There's this footage of Little Rock-born producer/musician/raconteur Jim Dickinson from 1979 that shows him producing an all-female, four-piece, punk-rock garage band whose name we can't print here.
It's youthful, primitive, barely listenable music and Dickinson, wearing a blue wrestling mask and calling himself "Captain Memphis," says it's a return to rock's roots of upsetting parents and disturbing the establishment.
It's no surprise that Dickinson was right in the middle of such a thing. Dig around a bit beneath the surface of Southern music and general Memphis weirdness and Dickinson, who died in 2009 at 67, is right there, waving his freak flag like a demented preacher from the unholy church of rock 'n' roll. He played piano on the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses," worked on albums by Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan and produced bands like The Replacements, Perfect, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Big Star and many others.
He made swampy, swinging, thunderous music with Mudboy and the Neutrons on albums like Known Felons in Drag and Negro Streets at Dawn, and left behind a small batch of solo albums starting with 1972's Dixie Fried. He recorded for Sun Records and Atlantic Records and his sons, guitarist-singer Luther and drummer Cody, founded the long-running blues-rock band the North Mississippi Allstars. The 1979 concert album Beale Street Saturday Night, which Dickinson curated and that features performances by Sid Selvidge, Furry Lewis, Teenie Hodges, Sleepy John Estes and others is a must-listen for anyone interested in raw Memphis blues, vaudeville, jazz and folk.
Now there's a live album, I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone: Lazarus Edition, released by Memphis International Records. The new collection has 10 tracks, most recorded at a 2006 New Daisy Theater concert on Beale Street, and serves as a companion piece to an autobiography, also called I'm Just Dead, I'm Not Gone, to be published Tuesday by the University Press of Mississippi.
It's not the greatest entry point to the Dickinson oeuvre -- that would be any of the Mudboy stuff -- but it's worth a listen or two if only to acknowledge his wonderful taste in covers.
As indicated by the Lazarus Edition of the title, this is a follow-up to the 2012 album that was culled from the same concert and features songs not included the first time around (with the exception of "Redneck, Blue Collar," which shows up on both). There are also two additional tracks, the classics "Ubangi Stomp" and "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," tacked on from a 1983 concert featuring Dickinson and Sun Records legends Roland Janes, Stan Kessler, Cowboy Jack Clement, Billy Lee Riley of Pocahontas and J.M. Van Eaton.
Backed by his boys and their Allstars bassist Chris Chew ("my spiritual son," as Dickinson calls him) along with Jimmy Davis on guitar, the set has a loose vibe, where honesty is cherished more than production values. At this point, Dickinson's voice, never great in the first place, was fading, and he maybe should have stayed away from covering "Midnight Rider," although the backup vocals and Luther Dickinson's slide guitar almost save the day.
The 1983 songs have greater energy, which is understandable. Dickinson's piano on these two tracks calls to mind one of his heroes, Jerry Lee Lewis.
A highlight is "All Out of Blue," written by guitarist Greg Spradlin, who grew up in Pangburn. Despite a keyboard intro that sounds like something you'd hear at a Holiday Inn lounge on a Tuesday night in 1985, the bones of the song's melancholy lope are gorgeous and it sounds like some lost country hit that everyone should know by heart (track down the original version on The Greg Spradlin Outfit's album ... and Twiced as Gone).
That female punk band from 1979 didn't make it past Memphis cult-hero status, and in a way neither did Jim Dickinson, but his touch and influence stretched way beyond. He was a rock 'n' roll original, a contributor to the wonderful, twisted, uplifting madness found among the music's wild history and greasy notes in a place where oddballs and outcasts could get down and do their thing. We'll never see the likes of him again.
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Style on 04/02/2017