Today's geezer music history for Sal, bds and other whippersnappers

The genre of American popular music referred to as "soul" music was a melding of rhythm & blues and black gospel.  It began in the early 1950's as a secularized version of black gospel and at that time the audience for it was almost exclusively black.
"Soul" began to evolve in the mid to late 50's at the same time a white audience began to discover black music.  

When I was at the age to first be discovering music and start buying records (about 1960),  the classic soul music was being recorded in Memphis and Muscle Shoals,  Alabama.

Arguably,  the best of it was recorded at the studios in Muscle Shoals and it's bordering town Sheffield,  Alabama by a now legendary group of studio musicians known as the Swampers (aka The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) who backed up a long list of vocalists.

One of the classic recordings which came from this genre has an interesting story.  I'll let wikipedia pick it up from here...

Before the recording session, the song had no title or lyrics.  The session proceeded with the expectation that the vocal artist would produce them for the vocal takes. When it came time to record the vocals,  the vocalist improvised the lyrics with minimal pre-planning, using the melody as a guide for rhythm and phrasing. The performance was so convincing that others working on the session assumed the vocalist had the lyrics written down.

Additionally...

The song is credited to Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright (the bass and keyboard players in the vocalist's own band who didn't even perform on the record). However, the song was in fact written by the vocalist himself, but he gave it to Lewis and Wright.

The recording reached number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B singles charts.

The wailing Hammond B3 organ providing the backbone for this recording was provided by the Swampers' keyboardist,  Spooner Oldham.  Oldham wrote "I'm Your Puppet",  the million selling soul record performed by Pensacola's James and Bobby Purify and produced by Papa Don Schroeder for Bell Records which was also recorded in Muscle Shoals.

Here's a youtube of the record with/lyrics.  I was 17 and in high school when this record was released.
I performed it often in a local soul band called The Twilighters (keyboard player).  It's still one of my favorite ballads,  especially when I'm three sheets to the wind like I was then.  lol

Good God! What a fantastic song. I've danced to that song with every woman I ever loved and every line and every word is true.

Yella wrote:Good God! What a fantastic song. I've danced to that song with every woman I ever loved and every line and every word is true.

And to think the lyric was just what popped into his mind during the recording session.

I just discovered something pretty remarkable.  It's a really good website about the history of soul music.
On this page it refers to the "Southern Soul Superstars".

Surprisingly,   of the eight "Superstars",  two are Mighty Sam and Oscar Toney Jr.  When you start reading you learn that the reason these are referred to as "Superstars" is because in the opinion of some serious soul fanboys these are the most distinctive singing voices regardless of how much acclaim they received.

What is remarkable about it is learning how much Pensacola and Papa Don Schroeder figured into the careers of these two.  Living here at the time this was happening,  I was aware of who they were and that they were produced by Papa Don.  But these two articles portray the story in a way which reveals that our own Papa Don was one of the major players in soul music.

Scroll down to "Southern Soul Superstars" and then click on the links for Mighty Sam and Oscar Toney Jr.

http://www.sirshambling.com/sir_shambling/articlelist.php

By the way, yella, if you read the Mighty Sam page, you'll see a reference to the "506 Club".
That's the black music club I told you about that used to sit diagonally across from where the Five Sisters Blues Cafe is located at the corner of Belmont and Devillers. For many years it was the Pensacola stop on the Chitlin Circuit.

You guys should have been born black so you could have had the whole soul experience...Sinatra is the best Geezer music....

I love Midnight Hour too,  Sal.  When that came out in 1965 it quickly became a staple for local bands performing in our area.  It and Louie Louie were probably heard as much as any other songs of the period.

The Memphis soul sound was also just as dependent on a particular collection of studio musicians as was the case with Muscle Shoals.
The Stax house band contributed as much to the sound as the various frontmen vocalists on all those records.
Steve Cropper,  the house lead guitar,  co-wrote Midnight Hour with Picket.

Of course the same thing held true for Motown.  That collection of studio musicians were known collectively as the Funk Brothers.
Of all three,  the Swampers in Muscle Shoals,  the Funk Brothers in Detroit,  and the Stax musicians in Memphis,  only the Memphis musicians ever received any of the acclaim they deserved at the time they were creating the music.  
The Stax Band actually got billing as Booker T and the MG's and later made minor hits as the Mar-Keys and the Barkays.  
And then of course the major Stax players later got added recognition as The Blues Brothers Band.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:You guys should have been born black so you could have had the whole soul experience...Sinatra is the best Geezer music....

