nashville Skyline home, my Dad said, ‘Oh, you mean that fellow finally decided to start singing?’”

The final word on Jimmy Griffin comes from the second greatest musical icon in Birmingham’s storied history. Spike, former singer of punk legend GNP, believes that Jimmy Griffin just might have clairvoyant powers: “I never bought much punk stuff from Charlemagne. There are just too many other cool genres of music to choose from there. It was mostly Grateful Dead-related stuff, or reggae, or ska. It seems like every time I walked up those stairs and Jimmy was there, he would say, ‘Hey, I got this new Dead thing . . .’ or he would have some obscure ska compilation to show me. It was like he knew I was about to walk in the store. I’m pretty sure he’s that way with everyone. He must be psychic. I love that guy.” &

20th Century Boy

 

20th Century Boy

 

April 14, 2011

Hugh Martin: The Boy Next Door
By Hugh Martin. Trolley Press. 409 pages, $29.95

Damn that Eddie Fisher for telling the world that his pianist—composer Hugh Martin—got him hooked on speed. It’s hard enough to imagine that the fellow who wrote “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was addicted to amphetamines for 10 years without further tarnishing his image into that of a dealer pushing dope to some half-assed pop singer. But not to worry; Hugh Martin was duped by the wicked Dr. Max Jacobson, who convinced his star-studded clientele that they were being injected with liquid vitamins, not speed. (President Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, and Truman Capote were among Jacobson’s patients. Of the doctor, Martin wrote: “Sometimes it seemed as if Truman Capote were giving one of his galas in the doctor’s office.”)

With impeccable timing, Martin wrote his autobiography Hugh Martin: The Boy Next Door a year before his death this March, at age 96. The Birmingham-raised Martin was a master at vocal arrangement and piano accompaniment.

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(click for larger version)

He tells the story of his charmed show-business life with amusing self-deprecation. Martin was smitten with music and theater as a child. His mother often left him in the care of his grandmother for months at a time so that she could go to New York City to indulge her fondness for the arts, particularly Broadway musicals. She instilled in the young Martin an infatuation with the magic of show business, and in his memoir he repeatedly praises her for nourishing that passion. His world always revolved around show biz—whether as a child in love with movies and musicals; performing with vocal groups as a teen; accompanying Judy Garland on piano for her triumphant two-week run at The Palace in New York City in 1951; or, while engaged in bayonet training at a World War II boot camp, imagining he was stabbing the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz

Born in Birmingham in 1914, Martin headed to New York City in 1934 for his first attempt at breaking into the entertainment world. Making the rounds of radio and other entertainment venues earned the singing piano player numerous rejections, but apparently he got someone’s attention because the still-unknown Martin soon got a phone call from Mae West. She became agitated when Martin assumed the call was a friend impersonating the starlet to play a prank on him. The embarrassed Martin apologized profusely but West simply let him off the hook with: “Never mind. Skip the apologies. I have a hard time sometimes convincing people that I am who I am.” She had called looking for a pianist and vocal arranger to tour with her for six months. When Martin turned her down because he didn’t want to leave New York City West got mad, shouting, “How dare you turn down Mae West . . . you’re insane!”

Many thought he was indeed insane when his repeated attempts to enlist for combat in World War II finally came to fruition (Martin had been earlier rejected for being underweight). After the war ended in Europe, Martin was stationed near Paris where he indulged his love of music and theater. He recalls an evening spent with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

“The ladies felt an urge to do their patriotic bit for us friendly troops, so they opened their famous residence at 27 Rue de Fleurs one night a week. Two lucky soldiers would show up at 8 p.m., and Gertie and Alice would entertain them with hors d’oeuvres and wine and some really classic conversation . . . We sat directly beneath Picasso’s famous portrait of Miss Stein, which made us feel somehow part of history. While she was fixing some tidbits for us in the kitchen, Alice leaned forward surreptitiously and whispered, ‘Gertrude is in one of her anti-capitalist cycles at the moment. Oh, I do hope she lets me have one more afternoon in Macy’s basement!’”

