duced it but it was really John Paul that made it happen. You know the movie, that docu- mentary Muscle Shoals? To make a long story short, I had some problems with that, so anyway, but he wanted me to play at the pre- miere and everybody said, “Good luck getting him to do it.” But anyway, when the kid called me and asked me to do it, I couldn’t tell this kid no, you know? I mean he was just such a great. John Paul was just another one of those great humans, you know, and so we wound up doing that together and he came over to my house about a week or so later and I played him some stuff. And from that we started talking about doing this album to- gether. T-Bone mentioned maybe we should work together, you know, maybe just a couple weeks before all this. He said, you know, be- cause T-Bone was originally going to do an album on me but we could never work it out, he was so busy, that guy is so busy but he said, you know, John Paul is the guy you re- ally need to work with. So I told John that. He said, “I haven’t ever produced an album in my life.” I said, “Well, you’re my guy. You’re the guy.” And that’s how it happened, you know. And from this movie, that Muscle Shoals documentary, really, that’s how all this came about because you know what? Let’s be honest, 72-year-old guys don’t get record deals (Laughs) as a rule, you know.
Not usually but… Very seldom.
Yeah, but you, you’re, you know it’s dif- ferent with you because you’ve already become such a star through all the years you know, so that’s kind of like, if Willie Nelson wanted a record deal with somebody, you know, it’d be kind of easy for him to get one, too. (Laugh- ing) You know? Well, I reckon it’d be easier for ol’ Willie to get one than me, (Laughs) but anyway, it worked out perfect and I couldn’t ask for bet-
ter people to have worked with. Ben Tanner’s a smart kid, and a great engineer and we used a lot of the young kids around here. It was kind of a mix of young and old, mostly the younger kids here in Muscle Shoals and we had the Secret Sisters sing on it and Britney (Howard), a gal with Alabama Shakes. She came in and sang on one song and Dylan LeBlanc and just a lot of the younger musi- cians came in and played. It was so much fun. And then of course, I had Spooner (Oldham) and David Hood come in and play. In fact, the name of the album is Oh My Goodness, and that’s a song Spooner and I wrote probably about 1968 or something. I always thought that if I ever did record that song, that I just would want to do it with just me and Spooner because Spooner had such a beautiful piano piece, the way he played this song. In fact, in- stead of writing a bridge to it, we just let Spooner play so it’s really kind of a short song. It’s beautiful the way Spooner plays
Oh yeah, it really is. And that was the whole reason for doing it like that.
Well, I was glad that you cut some of those songs that you had never recorded yourself. It’s all great. I’ve been reading the reviews, too and I’m not the only one who sees it. Ap- parently all the people from NPR all the way down are talking about how it’s going to be one of the best albums of the year.
I’m so happy and proud for you. I can’t even tell you. It’s just really such a good album, there’s nothing bad on it. One thing I wanted to ask you earlier and I forgot, was, when they did those Scott Boyer benefits a few years ago, down in ‘Bama-lama, I went to both of them and you did a song at one of them that I just loved about Lake Pontchartrain… Oh, yeah, “Across the Pontchartrain”
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