Hooked on the American Sound
Reflections on the legacy of Chips Moman and American Sound Studios
Welcome music lovers to another edition of ‘Listening Sessions’ as well as a happy Fourth of July to all my American readers as well as a belated Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians.
It’s purely a coincidence that my essay on American Sound Studio, a hit factory in Memphis that was dominant in the late sixties, comes out on the Fourth of July but here it is. I love the music that was made in the studio, both the well-known hits by the Box Tops, kind of the studio’s in-house band, as well as the tracks that artists like Brenda Lee, Neil Diamond, Dusty Springfield and B.J. Thomas among others made there. The artist perhaps most synonymous with American Sound is Elvis Presley and while I touch on him here, I only do so in passing as I have written quite a few times about Elvis in this space (another essay on him is coming this autumn) and it’s an aspect of the studio’s story that’s been well-documented elsewhere. One omission in my piece is Herbie Mann’s Memphis Underground on which the studio’s musicians teamed up with Mann, vibraphonist Roy Ayers, and guitarists Larry Coryell and Sonny Sharrock. The results are as incredible as can be imagined.
I hope you enjoy what I’ve written and will share your thoughts as well.
Until I’m next in touch, my good listening be with you all!
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How to describe the groove here? The undulation of the rhythm and its various building blocks. The momentum of the pulse as it ripples through the speakers. The connection with the body and how it compels movement. And, while we’re at it, the ease with which it comes together, the preternatural forces at work that makes it seem like making a pop record that practically screams a hit is as second nature as the act of putting one foot in front of the other to walk.
I suppose infectious works here but that seems cliché. Elemental may be more like it. The opening rhythm throbs, a little swampy but polished and precise. Burbling underneath is a locked-tight lick on an electric sitar, fattened up with a sustained organ note underneath it. The backbeat, first centered on the bass drum and then through cross sticks, begins just a hair late at the start of each verse as the singer, still a teenager, uncoils a slightly coarse, wise-beyond-his-years, lead. Strings add drama as the band temporarily drops out in the middle of the chorus. A bass singer adds a country flair in later repeats of the opening groove.
‘You Keep Tightening Up On Me’ would be the final recording by the Box Tops to chart, hitting #92 on Billboard in early 1970 just as the group disbanded, and had been recorded two years earlier. If it had been released right after it had been laid down on tape, it may have been as big a hit as ‘Cry Like a Baby.’
Now, it exists as one of countless examples of the work of the Memphis Boys of American Sound Studio. The core of the group consisted of six musicians. On ‘You Keep Tightening Up On Me,’ that’s Reggie Young adding the irresistible electric sitar part and that’s Gene Chrisman on drums adding the fill that leads into the chorus. The rest of the Boys were guitarists Tommy Cogbill and Mike Leech, pianist Bobby Wood and organist Bobby Emmons.
Collectively, they were one of the ensembles whose musical fingerprint were on an almost incomprehensible number of hit recordings, similar to Motown’s Funk Brothers, Stax’s Booker T & the MGs and the Memphis Horns, the players of Fame Studios, the Nashville A Team and the roster of musicians now commonly called the Wrecking Crew.
These ensembles of studio cats all specialized in a distinct texture of American music. Down Detroit way, the specialty was orchestral soul. In Memphis at Stax, soul was grittier. At Fame in Muscle Shoals, the soul had grit too. In Nashville for RCA Victor and Decca primarily, it was country pop perfected. In Los Angeles, the pop was complex and sounded huge. At American Sound Studio, the Memphis Boys synthesized it all, making the American sound the most American of all.
The Box Tops, fronted by lead singer Alex Chilton, were, in many ways, the studio’s in-house band. Their first single, ‘The Letter,’ was a chart-topper. It was produced by Dan Penn, primarily a songwriter who had moved from Fame to American Sound in 1966 and it was written by Wayne Carson Thompson. While Leech provided a brass and string arrangement for the ‘The Letter,’ it was the Box Tops—with Chilton, there was guitarist Richard Malone, pianist John Evans, bassist Russ Caccamisi and drummer Doug Smythe—who were featured on the recording. This soon became the exception rather than the rule.
