The Memphis Music Foundation proudly congratulates the Memphis Horns on receiving the 2012 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
“This is more great news for Memphis Music,” said Dean Deyo, president of the Memphis Music Foundation. “Congratulations to the Memphis Horns on an honor that represents a tremendous achievement milestone for their lifetime of work in the industry. It is another proud moment for Memphis culture to see the Academy’s Board of Trustees acknowledge the city’s rich roots.”
The duo now joins an historic group of Memphis icons who have received the prestigious honor, including Al Bell, Willie Mitchell, Booker T, and Stax Records co-founder Estelle Axton.
For 42 years the Memphis Horns have made their mark on the history of rock ’n’ roll, contributing a heavy dose of soul. They’ve performed with 32 members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, lending their signature sound to 14 Grammy-winning songs, 52 number ones and 113 top tens. Together and individually they’ve played on 83 Gold and Platinum records selling well over 40 million copies.
The Memphis Horns are Andrew Love, tall, black and as mellow as one of his tenor sax solos, and Wayne Jackson, short, white and as intense as one of his trumpet blasts. They were each reared in all that Memphis music had to offer. Jackson got his start in West Memphis strumming guitar and singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in childhood talent shows. Love began his career playing “Amazing Grace” in Memphis’ Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, where his father, Roy, was pastor. Jackson took up trumpet and trombone in school bands. Each learned to “follow the dots” during the day but really learned to play music at night, sitting in with bands at dozens of Mid-South nightspots in the ’50s.
By the beginning of the ’60s, Jackson was playing with a group called the Royal Spades, which quickly changed its name to the Mar-Keys, in honor of the theater marquee outside the converted movie house that was home to the band’s record company, Stax. A hit instrumental, “Last Night,” landed the Mar-Keys at number one, and Jackson toured the country in a group that included such future Memphis legends as Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Don Nix and Charlie Freeman.
Meanwhile, Love was doing sessions at Hi Records. At the suggestion of Al Jackson, drummer for Booker T. & the MG’s, he brought his sax to Stax, where, along with a musical home for the rest of the decade, he found a partner for life. Love remembers first playing with Jackson: “I loved how our tones blended, and so did Wayne. We have a unique sound. We’ve been together ever since.”
They appeared on virtually every great Stax single, backing Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla and Rufus Thomas and a host of others — a Who’s Who of Southern Soul.
In 1967, they toured Europe with the Stax-Volt Revue and helped Redding steal the Monterey Pop Festival from the likes of the Who and Jimi Hendrix. For Jackson and Love, it was a turning point.
They incorporated in 1969 as the Memphis Horns, offering their services to anyone whose music needed a serious shot of Memphis soul, and the lines began forming. Stephen Stills, Rod Stewart, the Doobie Brothers and hundreds of others have since worked with the men who made up the R&B horn section that provided the model for all others to follow.
“For about ten years, we were making number one records daily,” says Jackson. “It would be King Curtis one day, Tony Joe White the next day, Dionne Warwick the next, and then Elvis.”
Internationally known superstars like Sting, U2, Joe Cocker, Lenny Kravitz, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, B.B. King, Jimmy Buffett. Peter Gabriel, Steve Winwood, Al Green, Willie Nelson, Collective Soul, Primal Scream, Isaac Hayes, and Beyoncé Knowles would regularly fly them to various recording studios all over the world for sessions. If you could copyright a sound, the Memphis Horns would have closed down the market.