Martin’s circle of friends and peers reads like show biz archives: Ed Wynn, Tony Bennett (he called Martin his favorite songwriter), Irving Berlin (who Martin did not particularly like), Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer (Martin’s first song was in collaboration with Mercer), Rodgers and Hart, an unknown Carmen Miranda. Hugh Martin writes of the good fortune show business brought his way in dramatic style, and seems eternally grateful that he got to work with legends. Midway through his autobiography, Martin shares snippets of chatter with famous friends that pop into his head from time to time. Gore Vidal once asked Martin, after Princess Diana’s death, “Do we really want Elton John to sing at our funerals?” Besides being Judy Garland’s vocal coach, Hugh Martin also tutored the great Lena Horne, who once told him: “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’d just as soon not sing that lyric you wrote about darkies loving cornbread.”

Hugh Martin was in love with life and joyously shares every dramatic moment. Reading The Boy Next Door is forthright and intimate; it’s as if Martin invited the reader over to his front porch for a cup of tea to hear about the good ol’ days of show biz. &

String Plucker

String Plucker

For 30 years, local guitarist Tim Boykin has been singing for his supper.

 

April 14, 2011

Tim Boykin has been playing guitar for a living since he was 15. Though Boykin once disdained the “have guitar, will travel” notion of performing whatever was necessary to pay the bills, he eventually discovered that such work wasn’t a bad way to earn his keep. He was born in Birmingham but because his father was in the military, Boykin moved frequently, returning to Alabama as a teen. He became a guitar wizard adept at playing practically any style of music, transforming from a teenage punk rocker to a versatile guitar sideman and respected studio musician over the past three decades.

“At that time [the early 1990s] there was still actually a real blues scene [in town] and Topper Price and the Upsetters were playing at the Nick,” recalls Boykin. “Leif [Bondarenko, legendary local drummer] asked if I would come play some gigs with the Upsetters and my dumb ass was like, ‘Well, man, I don’t know. You guys are a bar band, you’re a cover band. I don’t think I can do that.’ Leif called again and I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’ I went and played a gig with Topper and made like $30 and I was like, ‘Oh wow, I can actually get paid for playing music.’ So that ushered in this era of stability. I was like, ‘Oh wow, I’m playing, I’m doing what I love to do, and it’s like a jobby job.’ The Upsetters weren’t making huge money but it was steady money.”

Boykin knew early on what he wanted to do with his life. His first guitar was an acoustic instrument his mother had brought home for him when he was 12 years old. He soon learned “Psychotic Reaction” by the Count Five. Though he has taken a few lessons, Boykin is mostly self-taught.

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Tim Boykin. (Photo: Scott Johnson) (click for larger version)

“I didn’t know that it was called this but there’s a part of ‘Psychotic Reaction’ where the rhythm guitarist makes what you call ‘ghost notes,’ where he’s just doing a purely rhythmic thing and not really playing notes on the guitar,” Boykin recalls. “And I figured out how to cop that and just thought that was incredibly fine and went crazy with it and broke all the picks I had.”

Boykin quickly latched onto the Ramones and Sex Pistols but also listened to classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. “The first two albums I bought on my 13th birthday were Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ Armed Forces and Ted Nugent’s Weekend Warrior at the PX on Fort Bragg.”

Guitar provided him with an identity while growing up in North Carolina. “I had found my niche in my high school social life. It was really different culturally up there,” he says. “People were more interested in what you did than what you had. Word got around that I was a good guitar player. And so within my little group of stoner friends up there, it was like, ‘Kevin’s a good fighter, Steve can fix cars, and Tim can play guitar.’” When he moved back to Birmingham in his mid-teens, however, his new classmates weren’t very impressed that he was a musician. “When I was going to Berry [High School], the rules were all different. It didn’t matter what you could do, it mattered what you had, how much money your parents had, that kind of shit,” he says. “People knew I played guitar but they didn’t care. They were like, ‘Oh yeah? Well, I have a Z28 Camaro.’”

