Peter Stone Brown Archives Podcast Peter Stone Brown Archives

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This interview happened in the last week of March in 1994 at WMMR, once the number one FM rock radio station in Philly. Al Kooper, a Nashville resident was in town to promote a new album ReKooperation , an instrumental album that was a tribute to the organ masters of the '50s and '60s who'd inspired him from Jimmy Smith to Bill Doggett to Booker T.
The album on an indie company, MusicMasters came and went pretty quickly and so did the label. As this interview will show, Kooper didn't expect more than that.
Kooper was great to interview because not only does he answer questions in a totally direct manner, he's also hysterically funny. At times it was hard to ask the next question because he kept me cracked up and also quite at ease from the minute I walked in the door. I was his last interview that day and at the time the music industry seemed dominated by people wearing vinyl baseball warm-up jackets that usually had the name of a company on the latest promotion on them so when I walked in wearing a beat-up leather jacket and cowboy boots, Kooper said, “You're the most refreshing sight I've seen all day,” and he meant it.
Parts of this interview were originally published in a long-gone weekly paper in Philadelphia on April 6, 1994 . Sometime after that, a friend of mine posted parts of it as part of a discussion on the Usenet group, Rec.Music.Dylan. Those parts later found their way much to my astonishment into the English Dylan magazine, Isis .
Keep in mind this was done more than eleven years ago. Kooper no longer lives in Nashville, recently released a new album, and some of the people mentioned here are no longer around and even Warner Brothers Records isn't really Warner Brothers Records anymore.
Why did you move to Nashville ?
So I could semi-retire. I thought there was no danger of me getting involved in country music. I thought I'd be relatively safe there, no danger of them even wanting to be involved with me, even though myself and Bill Szymczyk made the two records that all country music is modeled after in the '90s, and we were doing them at the same time at the same studio. He was in studio A, I was in studio B at the record plant, he was doing (the Eagles') Hotel California, and I was doing (Skynyrd's) Second Helping.
What changes have you seen in Nashville in the almost 30 years since you first went there to do Blonde on Blonde?
Not much. It's a little more cosmopolitan, but it's still a great place to live. I love living there.
I was at SXSW in Austin …
That's not Nashville . I've lived in Austin ,. That's a great place to live also, but you can't make a f*****g penny there. It's just hopeless.
…and they were talking about the music business may be shifting out of L.A.
It has to. I won't go back to L.A. Forget about it. I was in the earthquake. That was the start of my bad winter.
Well, it wasn't a great winter here either.
I went to a bunch of places. Every place I went to, I had a f*****g disaster.
Are you planning to tour behind this new album?
I'm trying to figure out how to do it. It always ends up costing me money which is why I don't do it more often. I gotta figure out a way to do it 'cause I really want to go out and play. The kind of show I wanna put on, I gotta take six other musicians with me, and it's like... you can't make any money. You can't even break even. I'll break even, okay. So if I could figure out how to do that, I'd do that for a living because I love to play. And the business is so fucked up that I can't go out and play. I can't do what it is that I do.
What led you to make an all instrumental album?
It's just something I always wanted to do. I just had to find the right moment for. And this is the right moment. I really had nothing at stake 'cause I hadn't made a record in so long.
The album has a more of a sense of history to than some of your other albums, like when you talk in the notes about going to see the jazz guys at Birdland. I always figured you to be more of a ro

