Magic City Nights
MAGIC CITY
NIGHTS
Birmingham’s Rock ’n’ Roll Years
ANDRE MILLARD
Wesleyan University Press ♦ Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
© 2017 Andre John Millard
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by April Leidig
Typeset in Garamond by Copperline Book Services
For pictures and more stories and to add your comments, go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MagicCityNights/?skip_nax_wizard=true. For pictures and profiles of musicians and to listen to some of the music, go to http://www.birminghamrecord.com/brc/.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Millard, A. J.
Title: Magic city nights: Birmingham’s rock ’n’ roll years / Andre Millard.
Description: Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, [2017] | Series: Music/interview | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035697 | ISBN 9780819576972 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819576989 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819576996 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Rock music — Alabama — Birmingham — History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML3534.3 .M586 2017 | DDC 781.6609761/781 — dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035697
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration: © OnStage Publishing.
ForBen Saxon, Johnny Powell,Topper Price, and Matt Kimbrell,who kept the faith
Contents
ONE Rock ’n’ Roll Comes to Birmingham 27
TWO Records and Rock ’n’ Roll 45
FIVE Race and Music in Birmingham 91
SIX Music in the Struggle for Civil Rights 108
SEVEN The Beatles Are Coming! 123
EIGHT Birmingham and the Counterculture 143
NINE The Muscle Shoals Sound 156
TWELVE The Morris Avenue Boom 204
THIRTEEN Decline and Fall: The End of Southern Rock 225
FIFTEEN The Next Big Thing 261
SIXTEEN Music and Community 281
SEVENTEEN The Curse of Tommy Charles 300
EIGHTEEN Birmingham Music in the Digital Age 323
Magic City Nights
Introduction
This book is the product of an oral history project begun by Aaron Beam at the beginning of the 1990s. As a music lover and club owner, Beam had made friends with the bands that played his venues, and he became interested in Birmingham’s rock ’n’ roll history as he listened to their stories. Southern musicians are essentially storytellers, and to tell a good story well is to perform. These recollections can cover the rise to fame of a group of musicians, the rags-to-riches stories that are at the heart of rock ’n’ roll mythology, and the corresponding, but no less dramatic, fall from grace. There are creation stories about bands, the writing of a great song, and the early years of a local musician who went on to become famous. Many of these rise-and-fall stories have a moral: the dangers of hubris, the pitfalls of sudden wealth, and the consequences of forgetting one’s friends. Every working musician can be relied on to recount at least one notable adventure of the road, or in a performance in the kind of place one only sees in the movies. The stories often begin: “I remember one night we were playing …” and then, acknowledging a comrade, “He tells it better than I do.” Longtime session man Roger Clark, looking back on forty years in the business, said: “I got a lot of stories. Some of ’em I can’t tell you about … I’d have to leave home … I can tell you a lot of stories, and some of them I wasn’t there.”
Giving interviews to journalists or historians could be taken as merely another performance. I have heard the same stories wonderfully recounted by authors like Peter Guralnick and Robert Gordon in their books duplicated more or less word by word by the same storytellers, at different times and different places. I have also heard the same story told by several different respondents in which the leading role had been appropriated by whoever was telling the story. No matter; these are good stories, and Aaron Beam heard