Interviewer: You all are from the South, Alabama, you ended up getting most well known for playing soul music.
Interviewer: What are your musical roots? What was the first kind of music you all played?
Johnson: Yeah, I think a lot of people get a misrepresentation of what we, I stared out basically, not in country music, I, we get accused of being country fans.
Johnson: Now, I don't know, Spooner might have been into it a little bit I think David and I basically came from the, listened to Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry that's why, my first inspiration to play guitar was when I heard a local guy play "Johnny B.
Johnson: Goode" and I said, I got to learn how to do that, you know.
Johnson: That's how it all started for me.
Johnson: It was an inspirational moment.
Johnson: I think everybody that actually becomes a player who sticks past the soreness on the fingers and the bleeding fingers I think they have to be inspired.
Hood: That's true for me.
Hood: I heard Donny Shriggley play, "Walk Don't Run" and it sounded just like the record and I thought, wow, that is great.
Hood: I, I got to learn how to do that.
Hood: And so I, I still can't do it on the guitar, I can play on the bass.
Interviewer: What about you?
Oldham: What inspired me to be a player? Ah, what I liked about music, ah, ah, so many things, it's just being in the local bands.
Oldham: It used to be like talent shows was the medium in which one were to expose their wares because one must radio or TV so it would be talent shows and you'd enter, you know, some of the earlier bands before.
Oldham: We used to play for money later and on weekends and turn to party bands.
Oldham: That was fun but early on it was just sort of, like you said, get your fingers sore.
Oldham: In my case I learned a little … and a little guitar and I guess by the time you get the soreness gone you feel like you deserve more than that so you keep working harder.
Oldham: But Jerry Lee Lewis when he came around, you know, through the airwaves, "A Whole Lot of Shakin" and that sort of thing.
Oldham: That was one form and of course the, the Ray Charles on the other side, the rhythm and blues side, that was wonderful for me to hear.
Oldham: And then there was the Grand Ole Opry, you know, all those things were coming at me at once so I took it all in.
Johnson: See my dad was playing and my uncle was playing country music.
Johnson: Well I didn't like it too much, I still don't.
Johnson: But I mean I enjoy playing it and producing sometimes as, you know, as something different to do.
Johnson: I enjoy that but I wouldn't want a steady diet of it, you know.
Johnson: But, ah, now my really roots was I think blues, for sure.
Johnson: And so as to, I know Jerry Wexler used to say that we were all part country and all this but most of us I think, a good portion of us was, strictly listened to the black players of that time.
Interviewer: Did you all listen on the radio much to the blues, to black music to gospel?
Johnson: Everything.
Johnson: Yes as a matter of fact when we had our bands we would listen to WLAC in Nashville usually on, when we'd return and we'd listen to… John R and Horse Man and, and he was playing the best blues records of the day.
Johnson: And that's, we, that was what we listened to coming home.
Johnson: We never made enough money to stay in a hotel overnight where we went so we'd have to drive back, you know.
Johnson: We'd drive about 100 to 200 miles to the show and then have to drive back when we got through.
Johnson: So we'd get in about 3 or 4 in the morning or later.
Hood: That's where I first heard Otis Redding was on the John R show late at night or early in the morning I guess.
Johnson: Remember when we found out that John R was white? Blew my mind because this, this was the whitest black sounding man I've ever heard in my life.
Johnson: I've got tapes of him.
Johnson: We became friends with him and he, he and Joe Simon come down cut records with us.
Johnson: So that was a real big thrill for us, you know.
Johnson: Got a picture with him.
Hood: But I think we all were influenced by the radio and records because that was it, you know, that was the way, that's how everybody learned how to play or that's how I learned how to play.
Johnson: And it was dry here, no liquor so, so we had no nightclubs to go to here.
Johnson: It was, you know, bible belt.
Johnson: All through our early music period it was dry here, prohibition.
Oldham: In my case al., also, we all did this I'm sure, go to each other's house and practice and play and listen to records, you know and decide what songs we wanted to learn, you know, so that was, there was some communication going on a little bit.
Oldham: John R, yeah, he was a great memory for me also, radio show…
Interviewer: Ever listen to …
Johnson: When Randy would come on, we'd turn it off… He was the country part of, come on after that.
Oldham: Honey Baby Chickens or something they'd give you.
Johnson: The thing about John R he would do all of his commercials live, he would never play a tape so it was really incredible to do one.
Johnson: He'd do it a little different every time.
Interviewer: Was there a church music piece of your early musical exposure, black or white?
Hood: Yeah, I mean, that's, I heard, we all heard music in church and that is, I, I look back on it now and I, and I hear hymns and things and I think, wow, I used to hear that when I was a kid and I think that was one of my early influences even though I didn't go into that style of music or anything.
Hood: I think it did influence me.
Oldham: The gospel songs I heard as a child, I still love them, you know, the "Amazing Grace" and a long list of songs that I still like, never got tired of.
Oldham: So it was good music.
Oldham: And Christmas music, that's good music to me too.
