Posted on 01/13/2017 9:52:37 PM PST by nickcarraway
In the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett
By Tony Fletcher
Oxford University Press, 320 pp. $27.95
It was October 13, 1966, and Wilson Pickett was pissed off. And as friends, bandmates, producers and girlfriends knew, you did not want to piss him off. Not for nothing was he referred to — and reveled in — his nickname as “The Wicked Pickett.”
At Rick Hall’s storied FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Pickett and his crack band had just laid down a definitive, smoking take on a little tune about a girl who loved her car more than her man. But before they could listen to the playback, someone in the studio hit a wrong button and the tape careened off the machine, breaking into dozens of tiny pieces.
“There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone looked at the fruits of their perfect take, cast across the studio like so much aural confetti, before Pickett unleashed a serious flash of the temper that he generally kept under control in the recording studio,” Fletcher writes here of the take that all in the room felt was “the magic one” that couldn’t be improved upon.
Fortunately, studio owner Hall and producer Tom Dowd sent everyone out for lunch, and painstakingly put the take back together using the razor blades and tape that were de rigueur for splicing in those pre- ProTools times. And thanks to their calm efforts, “Mustang Sally” — Pickett’s most recognizable tune, now playing somewhere at a wedding or dance party as you’re reading this — was saved.
In this, the first-ever biography of "the Wicked Pickett," music journo Fletcher traces the personal and professional life of the volatile singer through new interviews with bandmates, family members and archival comments from its subject, along with rare family photos. Fletcher had the blessing and cooperation, but not oversight, of Pickett's estate.
And while the premature deaths of his contemporaries Sam Cooke and Otis Redding have made them bigger names in accepted music history, Pickett should rightfully be mentioned in the same breath for sure.
After an early start with doo-woppers the Falcons, Pickett’s raw, gritty shouts and screams made him one of soul music’s strongest artists in the ’60s and early ’70s. Besides "Sally," his string of hits included “In the Midnight Hour” and “634-5789,” both recorded at Stax studios in Memphis, plus “Funky Broadway,” “Land of 1,000 Dances” and “I’m a Midnight Mover.”
Later he would also inexplicably find crossover success with cover versions of pop and rock tunes, from the Archies' lightweight “Sugar, Sugar” to Vanilla Fudge’s heavy take on the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hanging On.” But none was more artistically successful than his powerhouse turn on the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” which was still on the charts. The proto rock-soul tour de force was cut at the unlikely suggestion of Pickett’s studio guitarist at the time – Duane Allman. “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You” and the chugging "Engine Number 9" could stand with his earlier classics.
So what happened to Wilson Pickett? Why didn’t he get the late-career respect and accolades contemporaries like James Brown, Sam Moore and Lou Rawls did? There are plenty of reasons, and not for nothing is a recurring theme of this book “he was his own worst enemy.”
While he was still capable of putting on killer live shows, his spotty recording career from the mid-’70s onward was pitiful. Utterly ill-suited to join the disco bandwagon or for smooth and synthy ’80s R&B, he released half-hearted records with a revolving-door cast of band members and producers who increasingly did not want to work with him.
Personally, he alienated and insulted all sorts of people with his violent, bitter temperament and sizable ego, exacerbated by his increasing use of drugs and alcohol and fondness for waving guns. Physically, he would beat a litany of girlfriends (though he was married), children and even fellow performers with impunity.
He once forced his 14-year-old son to do cocaine with him while ostensibly giving a talk on the birds and the bees. He missed his own 1991 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and possible comeback-making performance after refusing to come out of his house when the limo came to collect him. Then there were two stints in jail for drunk driving, drugs and weapons charges in his middle age.
Wilson Pickett would clean up (somewhat) in the late ’90s, continue to perform live (often on oldies package shows and cruises), deliver one last decent record and appear among other ’60s soul survivors in the concert documentary Only the Strong Survive. He died of a heart attack brought on by debilitating health in 2006 at the age of 64.
