said, “Paul, man, I’m gonna have to find me a bass player. My bass player’s quitting. Do you know any good bass players?” I said, “Yeah.” In fact, the Charlie Daniels Band, I believe they were headed to Tuscaloosa. He said, “We’re on the way to Tuscaloosa to do a show and the bass player’s given two weeks notice.” And I said, “Well, since you’re going to Tuscaloosa, the bass player I know, the best one I know that you need to talk to is Charlie Hayward.” And so the way I remember this now, as soon as they pulled into town, this was well before cell phone days, Charlie went to a pay phone, called up Charlie Hayward on the phone and hired him on the phone. Hadn’t even heard him play. And Charlie, of course, Charlie Hayward, he was ready to go. He packed his bag and his bass and came and got on the bus that night and this was about 1975 and he’s been with Charlie Daniels ever since. That’s how he was hired, in fact. That’s called being in the right place at the right time.
Must have been destiny. So Tuscaloosa was always wrapped up with wonderful musicians. You had Bill Stewart, the drummer, you know, who played on a lot of Capricorn stuff…
Bill Stewart was from Tuscaloosa? Yep. Well, he was living there and you might as well say he was from there. He was playing there and living there. You had Eddie Hinton, and of course, you had Tippy Armstrong who became a renowned session player in Muscle Shoals. Johnny Townsend, from Sanford/Townsend Band, and of course, Chuck Leavell. So those were just to name a handful and so I moved back there and there was this club there in town called the Chef’s Lounge and there was sort of a loosely held together house band playing there. Every one of these musicians, at one time or another, drifted in there and was playing and in fact on any given Friday or Saturday night,
some of these musicians would be there play- ing and the band would vary from weekend to weekend, who was there. But you know, they’d be there playing and jamming and stuff and just a who’s who of musicians. So I moved back there and moved my Hammond organ right on in there, you know and I tried to put together a more stable group than had been here before. I tried to get the same guys together. Build sort of a more concrete band you know. Chuck Leavell was only sixteen and he was about to go into the twelfth grade in high school. He was out on summer vacation, I think, from the eleventh grade and Glenn Butts was guitar player and Bill Stewart on drums, Charlie Hayward played bass for a while, so here was our band and we had that band playing together for about nine months and I was teaching guitar lessons and making a living again. I wasn’t living in Hollywood in the bright lights but I was eating better than I was in Hollywood anyway. And so after about eight or nine months of that, Duane called me from Muscle Shoals one day and says, “Hey man, I want to cut some demos. Would you come up here and play some keyboards on some of them for me?” And he said, “I’ve been playing some sessions and some people at Atlantic listened to my playing and they want to see if I can cut an album as an artist, maybe.” So I went and drove up there and was up there two or three days and Johnny Sandlin was there and Berry Oakley showed up. Duane had just met him down in Florida on one of his trips home or something. So Berry wound up playing bass, Johnny Sandlin drums and I played keys. Duane of course on guitar and vocals and we cut several demos and stuff that Rick Hall produced and most of these tunes later wound up being on some of the Duane Allman anthology records, the very songs we demoed while we were there. Phil Walden came in, he was there and he was wanting to sign Duane and put a band to- gether around him and essentially, he asked me and Johnny Sandlin to put Hourglass
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