TIPPY ARMSTRONG (1947-1979)

EDDIE HINTON (1944-1995)

from the June 10, 2005 TUSCALOOSA NEWS

Hinton, Armstrong's local sound captured on recording by Ben Windham

“Bandcestors”

(independent release)

For a while, Tuscaloosa was home to two of the greatest blue-eyed soul musicians the South ever produced.

Eddie Hinton was a fine guitarist and songwriter but he made his mark as a vocalist. Author Peter Guralnick described Hinton as “the last of the great white soul singers.”

Tippy Armstrong was a brilliant guitarist. He played lead with Muscle Shoals’ famed house band, the Swampers, on sessions with people like Albert King, Wilson Pickett and Tony Joe White. People who heard him play in the 1960s with groups like The Rubber Band can testify to the intensity he brought to live performances.

Hinton, fighting a losing battle with personal demons, died in 1995 at age 51. Armstrong, who had demons of his own, died even younger, at age 32.

Though they both played in/slocal ’60s bands and both became associated with the recording industry in Muscle Shoals, it seems odd that Armstrong and Hinton never combined to make a commercial recording. It would have been dynamite.

They did, however, record a few demos together in Birmingham in the mid-1970s as part of a group with the working name “Tuscaloosa All-Stars.” The release of those recordings, and others that feature Hinton’s 1960s singing with a local band named the “5 Men-Its,” on a new CD suggests what Southern/smusic lost with their deaths.

Titled “Bandcestors,” the CD is credited to Fred Styles, a musician and songwriter who later became part of the film industry in New York. But as he makes clear in the accompanying booklet, Styles isn’t the star of the show.His is the one name that appears on all 16 of the album’s tracks (all but one previously unreleased), which range from mid-60s soul sessions to the mid-70s demos to a rehearsal medley recorded in New York in 1988. But this album really belongs to Hinton, Armstrong and musicians like Bill Connell, Mike Duke, Johnny Sandlin and Paul Hornsby, among others, who were Styles’ band mates on these recordings.

The collection opens brilliantly, with Hinton singing his Otis Redding heart out on a classic Southern soul ballad, “Nice Girl,” co-written by Styles, from the All-Stars sessions. It’s so strong, it’s hard to believe it’s only a demo. Armstrong’s guitar accompaniment is beautifully understated; at mid-tune he steps forward with an achingly beautiful solo./s Mike Duke’s churchy piano/sis icing on the cake.

Nothing else from those sessions approaches “Nice Girl.” There are stabs at then-trendy country-rock tunes and pop ballads on which Styles and Duke turn in credible vocal performances, but these pieces haven’t held up well over the years. Even so, it’s interesting to hear Armstrong’s fine guitar work in these contexts.

Hinton, however, gets two more vocals, both worth hearing. “Just Another Wild Love Affair” is a medium-paced soul rocker. Drummer Connell lays down a groovy fatback beat, with tasty guitar accents from Armstrong and a strong Duke piano solo. “You Made Me Sing” is a weaker composition, rescued by Hinton’s impassioned vocals.

These pieces and “Nice Girl” would be reason enough to make this an essential part of the Eddie Hinton soul book but there’s some amazing stuff on the CD: six cuts from the 5 Men-Its recorded “live” at Boutwell's Studio in Birmingham in 1966.

A converted church building, Boutwell’s was the “in” spot for Alabama bands hoping to record a hit record in the Beatles Era. Some of those local recordings wound up on 45-rpm records that were popular in Tuscaloosa, Selma, Birmingham or Anniston -- depending on where the band called home -- for a brief time before disappearing.

Many more, like the 5 Men-its session, were never issued. The Boutwell recordings on this CD must have been among Hinton’s first; he certainly sounds very young on Fred Neil’s “Blue-Blue Feelin’,” though his gravelly, soul style already is in evidence.

What’s even more interesting is how he tries, unsuccessfully, to rein in his singing on The Beatles’ “The Night Before.” He sounds much more at home on Southern-fried soul pieces “Neighbor, Neighbor” and “Turn on Your Love Light.”

Style’s vocal on Lennon and McCartney’s “You’re Gonna Lose that Girl” is his best in the collection. His Bozo Band Medley from more than 20 years later, however, is not something most people will want to replay.

The album’s only officially released track is “Old Man,” a 45 rpm recording that the 5 Men-Its made in Muscle Shoals in 1965. At the time, Hornsby and Sandlin were regular members of the band; later on, they became nationally famous as producers of recordings by The Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels, the Allman Brothers, Wet Willie and many others.

Rick Hall, who founded Fame Studios, produced “Old Man”; it’s no great shakes, though it does have a kind of period charm about it. But those Hinton/Armstrong cuts are timeless.

The CD comes with a booklet packed with vintage photos of/slocal bands and musicians that many long-time Tuscaloosans will recognize.

It’s too bad they aren’t identified in the booklet, however.

