Serendipity, hell—what we have here is a miracle. On a November day in 1969, soul shouter Wilson Pickett, members of the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and a little-known blues guitarist named Duane Allman found themselves at a former tobacco warehouse turned recording studio at 603 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
What happened at FAME Studios on that day in November is the stuff of legend, and what happened after that is even more the stuff of legend, but suffice it to say that the little-known guitarist would suggest to the soul shouter that The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” might make for a great cover. “Wicked Pickett” had no reservations about recording pop material—the 1968 Hey Jude LP included a (hardly memorable) cover of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” which he released as a single, and his 1970 album Right On would include covers of the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” and the ubiquitous “Hey Joe.”
They might have seemed like an unlikely pairing—the Detroit (by way of Alabama) hard soul vet responsible for such immortal songs as “In the Midnight Hour,” “Land of 1000 Dances,” “634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.),” “Mustang Sally,” “Funky Broadway,” “Engine No. 9,” and “Don’t Knock My Love,” and the blues slide guitarist whose biggest claim to fame up until that time was playing with Hour Glass, a failed pop band that once set Edgar Allan Poe’s “Bells” to music. It’s worse than you think it is.
But something happened in FAME studios during those sessions. Pickett and Allman clicked. Allman’s stinging licks on “Toe Hold” could be the best thing about the song, and he’s all over the superfunky and horn-heavy “My Own Style of Loving.” And Pickett doesn’t sing so much as throw punches.
And while “Born to Be Wild” may be less than the sum of its parts, those parts are nothing to sneeze at. Pickett’s vocals have junkyard dog bite, and Allman’s guitar floats like a butterfly and stings like a motherfucker. And the band doesn’t pick up the tempo so much as push it along at a pace that is well in excess of Alabama’s posted speed limit.
And the chemistry extended beyond that created by Pickett and Allman—the latter doesn’t play on the boast-and-a-half blast of sheer machismo that is “Man and a Half” (“Only once in a lifetime a man like me comes along/Shakespeare wrote poems about me even before I was born”). And that “No brags, just facts” is definitive. And while Pickett is the hyperkinetic type (it’s hard to imagine him sitting down, period), his incendiary performance on “Sit Down and Talk This Over” is perfection with a great horn arrangement.
But “Hey Jude” is the one, a song so great that it would have a rippling effect that would change the course of rock history. And not just because Allman’s performance on the song so wowed Eric Clapton when he heard it on his car radio that he promptly called Atlantic Records to find out who the guitarist was. Two years later, Clapton would ask Allman to join Derek and the Dominos.
More importantly, Muscle Shoals guitarist and record producer Jimmy Johnson would later credit Allman’s playing for literally birthing Southern Rock. It’s a wonderful thought—that Southern Rock was born in a converted tobacco factory during the making of a soul record.
Of course, that’s just one man’s opinion. Others date the birth of Southern Rock to way back in 1963, when Lonnie Mack cut the instrumental “Memphis.” You can hear it in his electrifying guitar runs. But it doesn’t sound that much different from the rest of the songs on his tres cool LP The Wham of that Memphis Man!, and I’m sticking with “Hey Jude.”
But like they say, it takes a village, and “Hey Jude” is the perfect collaboration. Between Pickett, Allman, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (or as they were better known, the Swampers, who in addition to Johnson on guitar included David Hood on bass, Barry Beckett on piano, and Roger Hawkins on drums), and horn players Gene “Bowlegs” Miller and Jack Peck (trumpets), Joe Arnold and Aaron Varnell (tenor saxophones), and James Mitchell (baritone saxophone). Toss in Marvell Thomas, whose organ line runs through the song and gives it much of its glory, and what you have is four minutes and change of pure musical bliss.
It’s easy to summarize what makes “Hey Jude” a landmark. From the opening notes, Pickett’s voice is all muscle. Allman plays fills between each line, but the power and the glory don’t really occur until the organ hits this high and regal note, and the horns come in. After that, Pickett is truly a man-and-a-half, and at around the 2:20 mark, he really lays it on until he delivers a series of blood-curdling screams, at which point Allman comes wailing in. It’s one of the best guitar solos of all time, in my opinion, but what makes it, makes the whole song, makes life worth living for Christ’s sake, is the way Pickett screams and creams all over Allman’s solo.
The general effect is akin to picking up a live power line. It’s like you’re getting two of the greatest performances in rock history at the same time, and I think the most amazing thing about “Hey Jude” is the fact that I thought no one could out-scream Paul McCartney when he put his mind to it. But here’s Wilson Pickett, topping him without even trying!
But it’s a mistake to overlook the brilliance of the first half of the song. Wicked Pickett, who certainly had his way of muscling a song, of beating them up even, and who put out some of the hardest-hitting soul dance records ever, actually manages to capture the emotion of the song. He makes you feel the words, believe that he believes them, owns them. Until the 2:43 mark, when he commences to scream better than maybe anyone ever has, and continues to scream his way through the rest of the song while Allman plays a solo that, to hell with Lonnie Mack, genius or not, is pure Southern Rock.
Duane Allman had so much ahead of him, but it wasn’t in the cards. At the same time, Pickett went on to put out record after record, most of them not as good as his best. You have to really dig at points: 1970’s “Engine No. 9″ from In Philadelphia is pure dead brilliant, ”Lay Me Like You Hate Me” from his 1978 “disco” LP Funky Situation ditto, but a cover of the Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”? Talk about your sad wastes of machismo.
By 1979, Robert Christgau was writing, “I’d like him back too, but wishing won’t make it so.” Ten years had passed since he awed with “Hey Jude,” twelve years since he’d funkified and sanctified “Mustang Sally.” “Oh lord,” he sang, then he screamed and said, “Guess I gotta put your flat feet on the ground.” At his best, there was nobody better.
On “Hey Jude,” two human beings from completely different worlds came together to produce a song that is utterly otherworldly. How to describe it? Words simply aren’t up to the task. “Hey Jude” will move you, awe you. Certain songs fall into the realm of the miraculous. Harry Nilsson’s “Sail Away.” The Pooh Sticks’ “I’m in You.” “Layla.” “Madame George.” They blow the top of your head off. They’re uncanny. “Hey Jude” is proof that God exists, whether he exists or not.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
