you hit it as to how many bases you took. You know, you didn’t have to really run and get thrown out. You just had to hit the cork a cer- tain distance then you get to take so many bases and essentially, that’s how that worked. Within a year, I would say, the Allmans


had cut two albums and they’d done that live album, At Fillmore East, which just took off like a rocket and with the success of that, Capricorn kicked off as a label. All of the sud- den, these acts that Phil had - these black R&B acts who he managed and booked, were coming through and we we were backing them up on records, you know. There were people like Eddie Floyd and there was Arthur Conley who had done “Sweet Soul Music.” That’s just as an example of a couple of the R&B acts that we played behind and all of the sudden the Allman Brothers kicked off and so he saw a new vision, in fact he thought “Hey, white rock and roll bands… that’s gonna be what I need to do.” And so, therefore, that was gonna cut out a lot of our work we were doing, you know, backing up people in the studio. Because a lot of these rock and roll bands coming in, they’re self-contained. They’ve got their keyboard players or what- ever, they’ve got their own musicians so as a band, as a studio band, there was less work for us to do. One of the last ones we had done, we had done a Livingston Taylor album and we had a hit with that. We did two pretty good sized albums with Livingston. All the bands, all the musicians that had come to town at this time were folk musicians, folk people. They wanted to be James Taylor or Livingston Taylor or they’d come to town tot- ing a guitar case with an acoustic guitar in there until the Brothers hit. Then all of a sud- den there was bands showing up with Les Pauls in the case instead of acoustic guitars and everybody had bottle necks on their fin- gers. Things changed real quick right there and just hanging out at the studio every day - playing, jamming, trying to invent something,


trying to make something happen - and you know, we just sort of picked up how to run the board and equipment, just being there every day. I’d come in from playing piano and come in and listen to play back. I’d reach over and turn a knob or two, before you know it, I’m engineering too, you know. One of the first groups that came in that I was offered a hand at producing was a band called Eric Quincy Tate, a band from Texas. Tony Joe White brought ‘em in so I cut an album with them, and it wasn’t a hit but it was a good record and it was as they say, “Critically ac- claimed.” The reviewers gave it great reviews.


Was that Drinking Man’s Friend? Yes!


Great album. It was pretty much a live album. It was cut on eight track and most of the vocals were cut live. You know Donnie McCormick was the drummer - very few overdubs. It was a pretty basic album, but still, we got great reviews and that was about one of the first albums I did. The next one was . . .Wet Willie had seen some guys in South Carolina play they thought was great. They came back, started talking to Phil Walden about The Marshall Tucker Band, and said “you need to hear this band” and so Phil said alright and they set ‘em up an audition showcase at Grant’s Lounge. I remember going and hearing them play that night. Phil was just knocked out with them. And so they had already gone to Muscle Shoals and cut some demos. I don’t know who cut ‘em, if they were produced or if they just were in the studio and played and I don’t know what happened, but nothing hap- pened from it. And I never did hear what they did. I think they were just basic demos, you know.


Yeah, I’ve got those in my collection. They were basic, very basic.


22


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