Interviewer: When Wexler started coming down here, Dave you're quoted talking about when Wexler came into the studio he was kind of a somewhat of a terrifying.
Hood: He was, he would strike fear in your hear when he'd come on over the speaker.
Interviewer: Use his name and tell us that.
Hood: Jerry Wexler when he would come over the talk back speaker his voice, that New York Jewish accent would just strike.
Hood: He'd say, David would you come here please? I just was shaking in my shoes, to have to walk up to the control room and get up upbraided for something or told what not to do or something.
Hood: But he's a great guy though, you know.
Hood: I learned a lot from that man but he scared me to death at first.
Johnson: I remember the first time he called me at home on the telephone and I could not believe he was calling me.
Johnson: Jimmy, how are you? I could hardly answer, answer back, you know.
Johnson: And he wanted us to come to New York to play on a King Curtis session.
Johnson: And so, ba, ba, ba, I mean I, I was ready to go before he asked, you know.
Oldham: Well Jerry Wexler, of course, you know, such a presence in ___ music industry, he had, before he came here he had produced a record with Ray Charles and, and all associated with that Red Atlantic label, you know.
Interviewer: Start again by saying Jerry Wexler.
Oldham: Ah, when, when Jerry Wexler came to Muscle Shoals I was already familiar with him even though I hadn't met him and I'm sure that was the case with all of us.
Oldham: He, would see that Red Atlantic Records and he had worked and produced people like Ray Charles and Chuck Willis and Drifters.
Oldham: So he was a real presence.
Oldham: Maybe he didn't know that that we knew him because when we got here he was, he was probably insecure in a sense that he had this new artist on to Atlantic, Aretha Franklin and he, he had a lot of pressure I'm sure to, ah, present a great musical package to the world.
Oldham: So that's what we met with is this, you know, clashing of, misunderstanding of sense, but, but we all learned to deserve each other's ...
Johnson: There was a clash in music terms too.
Johnson: There was a music term clash in the sense of when they would talk about the channel we didn't know what they were talking about.
Johnson: And they was actually talking about the chorus or the hook part of the song.
Johnson: And so we knew of it as the chorus.
Johnson: So it took a good year of working with, with Jerry and Tom and Areth before we, we kind of became, you know, acclimated to the, to their term, terminologies.
Interviewer: Talk about the session with Aretha Franklin, how she reacted to seeing this all white rhythm section.
Interviewer: Was there any tension there?
Johnson: No, Aretha to me, she, she always act., acted the same way to us, you know, she's sort of an introverted type person.
Johnson: And, ah, she never would show her feelings, I don't think, to too many people except maybe real close friends.
Johnson: But she always acted good to us and, and she'd get behind that piano and all it took was her to play and then when we heard her then, you know, we knew what to do because we followed her lead.
Johnson: And, ah, but I think that was what made it real comfortable, the fact that she played with us from the, from the start.
Johnson: And I remember on those first two songs we did hear a thing that, that we knew there was really something special there, I mean something really extraordinary happened during that, during that day, the first day we recorded with her.
Interviewer: Go ahead ...
Hood: Well I was going to say, I don't think that, ah, for one thing I wasn't in the rhythm section on that session I was in the horn section but I didn't feel any weirdness from her at all.
Hood: But, ah, we were, we worked with a lot of black artists before then and we felt like why should anybody feel weird about us, you know.
Hood: We didn't, we didn't think there should be any reason why she should have any feelings.
Hood: I, I think she probably did though when she first walked in from what I've heard.
Johnson: I think back now, I think back now and I think, well, you know, they had to, the, the black artists that came in here had to feel something because here was this Lily white rhythm section and, and maybe one black person there for the tracks and, and, you know, but we never, I don't think we ever realized it at the time but I did realize it later.
Interviewer: Could you tell me as keyboardist, how did she impress you when she sat down at the piano?
Oldham: Oh, to me, it was a, immediate musical bonding among all of us for, you know, there was no strains, no, no tension that I could sense and it was just, let's play music and have fun.
Oldham: And, ah, she was just wonderful at the keyboard I thought because she was creative, imaginative, had no restrictions on styles.
Oldham: She blended a lot of styles and so therefore by her knowledge and information of what she do, that allowed us to be free with the direction we choose to go.
Oldham: So it made it real easy to work with her like Jimmy said.
Johnson: You know, …played either a electric piano or organ….
Johnson: Now, I remember Spooner either al, always throughout the whole time either played B3 organ or Wurlitzer piano.
Johnson: And she would play the, the grand acoustic piano the big grand.
Johnson: And what, that was an incredible marriage that they had between the two of them, it was really amazing.
Oldham: There was one exception, I think I played the acoustic on "Natural Woman" because it was a new song that Jerry and Carole King and Gerry Goffin had written.
Oldham: For some reason Tom and Jerry wanted, their words to me was, play something classical.
Oldham: That was my approach to do that is rhythmically, structure, you know, not free in the sense that more gospel-like.
Oldham: And I'm sure she could have played that just greatly also but she, it worked out I guess.
Johnson: I wouldn't change a note.