This interview took place backstage at the Bijou Café right before Carl Perkins was to do his first show in Philadelphia in years with a band that included two of his sons. It was a rare occasion and I don’t believe he ever returned. At the time he had a new album out that pretty much ended up going nowhere and I’m not sure if the album he talks about at the end of the interview ever was released.
For whatever strange twist of fate, that’s the way it was for Carl Perkins, a man who was recognized by musicians more than anyone else, though in many ways he was easily as talented as the rest of the artists on Sun. For Perkins, it was bad luck -- a car crash on the way to his Ed Sullivan appearance and that crash seemed to set the tone career-wise for the rest of his life. If Perkins had any bitterness it wasn’t apparent. He was one of the friendliest and nicest people I’ve ever met.
PSB: When did you first start playing?
Perkins: I started playing back about as far as I can remember. I was about 5 or 6 years old when I got my first guitar. Of course, I liked country music. I grew up on a cotton plantation in West Tennessee . But I also liked the black blues and I liked the southern gospel spiritual music. So, what I did was try to play country music with a black man’s rhythm and it came out as rockabilly music. But I loved guitars all my life. Ever since I can remember, I wanted me as guitar as a little kid, and finally got me a little cheap one and I just lived with it in my arms. I loved it.
Can you talk a little about Memphis and the scene around Sun studios? I saw a picture of you and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash standin’ around a piano.
It was a great era, it was a great time. There was no jealousy at Sun record company between say Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich and myself. We were all poor boys. By poor I mean, poor! We didn’t have nothin’ you know and everybody was really wantin’ everybody else to do good and there was no jealousy. When one recorded it was nothin’ to look around and see Johnny Cash or Charlie Rich sittin’ in the studio wishin’ you well. It was that type of thing. It was one of the greatest labels, greatest atmosphere at 706 Union Avenue . It was a very small place, but there was a lot of devotion to what we were doing, individually plus collectively. Everybody was for Sun Record Company. It was kind a little tight package down there for a couple of years.
Was there ever any jamming?
Oh yeah. That was done quite a bit. In fact, you mention this picture of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee and myself. There has now in the last year surfaced an hour and fifteen minutes tape of us singing and picking together. It’s in court in Tennessee right now as to who actually owns that piece of tape. This happened at a session of mine. The session that I recorded “Matchbox” and “Your True Love.” And my lawyers think because I paid for it that it might be mine. Of course some other people, Shelby Singleton who bought the Sun tapes feel like it’s his. So I don’t really know. I do know that this album will be out pretty soon. I’ve got a copy of it and it’s not that bad at all. It’s better quality than I ever thought it was. I really didn’t know, or did any of the guys know that it was being recorded. But it’s a strange thing, an hour and fifteen minutes and there’s not a dirty word on it. But it’s a jammin, talkin’ stompin’ songs, that say “Hey man, let’s do it this way.” But it’s Elvis as I have really never heard Elvis on record. He’s happy. You can hear the dialogue in between the songs. We talk about different things. But it’s a great collectors item. My guitar playing is horrible on it ’cause we were playing songs I never heard or songs I that I’d never tried to play. But that’s beside the point. It does exist. It will be out. I’d say sometime early next year.
What were the early rock and roll tou

Full text
PSB: How did you first start out?
Well that’s a long story that goes back to kind of a long line of playin’ at talent shows, theaters and what-have-you, and comin’ from a very poor family havin’ to dance for the soldiers and make money to the pay money to pay the rent.  Kind of built my talent up to necessity for survival and when we started talent shows, it was kind of easy for me to win.  I won so many talent shows I guess they just they just got tired of me and decided to let me make it.  
Other person: I was listening to your new record and it seems like a new direction for James Brown that’s moving into an area of sort of sophisticated production away from that raw funk sound that we kind of associate with you.  What do you feel about your musical direction now?
No.  That was just change.  It’s kind of hard to have a direction because of the fact that my past has caught up with all of the kids, the rock clubs and everything, they’re so crazy about my older stuff.  We just recorded a live album.  Went to Japan where they have the best facilities in the world.  It’ll be out next of the original James Brown sound with new arrangements.  We had a band, you’ll see what I’m talkin’ about, all the excitement that the entertainment needs today.  But by the same token, I like the studio recordings, which produced by Brad Shapiro was fantastic and I’m one who kinda wanna do it all.  I don’t wanna have this one direction.  I think the main direction that I’m goin’ in today is what the country has ceased to go in, in the direction of entertainment.  I decided to come back out and entertain the people.  They need some entertainment, that’s all.
Other person:  Do you feel that as opposed to the disco thing which is strictly a sort of recorded dance....
Well, disco gave people a chance to dance.  They’d been sittin’ down for about 15 years, so they wanted to dance.  I think what’ll happen today is you’ll have dance concerts, you’ll be playin’ live and then they’ll dance and the ones that want to sit, they’ll sit.  If you’re hot enough, you’ll keep ’em standin’, if you’re not, then they’ll sit down.  It’s be kind of bad for ’em to sit down.
Other person:  James, I interviewed a few people outside in the bar and a number of ’em told me that, a number of black people told me that you as an individual meant quite a bit to their life and that you were an inspiration and the whole soul drive really kept ’em goin’ for awhile.  Did you ever have that as an intent?
Well it was my intent to contribute to humanity and I didn’t want it to be just black people.  But however I wanted to do what I could for people ’cause people made me what I am today.  I think that’s everyone’s duty.  However, I think God give me a talent to entertain people to try to make them forget their problems and whatever and kind of help them to get themself goin’ and reorganize themself or what have you.  So that’s really where I’m at about entertainin’ and tryin’ to give back and keep the energy goin’.
Matthew Berg:  A lot of people came through your band like Bootsie and Fred Wesley and the horns.  What do you think about the kind of music they’re making now, the younger people or even someone like James Chance.  Have you heard him?
No I haven’t, but what it is, you fellas, youngsters just kind of come along a little late.  We were talkin’ about it earlier with the owner of this club who I’ve known for quite awhile.  Naturally, being young at heart or bein’ people at heart, human, if you see me around the house, you’d see how I feel because I would probably come with my boots on and western hat my denims and things.  I know I’m in a lot of bags, so sometimes I put my suit on, bust the collar open and sometimes I’ll take you inside, I’ll take you up in how I look my most sophisticated but what Bootsy and them is doin’ is

Interview with Peter Stone Brown talking about the life and work of Bob Dylan recorded in 2018.


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