While the backing track is good, it is nondescript. The song is sold on Thompson’s conceit: the prospect of a relationship reconnection set against the backdrop of the romance of air travel (back when it offered glamour and legroom) as well as Chilton’s vocal—his voice intentionally hoarse—and the sound of a plane taking off at the end. The group’s follow-up single, ‘Neon Rainbow.’ also written by Thompson, had the Memphis Boys in place of the group save for Chilton. The comparison between the two recordings is startling. It’s even more so on what came next.
‘Cry Like a Baby’ had Penn moving from the producer chair to teaming up with keyboardist Spooner Oldham, his old colleague from his days at Fame, to write it. The two had earlier success with the big hit ‘I’m Your Puppet’ by James & Bobby Purify. Taking Penn’s place as producer was Chips Moman.
Moman founded American Sound in 1964. He had cut his teeth at Stax in the early sixties with his biggest success coming from steering Carla Thomas’ ‘Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)’ into the Top 10 in 1961. He left three years later after getting into a tussle with Jim Stewart, the founder of Stax, over money.
‘Cry Like a Baby’ starts with a brief introduction of anticipation. Emmons plays a chord on the organ as Chrisman outlines a steady two-beat. Against this backdrop, Young gradually appears, repeating a lick on the electric sitar. The instrument, which looked like a regular guitar but sounded like a sitar, was soon to become very much in vogue once Young, who became part of the Memphis Boys after the passing of bassist Bill Black in October 1965 and in whose combo he had played from 1959 until then, strapped it on. It is the fluid lines that Young plays to answer Chilton’s tough and soulful lead vocal that are the signature element of ‘Cry Like a Baby.’ But they aren’t the only ingredients that make the recording great.
There’s the crisp drums of Chrisman like the fill at the end of the introduction and the way he and Young lock together at the end of the latter’s solo. The fluid bass work of Cogbill also sticks out as does how Chilton throws out line after line from the song, seemingly at random, during the extended coda at the end. The use of a female background chorus ups the gospel soul, deepening the southern feel. While American Sound had already been enjoyed success on the charts with, in addition to ‘The Letter,’ there was Sandy Posey’s ‘Born a Woman’ and Joe Tex’s ‘Skinny Legs and All’ early on, ‘Cry Like a Baby’ announced that American Sound Studio was becoming a hit machine.
As it rode up Billboard’s Hot 100, ‘Angel of the Morning,’ recorded by Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts, a West Coast group whom Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders brought to Moman’s attention, was beginning to make its own upward march. A ballad of wide appeal, it features a drum pattern by Chrisman with a martial feel that would be repurposed a year later for Elvis Presley’s ‘In the Ghetto,’ and a brass arrangement that imbues a mournful, consequential quality.
And as ‘Angel of the Morning’ began its chart descent, up came another hit for the studio. As vibrant as ‘Angel of the Morning’ was muted, ‘The Eyes of a New York Woman’ was the start of a new phase for B.J. Thomas. Initially making his name as a sophisticated country crooner with the Triumphs, he retreated from his Nashville bona fides to embrace a pure pop sound in Memphis. The wide lens of Moman’s production with strings, a double-tracked Thomas vocal in places and a weightless, slightly psychedelic bridge enlivens Thomas, a singer whose tone and authority commanded attention. ‘The Eyes of a New York Woman’ was a modest hit; the follow-up, ‘Hooked on a Feeling,’ (both were written by Mark James, another member of the American Sound crew), was a sensation.
Few suggest the purity of falling in love as sweetly as ‘Hooked on a Feeling.’ Thomas goes all in on his vocal, especially on the final sustained note of the song’s irrepressible refrain. The use of a tambourine-and-conga effect throughout adds a distinctive, unique edge. And then, just as on ‘Cry Like a Baby,’ there’s Young on electric sitar who almost steals Thomas’ show. His lick on the opening approximates a Ravi Shankar run. His brief solo is triumphant and indelible. Throughout the recording, he is in constant, close dialogue with Thomas.
These two singles along with the album on which they appear, On My Way, foreshadowed the approach Moman and the Memphis Boys would take when Elvis Presley would swing through the studio’s doors at the beginning of 1969. It was a modern sound that was rooted in the intangibles: a rock beat with a soulful leaning and a country drive.
Not only could these Memphians make hits, they could re-energize careers. Of course, the music they made with Presley will always stand as their ultimate act of resurrection, the regal culmination of an almost-three-year process of the singer re-discovering how to make records that not only resonated with him but also with the wider public. Their alliance with Dusty Springfield may stand as a close second.