But it was before my time,  Teo.  It's the music you grow up with which is the music which really imprints on most of us.

You should use the correct term ...define geezer
You soul geezers are not actually geezers you are Old Soul Farts

Black guys can't be geezers they are too cool.


In the U.K.: A guy, a bloke, a person in general. The British equivalent of the American slang word "dude".

In the U.S.: An old man, particularly one who is either cranky or eccentric. Rather derogatory term.
(UK) "You're looking for Johnny? Yeah, he's that geezer over there in the green coat."

(US) "Old man Anderson keeps yelling at the kids playing outside. That geezer!"


old geezer


A Geezer is a male englishman who likes drinking, football, and violence, preferably all at the same time. Wants to be the typical cockney jack the lad. They dress up smart to normally pull 'birds' favourites being Stone Island and Burberry. Theyre basically like a better meaner version of a Chav and not bad people to know aslong as you just prove your a 'geezer'. Sorted me ol' mucker...

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:You guys should have been born black so you could have had the whole soul experience...Sinatra is the best Geezer music....

But it was before my time,  Teo.  It's the music you grow up with which is the music which really imprints on most of us.

I grew up with Porter Wagner and Eddie Arnold...my parents were country western...I really didn't like it and found Sinatra and Martin when I was about 17 and locked on to their style..you are right from there on they were my choice with some lovin for the Beatles.

Before your time ? The ratpack was in the mid 60s

TEOTWAWKI wrote:You guys should have been born black so you could have had the whole soul experience.

p.s.  In the 60's during the peak of soul music,  a great many of the session players in Muscle Shoals and most of them in Memphis were redneck southern white boys.  
And before forming the Allman Brothers Band,  Duane and Greg both (and especially Duane) were among the studio musicians in Muscle Shoals.
In many ways,  soul music was a hybrid of black vocalists and white musicians.
So you really didn't have to be born black to be a part of it.  The soul band I was in in the late sixties was referred to as a "salt and pepper" band (half black,  half white).

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:You guys should have been born black so you could have had the whole soul experience.

p.s.  In the 60's during the peak of soul music,  a great many of the session players in Muscle Shoals and most of them in Memphis were redneck southern white boys.  
And before forming the Allman Brothers Band,  Duane and Greg both (and especially Duane) were among the studio musicians in Muscle Shoals.
In many ways,  soul music was a hybrid of black vocalists and white musicians.
So you really didn't have to be born black to be a part of it.  The soul band I was in in the late sixties was referred to as a "salt and pepper" band (half black,  half white).

Okay I guess you can be a grandfathered in Brother.....congrats that must be a rare critter. Is that why you live near Brownsville...feels like home ?

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

Before your time ? The ratpack was in the mid 60s

I was 15 years old in the mid-sixties. Like most teenagers, I was listening to the music my peers were listening to on WNVY and WBSR. Papa Don and Daddy Rabbit weren't playing no Sinatra records. lol

I hated my peers so I guess I was a rebel without a clue back then and went Vegas .....

TEOTWAWKI wrote: Is that why you live near Brownsville...feels like home ?

Not Brownsville.  The black kids in the band lived in the neighborhood back then called The Field.
That's the neighborhood along Miller Street south of Texar Drive where the old Washington High School was.  Today it would be called a "hood".
But I spent some of the best times of my life in that neighborhood.
The three black teenagers in the band were nicknamed BayBay (derives from "baby"),  Bubba, and Jumpback.  The white guitar player we called the Toluene Kid (because he carried a toluene soaked rag in his back pocket). lol
But we all shared one thing in common.  We loved that goddamned "screamin nigger music"  (what my uncle called it).  lol

I gotta run.  Talk to you later.

Bob wrote:By the way,  yella,  if you read the Mighty Sam page,  you'll see a reference to the "506 Club".  
That's the black music club I told you about that used to sit diagonally across from where the Five Sisters Blues Cafe is located at the corner of Belmont and Devillers.   For many years it was the Pensacola stop on the Chitlin Circuit.

Went to "Abes 506" a couple of times. Hell of a experience. I was talking with someone not long ago about going there....

Be safe Boogie Woogie Bob.