BEN WINDHAM: Dreaming of music from special era

from the January 14, 2017 Tuscaloosa News 

Usually when I have memorable dreams -- dreams that I remember after I wake up -- the weather is hot. Lately, however, I’ve been having those dreams during our cold snap last week, with snow on the ground.

The other night, I dreamed that we were at a Bob Dylan concert in Birmingham. The weird thing was that they were staging the concert in a 20-story office-type building. You were assigned on your ticket to a floor of the building and you were ushered into a small room.

On the way in, I spied an old friend who I haven’t seen in years. At least, he looked like an old friend, except for the fact that he was very tall -- about 16 feet tall. Also, he didn’t seem to recognize me.

After we were ushered in and seated, an announcer said we wouldn’t be seeing Dylan in the flesh. Instead, they’d show a televised version, in black and white.

A murmur arose from the audience but at the same time, a screen came down and Dylan and his band started to play.

After the concert, we found that people on other floors of the building rooms had the same experience, except for those in a single room, where Dylan actually played. Most of the concert-goes felt ripped off.

“He might as well have played in Minnesota or New York and just televised the pictures down here,” one complained. The disgruntled concert-goers started to riot.

I thought about it, in the dream, but then I thought about how audiences rioted when Stravinsky premiered “The Rite of Spring” in Paris in 1913. People always get bent out of shape when they pay expecting to see something old but they get something new instead.

I thought that televising the concert was a brilliant idea. In the dream, I stopped by a merchandise table and the vendor told me that he was selling “instant videos” of the concert, taken from the feed.

That was even better, I thought. Play a concert in New York or Minnesota or even in your own living room, beam it to Birmingham and pack ’em in. Then, for the price of a video, a concert-goer gets to play it back to his heart’s content.

Wave of the future? Well, it was just a dream.

Fred Styles, an expatriate Tuscaloosan, found his dream -- or part of it, anyway -- tucked in a closet, where it had lain for years.

It was a box that had been sent to him by Doug Hogue, a former bandmate and roommate.

“Inside were about 30 quarter-inch audio tapes,” Styles wrote me. “Several of those tapes had home-recordings of rehearsals of the Pacers, the rock band that Doug and I started in 1962 -- while we were in school at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.”

In the 1960s, Tuscaloosa was a hotbed of popular music. Musicians and bands blared out all over the place: bars, electric quads, frat houses ... you name it.

It’s funny how some of those musicians -- Tippy Armstrong, guitar genius who went on to back up Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison, Wilson Pickett and many others; keyboardist extraordinaire Mike Duke of Wet Willie fame; unofficial Rolling Stones member Chuck Leavell; and musician and producer Paul Hornsby, among them -- became successful and how many of their early bands flopped.

The best musician of all, to these ears, was the great Eddie Hinton, who died way too soon. Hinton, with his rough and soulful voice, was absolutely brilliant.

Styles’ bands included all of these musicians and other fine local players.

From the box of tapes. Styles has created “Bandcestors Too”, an anthology of Tuscaloosa musical talent in the 1960s and 70s.

The new CD joins “Bandcestors,” a disc featuring Hinton that Styles issued earlier.

Styles took me back to when the band recorded a try-out tape for Mark Harrelson, a producer for Birmingham’s Boutwell Studios. The rehearsal was at Greenwood Church, near Dreamland Drive-Inn.

The church was “a white cinder-block structure which was in the middle of a graveyard,” Harrelson wrote.

Then he recalled the first time that he heard Hinton sing:

“I was not prepared,” he wrote. “He sounded like the bastard step-son of Otis Redding AND Solomon Burke, with a big shot of Sam Cooke thrown in for good measure ...”

Some of that vocal majesty can be heard of “Bandcestors Too,” especially when Hinton sings Styles’ “Just Another Wild Love Affair.”

The first iteration of the Pacers included Bill Connell on drums; Johnny Duren, bass and vocals; Sam Hill, piano; Doug Hogue, lead guitar; and Styles, rhythm guitar and vocals.

On later recordings, players on the CD include Hinton; Hornsby; Johnny Sandlin, drums; Armstrong; Duke; and Joe Rudd, bass and lead guitar. The Muscle Shoals rhythm section backs up Hinton on a few tracks.

Harrelson is listed as engineer and co-producer.

The collection isn’t perfect. Leavell writes that “Some of the tunes may sound a bit dated ... that’s because they are! Nevertheless, I love the attitude and exuberance of what this is. Thank heaven these tracks are preserved!”

Styles says ”... most of these recordings are pretty raw, filled with mistakes and very poor technically. Many were recorded on home tape recorders in the living rooms of the tiny apartments where we practiced.”

However, I think they’re being hypercritical.

I’m not writing a review of the CD but like its predecessor, “Bandcestors Too” sounds fine -- especially to those of us who love the music from this era.

Maybe it won’t cause riots, but “Bandcestors Too” is a beautiful dream.

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