In 1967, Springfield had scored with a seductive, sensual cover of Bacharach and David’s ‘The Look of Love,’ another stylistic twist as the singer moved from the folk of the Springfields with her siblings to the brash British blast of her early solo hits to faux-operatic showstoppers to supper-club chanteuse. And yet, perhaps this was all prologue to what she, along with the Atlantic production team of Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin, recorded in Memphis in the fall of 1968.
‘Son of a Preacher Man,’ with those stabbing asides from Young on guitar as well as cool comping by Emmons on electric piano, the dry, precise beat by Chrisman (like Hal Blaine, he was a drummer you could recognize just by the way he would hit the snare drum) and gospel backing by the Sweet Inspirations, is the iconic track but in reality, it’s just the best known of the multiple of masterpieces on the resulting album, Dusty in Memphis.
It stands not as only a testament to how startling Springfield was as a singer but also in how the Memphis Boys’ success lay in the way they lifted up whomever they were backing. It’s in the feeling of openness they impart on the opener, ‘Just a Little Lovin’,’ the desperation coursing through ‘Don’t Forget About Me,’ the ache on ‘I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore,’ how they become airborne on ‘In the Land of Make Believe’ and the song-long build on the closer ‘I Can’t Make It Alone.’
The largeness of the sound on ‘I Can’t Make It Alone’ is partly due to the brass chart by Mardin but also points to how Neil Diamond’s sojourn to Memphis would be another of American Sound’s success stories.
While Springfield and Presley’s triumphs extended from hit singles to full-length albums, Diamond’s rests on three songs ‘Sweet Caroline,’ which needs neither an introduction nor an explanation as well as ‘Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show’ and ‘Holly Holy’—two key tracks in Diamond’s transition from one of the finest hook-driven songwriters of the sixties to the anthemic scribe of the seventies into the eighties.
They rest on Diamond’s interest in the profundities of faith—hear the way he sings “take my hand in yours / walk with me this day / in my heart I know / I will never stray” on the former—but also on the musicianship of the Memphis Boys, revealed in subtle ways that make all the difference. There’s the slightly off-beat piano riff by Wood after the opening line of ‘Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show’ and Chrisman’s use of brushes and Wood's propulsive piano chords on the incredible “sing a song” set piece of ‘Holly Holy.’
Like the other great studio ensembles of the day, one can get a whole lot out of an American Sound record by just concentrating on what the musicians were playing. This applies to both the recordings that stand as their calling cards—the Diamond tracks certainly among them—as well something like the stuttering yet driving background on Presley’s ‘Suspicious Minds’ that was perfected from the original recording by its songwriter Mark James, a reminder that not everything the Memphis Boys touched turned to gold and that some of the artists that travelled to Memphis looking for a boost did not get what they hoped to receive.
The highly influential Roy Hamilton made the trip in early 1969, coinciding with Presley’s own. His version of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s ‘Angelica,’ a tune Presley was to record but offered to Hamilton, one of his big musical heroes, bursts through the speakers. Its the persuasive equal of something like ‘Kentucky Rain,’ the first and final big hit Presley had at American Sound yet made no impact. The records that Hamilton made there turned out to be his last as he passed later in 1969.
Brenda Lee came in 1970, four years removed from her last appearance on the Billboard Top 40. The resulting Memphis Portrait is as forgotten as Dusty in Memphis is venerated even as Lee goes all in, finding a natural fit and affinity with the Memphis Boys. Hear the marvelous interplay between her and Chrisman on ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ the big sound on the spiritually centered ‘Too Heavy to Carry’ and her covers of ‘Games People Play’ and ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes,’ signatures hits for Joe South, a one-of-a-kind artist that was doing what Moman et al were doing as well.
What they did was take the widest possible musical ingredients to make something deeply individual. To do that is a uniquely American thing to do and even as I am a Canadian, when I hear something that American Sound recorded that was good (and that means almost everything recorded there), I feel something that goes beyond pretty much everything else made at the same time. How to describe the feel here? Exciting, exulting, the purity of the American sound.
Magic. That's what music is.
They have a remarkable legacy of music to be proud of. Oddly, while the trademark grooves of Fame and Muscle Shoals as a whole (and as you have shown, some of American's players were also major contributors to that movement) are celebrated, American is not as well-known save for the celebrity connections, when they should be known more.