The unique performer, the complicated man and the brute bully all come together in one here. And — in the words of the women he occasionally shared the stage with — Wilson Pickett gets his R-E-S-P-E-C-T in book form, finally.
Nothing but a shithead who lucked out with a few hit tunes.
Mustang Sally is one the most overplayed songs for any classic rock cover band. It’s one that makes you say, “I can’t believe this band is going to pull out that crappy tune, again”.
Thanks much for the post, grew up with his music in high school.
Somewhat related:
If you haven’t seen the doc “Muscle Shoals,” it’s worth it:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2492916/
available on Netflix.
Wilson Pickett sings lead. The instrumentalists backing the Falcons are the Ohio Untouchables, who would later gain fame as the Ohio Players.
In the early Seventies, in Milwaukee, I played in a band called Methyl Ethyl and The Ketones. During the summers, when the band members who were Marquette students went home, we locals formed an R and B band called Hot Potate and The Abdomen. We played a lot of Sam and Dave and Wilson’s music. Wonderful stuff! I played way pre Robert Randolf music on pedal steel. I loved playing WP’s music! Kicked butt!
As someone who spent a lot of time in recording studios during the analog age, I’m trying to figure out how a magnetic recording tape “shatters”.
Ping
“Is it live or is it Memorex?”
Proof positive that I'm 'of a certain age': I not only remember that ad, I also bought the stuff!
That makes us contemporaries.
Lotta grey hair around this place, but we’ve got a young crop, too, which is a good thing. Us grey hairs can’t hold the fort forever.
I've tried to get my kids interested in FR, but not any luck. They get their dose of conservative news from the younger - “hipper” (Oh man - do they even use that term anymore?) people. Tammi somebody, Milo, Breitbart and some others that I've forgotten now.
It's too bad as I think FR really provides a more knowledgeable discussion about things.
As they say, “youth must be served”.
My kids are still too young to warm up to a place like FR, but they do talk politics with their millennial peers on social media platforms.
It's tough being a conservative kid, though. The majority of their peers are indoctrinated liberal sheep who get their news from comedians and Yahoo.
Fortunately, my kids have basic principles down cold, and are immune to the idiocy being pushed by other kids their age.
“Shatters”
Yeah, that’s a challenge. I’ve been around tapes that powdered, though. When 3M’s 400 videotape had been around for a couple of years, those of us using it discovered trying to play back older shows resulted in a white powder clogging the video heads. It had something to do with the glue that held the oxide on the tape. At CBS, the tech crew created a jig that had a group of cloth rollers on it. You threaded the tape through it, then turned the roller slowly by hand as the tape dragged against the cloth. We ended up spending most of one summer dubbing two years worth of show masters to save them. The “baking” solution was discovered some time later.
Kudos to you. My one daughter in college said it is easier there where maybe it’s 30% conservative kids. Highschool was maybe 1%.
But the profs are still liberal. After Trump was elected the one prof ranted about Trump and thought it would be a good day for all the kids to say what makes them happy on such a sad day.
My daughter said “Well, what makes me happy is that Mr. Trump will be our next president.” The prof and several girls gasped. My daughter got a kick out of that!
“Shatters”
In the early days of reel to reel tape handlers we had quite a few “stretch tape” commands that somehow crept into the programs.
Never saw a shattered tape. Some looked like fermicelli, but never shattered. No way to splice that garbage together to get anything out of it.
A friend of mine is a highly acclaimed mastering engineer who once remastered Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”.
The first problem was trying to find the real original studio master tapes - not copies - to have the best sound quality. The tapes could not be found...until my friend received a call from Ian Anderson who said he finally found them in his garage!
The tapes were sent to LA and my friend began the remastering process. During the playback of the title track, the original master tape had stretched so much in one section he had to splice that portion with a copy of the studio tapes before completing the remastering project.
Before splicing, he copied the original section so you can hear the squealing...and I was gifted with that copy. Always interesting to hear that tape stretching....
We’ve got some older cars that we drive while listening to tapes.
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