Boykin soon trumped his classmates, however, joining up with local punk outfit the Ether Dogs, and for the first time earning money playing his guitar. “Getting in the Ether Dogs while I was in high school brought me into this whole other social scene with older people and this whole other deal that was going on. So to me that was the real world.”

Boykin embraced the punk credo that stipulated attitude over ability. “I remember reading stuff where [music writer] Lester Bangs was saying, ‘You need to just get a guitar and go do this now. You don’t need to wait around until you’re good enough. You need to get a guitar, learn three chords, get on stage, and be playing now. Worry about the finer points later.’ And I took that to heart,” he says. “By the time I was 15 years old I was playing in bands and clubs and stuff. And I felt like that’s what I was supposed to be doing. So I was hearing the Ramones and going, ‘OK, cool. I can go ahead and be doing this. It was more about energy than finesse.’”

His first band was the Dead End Kids, which played parties at the homes of Mountain Brook teens since the band’s drummer was from that area of town. Boykin then joined the Ether Dogs and played regularly at The Cavern on Morris Avenue in the early 1980s. By 1984 he formed Carnival Season with Brad Quinn playing bass and Mark Reynolds on drums. (Disclosure: Ed Reynolds, author of this story, played guitar with Carnival Season briefly.)

“Tim was the most authentically punk-rock kid I’d ever met,” Quinn says of Boykin, with whom he shared a deep fondness for remedial algebra when the two were in school together. “He was an army brat and had moved around a lot with his family, and he was really steeped in the history of punk and its precursors—The Stooges, MC5, The New York Dolls, The Velvet Underground—all the stuff that everybody nowadays claimed they loved all along, even though they were probably listening to Yes or something. Tim was into Lester Bangs and had read a lot of the seminal rock writers, and so he was really thoughtful about rock ‘n’ roll. He was fairly class-conscious and saw things in a more politicized way than a lot of kids around Birmingham, at least. He was a big influence on me and a lot of other kids at the time. I’m sure he probably felt like a misfit, but that’s partly why it worked.”

Boykin’s ability to write catchy melodies and sing his own songs became evident when he joined Carnival Season at 18, right after graduating from high school. This was also his introduction to making records, with the band recording demo sessions for MCA Records before signing with U.K. indie label What Goes On. (Arena Rock Records reissued much of Carnival Season’s catalog on CD in 2010.) Underground pop phenomenon Tommy Keene produced the sessions that led to Carnival Season’s lone full-length album.

“That was the first album I’d done with anybody. It was very stressful,” Boykin recalls of those sessions. “We were young and everybody felt that there was a lot at stake. There was a lot of tension and conflict . . . some about creative decisions and stuff . . . Tommy kinda had this ’60s rootsy thing, which we had kinda moved away from. We had become more of a hard-rocking band. I had this little solid state Marshall half-stack that wasn’t real versatile but it was this sound [Tim loved]. That was my sound. That was kinda where my head was at, at that point, a lot of that early ’70s British rock kind of stuff. And Tommy was like, ‘Well, man, I have some perfectly nice amplifiers here. We can get you a good guitar sound. Here’s this lovely Fender Deluxe amp—which is a bitchin’ amp, a great amp—but it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s fine because I’ll just pack up my shit and go home.’ And I’m glad now that I held my ground about that stuff, but then on the other end of things I learned a lot of stuff and had some real first-time experiences. Tommy was real good at getting vocal performances. He made us work real hard. And you didn’t have any kind of [vocal enhancement] toys at that point [in time]. You couldn’t make a bad singer sound good, you really couldn’t. When you hear the Go Go’s and Belinda Carlisle singing on pitch? It’s because they made that poor child do take after take. A couple of vocal performances from me were like, ‘Yeah, we did that by the sweat of our brows.’ And I didn’t know before that that’s how you did that.”

The band lasted five years.

“After Carnival Season, it was kind of a learning process. I was still really young. When I quit Carnival Season, I was 23,” Boykin says. “At that point I felt like I had really been around the block. Initially, I thought that I had to be in a band that has a record deal. So I ended up being in the Barking Tribe—they had a record deal and got out on the road and worked real hard and made zero dollars. It kind of helped me assess more what my goals were and what I wanted to be doing.”

