Tag: Phillips Recording

Categories
Music Music Blog

Jerry Phillips Remembers J.M. Van Eaton

J.M. Van Eaton receives a Founder of the Sound Award from Jerry Phillips in 2020 (Photo courtesy Ameripolitan.org)

Last Friday, on February 9th, drummer James Mack Van Eaton, aka “J.M.” or “Jimmy,” passed away at the age of 86, and with him were lost some of the last first-hand memories of Sun Records’ early days. Any fan of Jerry Lee Lewis knows Van Eaton’s work, for on the day that Lewis showed up at Sun with his cousin, J.W. Brown, ready for his first proper recording session, producer Jack Clement called up Van Eaton and guitarist Roland Janes to fill out the band, and the rest is history.

As described in Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll, the ad hoc quartet cut over two dozen tracks that day. After they’d played themselves out, Janes took a bathroom break, then emerged only to hear Van Eaton and Lewis playing on as a duo, indefatigable. As it turned out, that stripped down drums-and-piano version of “Crazy Arms” was Lewis’ first hit for the Memphis label. And that was just the beginning, with Janes and Van Eaton going to to accompany Lewis on many of his hits. Ultimately, Van Eaton would record with several other Sun artists, including Billy Lee Riley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Charlie Rich.

To reflect on the passing of one of Sun Records’ giants, I called on Sam Phillips’ son, Jerry Phillips, to share his memories of the man and his music.

Memphis Flyer: Did you know J.M. back in the day, when he was most active at Sun Records?

Jerry Phillips: I’ve known J.M. pretty much all my life. He started young at Sun and was I was young too, and over the years I’ve played with him and he’s played with me. You know, I was in Spain a couple of years ago at the Rockin’ Race Jamboree, a rockabilly festival. I started listening to the drummers, and you know, every one of those drummers was either trying to play like J.M. Van Eaton or they were playing J.M. Van Eaton licks. It wasn’t J.M. Van Eaton, but man, they were trying hard to be him.

He had quite a distinctive approach, didn’t he?

At the 2020 Ameripolitan Awards, J.M. got the Founder of the Sound Award, and they asked me to present it to him. In my speech I said, ‘I don’t know that Sun Records would have been the Sun Records it became without J.M.’s drumming.’ There was a definite sound that he had, and that’s what gave Sun a lot of its personality. I just don’t think we would have had the same sound or the same legacy had J.M. Van Eaton not been playing drums.

Just as my dad would say, ‘If you’re not doing anything different, you’re not doing anything at all.’ And J.M.’s drumming was completely different from anybody else’s that I’ve heard — except for the guys that are trying to imitate him. You never knew if he was going to do a roll, or what he was going to do. And he had that shuffle beat.

J.M. left full-time music behind for many years before coming back to the stage. Did he still have it when he got back in the game?

Oh, he definitely did. Probably 20 years ago, he brought a gospel group into the studio. And he played sessions with different people, just from kind of hanging around at Phillips Recording. Those guys that came out of Sun liked to just hang around. That’s what they did at Sun, they hung around.

Of course, you can’t leave Roland Janes out of the equation, either. Because J.M. and Roland were like a team. When Roland passed, they did a tribute to him at the Shell, and me and J.M. and Travis Wammack all got together and played.

J.M. eventually moved to the Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals area and bought a house, and he always played quite a bit over there with different people. He played with Travis Wammack a lot. And I saw him and played with him more often there, since I was in the Shoals quite a bit because of our radio stations. We were better friends as adults, you know what I mean? And he just loved the Shoals area, and everybody there loved him.

He was just an extremely likable guy, wasn’t he?

I just can’t say enough about J.M.’s drumming, but also what a great person he was. I mean, I think he knew he was a great drummer, but maybe he didn’t. He never was one to say, ‘Hey, I’m a great drummer.’ But he just was. If you had J.M. on your session, you knew who was playing drums just by listening to him. And that was a signature Sam Phillips/Sun trademark, was that everybody over there sounded like themselves — and different. Tell me one drummer that J.M. sounded like!

Did you see or speak to J.M. soon before he passed away?

I did talk to J.M. the other day, I think it was a day before he passed away. We just had a little brief conversation. I told him how much I loved him and how important he was to everything. But he was pretty weak. He wasn’t really in the greatest shape, you know? Once his kidneys failed, he went downhill fairly quick. But up until that point, he was in pretty good health.

I’m gonna miss J.M. I really am. And I think J.M. was one of the most important people in the history of rock and roll music. I really do.

A celebration of life for J.M. Van Eaton will be held on Friday, February 23rd, at First Assembly Memphis, 8650 Walnut Grove Road, Cordova, from 6 to 8 p.m. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 2nd, at Cypress Moon Studios, 1000 Alabama Ave., Sheffield, Alabama. Call (256)381-5745 for details.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: “Deck The Halls, Y’all” by Susan Marshall

Susan Marshall

It’s Christmas week, and you need to chill. Legendary Memphis songstress Susan Marshall is here to help. “Deck the Halls, Y’all” is the slow-burn comedown track on her 2015 holiday album Decorations of Red. It’s a hill country blues take on the classic yuletide carol.

