SONIC REDUCER / CARL HANNI

James Luther Dickinson's Dixie Fried

By Carl Hanni

This month Sonic Reducer pays tribute and respect to James Luther "Jim" Dickinson, one-man repository of the southern musical vernacular, kudzu-crusted swamp boogie conjuror and musical force of nature. 

Jim Dickinson, who recently passed along into the great recording studio on the other side, was one of those Large Characters that can only come from the American South. Equal parts iconoclast, master collaborator, producer of note, studio rat par-excellence, keyboard-man/multi-instrumentalist in demand, character, legend, raconteur and living (now deceased) archive of several Southern musical traditions, Dickinson lived several musical lives, often at the same time. He became, over several decades, the very stuff of Memphis itself. His home (barn, really) studio in the Mississippi Hill Country south of Memphis became a point of destination for generations of bands looks for some genuine Southern grits and grease in their sound and in their point of view. And his life was a tabula rasa of dedication to putting the bomp in the bomp-shu-bomp-du-bomp and the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong.

Jim's myriad of projects, bands, recordings, production credits, etc. have been detailed elsewhere many times, including recently here in Blurt, and are too numerous to go into in complete detail. But if there's anyone out there who hasn't heard the list yet, a few of the highlights include producing and collaborating with Alex Chilton on Big Star's legendary Big Star 3 and Chilton's disaster-masterpiece Like Flys on Sherbert; recording memorable records for The Replacements, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Green on Red, Flamin' Groovies, True Believers, Jason and the Scorchers, North Mississippi All-Stars plus many many more; several fruitful collaborations with Ry Cooder (including the soundtrack to Paris, Texas); and a legendary Muscle Shoals recording session with the Rolling Stones in 1971. Along the way he sired a couple of the coolest kids in music, Cody and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All Stars, played in the legendary bar-room wreckers Mud Boy Slim and the Neutrons and the famous Atlantic Records studio band the Dixie Flyers, recording behind Aretha Franklin among others. Bob Dylan, Toots and The Maytals and Jerry Jeff Walker all benefited from having him in the studio, along with several dozen other acts. Oh, and he recorded a bunch of solo records, starting with 1971's Dixie Fried.

Something of a legendary/long out of print classic, Dixie Fried showcases what Dickinson felt like doing when left to his own devices. It's nine songs form a Memphis stew of looney tunes rock & roll, Hill Country country, white boy blues, minstrel-show boogie and whatever else they feel like taking a run at . Not everything on Dixie Friedsticks in my brain, but the ones that do are impossible to dislodge. He and his 2 dozen + players listed nail the stutter rhythms of the circus side-show boogie on "Oh How She Dances" to perfection. He tears the roof off Carl Perkins' "Dixie Fried," conjuring up a shuffle beat that Little Feat would build an entire career around. His tricked-out version of Bob Dylan's "John Brown" is a psychedelic folk blues classic . His own composition "The Judgement" is a small wonder, a hybrid of jazzy, country flecked gospel and cosmic blues. And his take on Furry Lewis' "Casey Jones (On The Road Again)" is a deliberately unfolding narrative that rolls on like a slow moving train shuttling between the barroom, the jail and the church.

Produced by Dickinson and legendary Atlantic Records producer/engineer Tom Dowd, Dixie Fried sounds delicious in that warm, wet way that so many records did back in the analog early '70s. The drum sound on every track, the Memphis-fried dubby effects on "John Brown" and the fabulous separation in the mix from start to finish are textbook/Production 101; except that, in truth, nothing that Dickinson did resembled anything in a textbook or academic or generic or standard. Intuition pretty clearly dominated intellect in his playing and producing. Enthusiasm, humor (ribald and otherwise) and a sense of communal playfulness infuses everything on Dixie Fried, as it did on most of his records. This is a fun record. 

Jim Dickinson was one of those guys that only come along a few times in a generation. He was a catalyst, the guy putting in the long hours, making everyone and everything around him better, leading by example, setting standards and making and breaking rules as he went along. Jim, wherever you are: is the piano in or out of tune there?

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You can leave comments below or e-mail them to me directly at modmedia@theriver.com .

Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.