I don't know what the answer is, but I'm very blessed and lucky to have made a good living doing what I've loved to do. I just hope I can do another one after this.
If you're a songwriter, it's to perform your songs. For singers, it's just to get to sing somewhere. So while there may be a reluctance with all the things that go along with it, you got to choose, and this is one of my big opportunities to get back doing it.
I've known just thousands of people a hell of a lot more talented than me who never could get anywhere.
The guys that I played with, Hollis Dixon and the Keynotes - just about all the great musicians from Muscle Shoals.We played fraternity parties and kids' dances. They were called "lead outs" for kids in high school. We played wherever we could - in the down time when you weren't recording, people had to make money.
John Paul to give me a shot, I'll never forget as long as I live.
I went to visit a friend of mine, a writer name Troy Seal, a songwriting fool. He's had a ton of hits. He said, "I've got a thing I'm stuck on." I can hear the wind a blowin' - he already had that. You and me lord, we had it all. He only had that first verse. For some reason he was stuck. But that's how that came about.
I was wanting to do an album but I didn't know if I was really ready. Jerry Wexler was one of my closest friends and allies, like my godfather. He said, "Let's do an album." I couldn't sing worth a damn, but there were some good songs.
As long as you have those brilliant songs, it didn't matter how bad you played, or how bad he sang on 'em sometimes. It was one of those magical things that really worked, and I don't think could ever happen again.
I was writing for a publishing company in this old building right next to the RCA Victor Studio in Nashville. We were on the top floor, and Combine Music was on the bottom floor. I was friends with all those guys.
I was writing with different people in Nashville - whoever I could. Eddie Hinton came on the scene about 1963, and about four years later we wrote a ton of songs together. I drifted around, but Eddie and I had some cuts through the '60s and '70s. I went on the road with Kris Kristofferson in 1970.
I was in Hollis' band for eight years, playing drums. At one time we had Barry Beckett, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood - everybody but Roger Hawkins. We had a hell of a band.
You got to understand, Arthur Alexander was there with us, and some of his crew. It was in the '50s in Alabama. It was before even the civil rights stuff even started. You can imagine the hatred, although we didn't have it as bad as other parts of the country, I must say.
Tom Stafford was an odd character, you know - a brilliant guy. He looked weird and I think he took a really defensive attitude about being a hunchback. You know how people can be, giving him a hard time. So he turned that into a defensive mechanism. He would strike first, a lot of times. But he was a great guy, and really those talks we had when I was about 15, out of all of that came the studio over the drugstore and everything else. I'm not saying - I'm no big deal, but I was a part of the birth of the music there.