Director Kim Bledsoe Lloyd made this music video for the song in 2020, which she says features Marshall and drummer Pee Wee Jackson “filmed at Phillips Recording Studio and then stuffed inside a snow globe.” Let’s just take a moment to admire the brilliance of her concept.

Susan Marshall decks the halls, y’all.

Lloyd mixed in some images from a 1949 version of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and 1959’s “Santa Claus vs. The Devil,” as well as home movie footage of Sam and Jerry Phillips’ family Christmas celebration and the Orange Mound Christmas parade. The result is a fizzing sip of holiday good cheer. Deck them halls, y’all!

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Impala Lives! Teenage Tupelo Soundtrack Enjoys Vinyl Reissue

CREDIT: Cover artwork by Rui Ricardo

Cover artwork by Rui Ricardo

The times I was lucky enough to work with Roland Janes at Sam Phillips Recording Service are burned into my mind’s eye, not to mention my ears. One such moment was helping out some friends in Impala, as they cut tracks for what would become El Rancho Reverbo, their debut full-length on Icehouse. What struck me at the time was the way the late producer, who by then was legendary for his role in early rock-and-roll, yet oddly under-recognized in Memphis, dug into the heart of each musical adventure. As arrangements were hammered out, Roland was right there, brainstorming with the band, leaning forward in his control room chair and listening intently. His focus and quiet enthusiasm was contagious, as was his way of stripping each composition down to its core. 

A similar energy must have pervaded the soundtrack they cut a year later, once again at Phillips under Roland’s guidance. Scoring Mike McCarthy’s Teenage Tupelo was an apotheosis for the band: If their previous blend of surf, crime jazz, and roadhouse R&B borrowed heavily from soundtracks of the past, here at last was a chance for those sounds’ cinematic potential to be realized. And the thrift-store mash up of pulp influences that informed McCarthy’s film perfectly matched the band’s aesthetics.

Bassist and producer Scott Bomar spoke with the Memphis Flyer’s Andria Lisle about the score  in 2005:

“I think Teenage Tupelo is the most accurate representation of Impala and what we were capable of doing,” Bomar says. “It really paved the way for what I did on Hustle & Flow. Mike knew these guys down in Mississippi who used to play with [Memphis rockabilly/country singer] Eddie Bond, so we had this pedal steel player and this piano player who we’d never played with before, and we had to create these two [tracks] that were supposed to be coming from a jukebox. So we had to re-create [the sounds of] a ’60s Tupelo, Mississippi, trucker jukebox. I like a lot of different types of music, and that’s what’s fun about working with movies. People want and need so many different types of music — a country song on a jukebox or maybe a polka.”

Indeed, as the 1995 soundtrack now enjoys a vinyl rerelease on Chaputa Records out of Portugal, it’s eclecticism is striking. Beyond the band’s usual mix of influences, there are touches of country in “Johnnie’s Drive-In” and “Tom’s Automotive,” spaghetti Westerns in “Tomb of the Tupelo Twin,” and even a jarring free-jazz moment in “Pinstripe (Capt. Crypt’s Theme).”  And the band’s crime jazz elements are given more space than ever, in numbers like “D’Lana Walks at Night,” “Rumble Suite,” and “Blue Light of Capricorn.”
Dan Ball

Impala recording with Roland Janes (third from left)

Through it all, Roland Janes’ subtle production touches, such as the tone of the percussion in “Woman in Chains” or the glorious mid-range of the piano in the country numbers, shine through. It is indeed an apotheosis of the band’s and the producer’s vision, and it’s heartening to see this, one of the greatest expressions of the ’90s Memphis scene, honored internationally in this gate-fold vinyl release.

Teenage Tupelo is available at the Electraphonic Recording website and local record stores.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

The Memphis Heat Soundtrack is Hot Stuff

I suppose the Flyer‘s other Chrises — film editor McCoy and music editor Shaw — will be writing about this in the days and weeks to come. But since FOTW works the local wrestling beat, it seemed appropriate to break the news here. The creative team behind Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’ is celebrating the documentary’s 5-year anniversary with a March 24th screening at MALCO’s Cinema Paradiso that doubles as an official release party for the film’s previously unavailable soundtrack. Serious vinyl nerds will want to know that the handsome blood red platter was the first disc cut on Phillips Recording’s newly refurbished record lathe. But that’s just trivia. The Doug Easley-produced tracks — often introduced with sound bytes from the movie — are all pretty fantastic too.

The record opens with a clip of Superstar Bill Dundee explaining the meaning of heat: “Heat is when they don’t like ya.” The Superstar’s definition transitions perfectly into “Black Knight,” a full throttle scorcher by River City Tanlines. It’s an excellent start to a disc as offbeat and entertaining as the film that inspired it.  

The Memphis Heat Soundtrack is Hot Stuff

“Black Knight,” is also the only track on the entire record that wasn’t created expressly for Memphis Heat. What follows is a series of punchy instrumentals that will do the same thing for your ass they do for the film: Make it move. 

This is probably my favorite (mostly) original Memphis movie soundtrack since Impala scored Mike McCarthy’s Teenage Tupelo. The tracks, recorded by a clutch of Memphis’ finest players, have a vintage feel and walk such a fine line between joyous and sleazy they may remind some listeners of the Las Vegas Grind series. 

Good stuff. 

The Memphis Heat Soundtrack is Hot Stuff (2)