And so, Phil asked Johnny Sandlin to cut some stuff so they cut some demos again. I don’t think they what’d you’d call produced- they were just, you know, turn ‘em loose and let ‘em play, you know, and nothing came of that. And so Sandlin I don’t know… Sandlin must not have been impressed… I can’t speak for him but somehow or another, nothing happened from it and so… So I’m the only other staff producer there, you know, me and Sandlin so Phil asked me to try my hand at it, so I guess third time’s a charm so I took ‘em in and this was a proving ground. I just felt like, man, we’ve got to make this happen. This is it. I’d been there about two years and nothing had happened. So we spent long fif- teen hour days in the studio for two solid months, cutting that album and we didn’t know what direction to take, you know, it’s like we just had to get in there. We wanted it to sound like something different somehow, you know. We tried all kinds of crazy stuff and experimental stuff and some of it worked and some of it not so much. But you never know until you try it, you know. Then we put the thing out and and they put ‘em on the road with the Allman Brothers Band and they just took over. All it took was having an audi- ence to hear ‘em and seeing the enthusiasm.
And that was pretty much it. The album was almost an instant hit. The right audience for the exposure, you know and so taking what the Tucker band had, their enthusiasm, their sound and having that great audience, it just happened, you know.
I never will forget the first time I heard
“Take the Highway” you know. I said “Hey, they’re playing a synthesizer on that!” So that was you though, doing that. That was me. That was the studio version of it. Again, we were experimenting.
It was cool as everything though. The
Paul with Charlie Daniels and Toy Caldwell. (Courtesy Paul Hornsby)
whole thing, like you’d said so many times before…people didn’t expect this country, rock-type band to be throwing a saxophone, a jazz saxophone, and flute and jazz drums mixed in with this country… it was such a mix, as I say, I’d never seen anything like it in my life. And then when they did that Don Kir- shner’s concert that Saturday night in Macon, Georgia, I remember every- body in Spartanburg was going crazy! “Oh, our boys are on there with the All- man Brothers!” and Wet Willie! That show kind of broke them. That show did more good for them than it did the other acts on there. Didn’t do a thing for the Allman Brothers. I think they were feudin’ or some- thing during that show or not in a good mood. Wet Willie did well you know, they played outside. Toy was sick as hell that night. You can see that now on the video. He had a fever of about 103 when he was onstage doing that. It’s a wonder he hadn’t died on there. But that show really broke them nationally.
I’ve always told people that that’s what made me want to write and all and play
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77
