“Wicked” Wilson
As you probably know, Wilson Pickett passed away last week at the age of 64. His music was a great influence to many of the musicians of our time. When I first started playing, I learned how to play by listening to his records, backed by the mighty Stax/Volt tandem, including Donald “Duck” Dunn & Steve Cropper. In my time I didn’t know of a band whose set list didn’t include “In the Midnight Hour” & “Mustang Sally”. I venture to say Dunn & Cropper laid the foundation for generations of music to come. I’ll go one further and say if it wasn’t for Duck Dunn, there may not have been a Chris Squire or a Jaco Pastorius! If you haven’t already seen it, I recommend a movie that was based on his music, The Commitments”. Thanks for the memories, Wilson.
January 26th, 2006 at 9:56 am
And don’t forget Donald “Duck” Dunn and Steve “The Colonel” Cropper were members of The Blues Brothers, which did more for the revival of Blues and Rhythm and Blues than any other band in the world… If you haven’t checked out “The 25th Anniversary edition of The Blues Brothers” which includes new interviews and lots of missing footage, you should….. “The Blues” – the only true American music form……
January 26th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
The “Commitments” was great. Highly recommended.
January 26th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Also don’t forget Sir James Paul said that Duck was the best bass player around. As for Wicked Wilsom pickett, his legacy speaks for it self, In my opinion.
January 27th, 2006 at 3:34 am
Oh, we’re namin’ names. Then let’s don’t forget the rest of the Mar-Keys; Smoochie Smith on
keyboards, Terry Johnson on drums, Don Nix on bari sax, Packy Axton on tenor sax and Wayne
Jackson on trumpet. Cropper then founded Booker T. & The MG’s (which did most if not all of
the studio work for Wilson Pickett). They were, besides Cropper and Dunn, Booker T. Jones on
organ and Al Jackson, Jr. on drums.
Another elite bassist, besides McCartney, Pastorius and Squire, who claims to have been
heavily influenced by Duck Dunn is Tony Levin.
This sorta relates to MR’s “concerts you missed” post. I would really like to have witnessed
the Stax / Volt Soul Revue—The Mar-Keys AND Booker T. & The MG’s would go on first and do
instrumentals such as Philly Dog and Green Onions, then they would bring out the singers;
Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett.
MAN !
I was in a band called the Continentals in the sixties which covered, besides the aforementioned
Midnight Hour and Mustang Sally, Hold On (I’m Comin’), Soul Man, Knock On Wood, Try A Little
Tenderness, etc., not to mention numerous songs by Mowtown artists, 2 or 3 by Ray Charles, and
one of my favorites, Dead End Street by another great soul man who we recently lost—Lou Rawls.
January 27th, 2006 at 3:43 am
Correction—MOTOWN.
And ALL of the above happened LONG before Jake and Elwood Blues grabbed a mic.
RUBBER BISCUIT !
January 27th, 2006 at 10:18 am
The MOTOWN stuff with Jamerson on bass is great — he was at least Dunn’s equal.
James Brown’s rhythm sections were awesome, too. Bootsy, baby!
January 28th, 2006 at 10:15 am
I agree about JB’s rhythm section. One of the tightest I’ve ever heard. With JB as the front man, they probably didn’t achieve the notoriety that Dunn & Cropper did.
February 5th, 2006 at 2:04 am
“GOODGODOMIGHTYYALL !” Let’s don’t forget Maceo Parker.
“MACEO ! BLOW YOUR HORN !”