After a couple of years with Barking Tribe, Boykin began writing music again, forming Pinky the Stabber and then the Shame Idols, which caught the ear of Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows and REM. McCaughey hooked the Shame Idols up with Frontier Records, where the band recorded two critically-acclaimed albums. Boykin figured he had the best of both worlds, making money with one band and finding a creative outlet for his songwriting talents with his own group.

“I was making money playing with Topper [Price],” he says. “Then I’d tell him the Shame Idols were flying out to L.A. to play and that I’d be gone for a couple of dates. My spot [with the Upsetters] was secure. I’d either line up a sub or they’d get somebody to sub. I’d go play rock star and then come back home and get back to work. It was great.”

By 1998, Frontier Records no longer existed so Boykin decided to record a third Shame Idols album at his own expense.

“The Shame Idols always had a real strong pop sensibility. But the first couple of albums are really heavy guitar things, to me,” he explains. “At the time Frontier folded I was listening to a lot of more kind of power pop–oriented stuff like the Flamin’ Groovies, that kind of thing. I was getting more of a ’60s kind of vibe.”

The band broke up in the process of recording and Boykin decided to record the new material as the Lolas—his dog’s name. Around this time he also started the Tim Boykin Blues Band.

“It was me basically trying to still do what I had been doing when I was playing with Topper and doing the Shame Idols,” he explains—using one band to make a living and the other for his songwriting talents. “Boy, I was just trying to book my own life at that point. I was booking the blues band all over the place and at a lot of the same clubs I was actually booking the Lolas in there, too. And man, at some of those clubs the Lolas were a hard sell. We were doing covers but we weren’t doing the bullshit covers that they liked to hear down there. We were doing the Flamin’ Groovies and shit and they were like, ‘What the hell is that?’”

Boykin currently plays with Birmingham blues singer Shar Baby, recording her album Shar-Baby’s 11 O’Clock Blues at Boykin’s home recording studio, Bushido Sound.

“I think Tim’s one of the greatest guitar players here in the state of Alabama,” says Shar Baby. “That boy is somethin’ else. That guy is true. He’s over the top—off the chain, as they say.”

Boykin’s old bands rarely completely die; rather they seem to be in a temporary cryogenic state, ready for thawing out every few years to record a new CD or play a show. Carnival Season has done recent reunion gigs and there has been chatter among band members about a new record. The Lolas and Shame Idols rear their heads from time to time as well. When the Lolas “started to fizzle out” a few years ago, Boykin sought a different direction.

“I was starting to repeat myself and I was wanting to do something kind of different,” he says. “I initially got excited about what was going on with stoner rock, desert rock, doom metal, that kind of stuff. I was partly attracted to it because it was more of a grassroots, death metal scene that seemed analogous to the way the whole punk scene was. It seemed like indie rock had become this whole status quo. So I was really looking for something that kind of seemed counter culture.”

Moving in a metal band direction, Boykin worked with Annexed Asylum before forming Throng of Shaggoths with former GNP [Grossest National Product] guitarist Chris Hendrix on drums. “Annexed Asylum was a lot of fast stuff, showing off chops with various degrees of success,” he says, laughing. “Throng of Shoggoths is a slower, heavier band with weird time signatures. The songs are based in H.P. Lovecraft. It’s very weird stuff.”

There is a misperception that musicians must move away from Birmingham to truly be successful, Boykin says. However, he has found that living here has certain advantages, especially financially.

“I’m traveling so much. San Francisco is a beautiful city but people who live there will tell you that it’s absolutely brutal to live there. You have to work three jobs and you’re still almost living on skid row. There are other places that are a lot more laid back, like Seattle, Indianapolis. And those places are kind of like Birmingham. . . . There are big cities that I like but I’m not necessarily pissed off that I don’t live in them.” &

To contact Tim Boykin for guitar lessons and to access his performance schedule, go to http://timmehworld.com.