“The Gibson Classic Interview,” where we open our archives and share with you interviews we’ve done over the years with some of the world’s biggest artists. This week, we revisit Russell Hall’s 2007 interview with Memphis legend Jim Dickinson.
“I’ve tried to create things that have some shelf life,” says Jim Dickinson. “Great records endure because they’re art. Art is supposed to last, and I’ve never tried to do anything else but make art.”
As a producer, session player, and recording artist in his own right, Dickinson has successfully pursued that ambition for last four decades. An integral cog in the Memphis and Muscle Shoals scenes in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Dickinson played piano on countless albums—including recordings by Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones.
Now in his late sixties, Dickinson remains as active as ever. Working at his legendary Zebra Ranch Studio in Independence, Mississippi, he continues to produce albums for a variety of artists, most notably his sons’ band the North Mississippi Allstars. In the past two years he’s also released two superb albums of his own, both of which prominently feature his barrelhouse piano style. Titled, respectively, Jungle Jim and the Voodoo Tiger and Killers from Space, the recordings consists of rough-and-tumble nuggets from what Dickinson calls “the jukebox of my mind.”
You recently set up a Baldwin M1 in your Zebra Ranch studio. What are your thoughts about the instrument so far?
It’s quite a different experience. I’ve never had a new piano before. It’s an amazing instrument—just beautiful. It’s candy apple red, like a ’58 Chevy convertible. It’s big for a baby grand, but small for a grand, which makes it perfect for recording. In a recording situation a grand piano is really too much. The harmonics and the overtone are so strong they wipe out an acoustic guitar, or an instrument like that. But this piano is perfect.
Can you characterize the sound—what makes it distinctive?
It’s got a really good bottom end—really loud and bright. And that may be because it’s red, in all seriousness. For years my favorite studio piano in Memphis has been a Baldwin grand in Sam Phillips’ studio. It’s had the crap beaten out of it, and they don’t really maintain it, but it just keeps getting better and better. This piano sounds like a smaller version of that one. It has a brightness that’s not usually associated with grand pianos.
You did lots of session work in the ’60s. Did you have to change your style of playing a lot?
You do have to be adaptable to do that kind of work. Working for Atlantic, we would go from Jerry Jeff Walker to Aretha Franklin to Carmen McCrae within a single week—covering everything from rockabilly to reggae. What I do as a piano player is really simple and rudimentary. For that reason I can pretty much play with anyone, regardless of genre. I’m not a jazz player, for instance, but I’ve got a little jazz trick that I do. And the same is true of country music. I’m not really a country player, but I’ve got some country tricks. In session playing, the piano—certainly in rock music if not most pop music—should be colorless. You should be able to detect it only when you take it out, when it’s missing.
Do you read music?
No. I’m completely untrained, as far as that goes. I have really bad eyesight—a multiple vision problem that makes reading music impossible.
Your most famous session is the one you did with the Rolling Stones on “Wild Horses.” Ian Stewart was the Stones’ regular piano player at that time. Why didn't he play on that song?
I didn’t know the reason, for 10 years afterward. As soon as they started doing the song, Stu got up from the piano and started packing the gear, as if they were leaving. I was standing with Jerry Wexler, and Jagger came over to me and said, “So, I assume now we need a keyboardist.” Wexler said, “We could call Barry Beckett.” And I said, “Jerry, I don’t think that’s what he means.” So I just sat and started playing.
Did you take anything away from that session that you were able to use later in your own production work?
Yes. Spontaneity. Capturing the moment. As an R&B player, which is what I was then, you play lines and patterns—things that are very rote. And you play the song until you get it right.
What have you been working on lately?
Just yesterday(29th April) we finished another Allstars record. Actually this will be the first record we’ve used the new Baldwin on. I play most of the piano. Kurt Clayton, a local pianist who plays like Billy Preston, is also on one track. The record is going to be called Hernando. It’s coming out in January.
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