IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: THE LIFE & SOUL OF WILSON PICKETT by TONY FLETCHER (2017)

Wilson Pickett was one the biggest soul stars of the 60s yet is often overlooked and taken for granted. I’ve a bunch of his singles, from early sides on Double L (‘Baby Call On Me’) and Verve (‘Let Me Be Your Boy’) to the humongous hits for Atlantic (you know the ones) but rarely pay him much mind. There’s probably an element of unconscious soul snobbery at work here; Wilson wasn’t an obscure and underappreciated talent and he didn’t die with early promise unfulfilled; instead, he worked his way up, hit it big then floundered through the decades with decreasing artistic reward. Pickett also inadvertently provided fodder for karaoke nights and wedding bands everywhere and while ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ still packs an almighty punch I never want to hear ‘Mustang Sally’ again.

Tony Fletcher’s new biography, In The Midnight Hour, succeeds in turning the spotlight back to Wilson Pickett y’all. Although the first Pickett biography his story reads a familiar one as with unerring predictability his life plays out as the archetypal 60s soul star. If reads like a work of unoriginal fiction and a cliché, it was Pickett, more than most, who established it as he walked toe-to-toe with the progression of black American music during a sizable chunk of the second half of the 20^th century.

From growing up poor in Prattville, Alabama, to Pickett’s father moving to work in the motor trade in Detroit, to young Wilson singing gospel, joining the more R&B-focussed Falcons in Detroit, recording in New York, sessions at Stax in Memphis and Muscle Shoals back in Alabama, huge success with the trappings that bought, to helping switch attention to the soul of Philadelphia, to performing in Africa, Pickett carried the flame. Then came the downward spiral. Pickett struggled to find a place in the music business when soul shifted from hitting hard in the guts and deep in the heart to the disco era, skittering across emotions and dancefloors.

As Pickett’s star waned his descent into drink, drugs and increased violence escalated alarmingly and stays in prison beckoned. “It’s very difficult to get somebody who’s been to the top of mountain to accept that they’ve living on the hillside,” offers Jon Tiven who attempted to help get Pickett back on track in the 90s. 

As always with Tony Fletcher, he put the miles in to interview as many associates as possible to compile a thorough account of his subject. There are plenty of anecdotes telling of Pickett’s greatness: his dynamic stage presence, the way he commanded the studio, his artistry, charisma and humour. And, of course, that voice and that scream. Jerry Wexler said James Brown screamed but Wilson Pickett screamed in tune.

On the other side of the coin was The Wicked Pickett, a nickname earned from pinching the mini-skirted behinds of secretaries in the Atlantic Records offices. If we recoil at such practices nowadays it was small fry compared to what was to come. Fletcher asserts “for most southern blacks of the era, harsh physical discipline was accepted as a rite of passage” and harsh physical discipline was something Pickett took from his childhood and delivered in adult life. It makes grim reading and when added to beating women and his children, pulling a gun on his brother, serving up a saucer of cocaine to his 14-year-old son and a bunch of other assholery it’s hard not to feel when his bass player rips a towel rail off a wall to smash Pickett in the head, breaking the bone behind his left eye, that he didn’t have it coming. If this was a movie a little cheer may've gone up in the cinema.

If such passages make uncomfortable reading, Fletcher’s analysis and descriptions of Pickett’s music are enthralling and redress the balance. Such is Fletcher’s enthusiasm he does what any good music biographer should, and sends the reader back to the records. For my part I bought the first five Wilson Pickett albums (check out the Original Album Series, five CDs for little more than a tenner) and have listened with fresh, excited ears. I like him more now and although still not the biggest fan of that sock-it-to-me chuggy-chugging brand of soul, gems aplenty have surfaced. ‘Jealous Love’ and ‘I’ve Come A Long Way’ alone from 1967’s excellent I’m In Love are new favourites and have, at last, given me a fuller and fairer assessment of the Wicked (sometimes very wicked) Pickett. Oh yeah, he also turned 'Hey Jude' into a decent record so he definitely wasn't all bad.

In The Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett by Tony Fletcher is out now, published by Oxford University Press.

MUSCLE SHOALS (2013)

I’ll be honest with ya, for years I thought Muscle Shoals was simply the name of a recording studio not an actual location on a map. Tucked away down in Alabama with a population of around 8,000, the place is synonymous with the full-fat, funky sound cut deep in the grooves of classic 60s soul sides and beyond.

Greg “Freddy” Camalier’s film tells the story of the small city’s rich musical heritage through contributions from artists who recorded in the otherwise tranquil surroundings of trees, swamp and dirt roads at both FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios within a splash of a gator’s tail from the Tennessee River. An impressive roll call of talking heads (most filmed for the movie with occasional stock footage spliced in) takes their turn to pay tribute: Percy Sledge, Clarence Carter, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Wilson Pickett, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Stevie Winwood, Jimmy Cliff, Candi Staton etc. All these and more recorded in Muscle Shoals but why the irrelevant Bono gets his slappable, sanctimonious face on screen without having any connection I known of – physically or spiritually - to the place is never explained. It’s a shame that for all the greatness contained within the 111 minutes it’s the image of Bono’s ego wrestling limelight away from the film’s intended focus which lingers most unnecessarily.

Muscle Shoals covers a wide base and therefore individual stories are kept brief. A lot, like Jerry Wexler at Atlantic sending new signed Aretha - a yet to be crowned Queen of Soul hitherto fumbling around for direction - down south and coming back with “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” with the help of Spooner Oldham’s chord sequence, followed by five albums of hits, or Leonard Chess packing off Etta James during a lean period to be rewarded with “Tell Mama” and “I’d Rather Go Blind” are well known vignettes but the main focus isn’t on the established acts whose names appeared in bold letters on record labels but the guys like producer Rick Hall and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section house band, nicknamed the Swampers, who were lucky to make the small print.

Rick Hall is the central figure and his musical highs are offset by his candid disclosure of personal hardship and family tragedies. He’d cut Arthur Alexander’s “You’d Better Move On” in ’61 and followed it with another hit, Jimmy Hughes’s “Steal Away” recorded in his FAME studio. From there the hits kept coming, due in large part to his meticulous approach and the distinct yet adaptable sound of the Swampers, built around a nucleus of Jimmy Johnson (guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums), Barry Beckett (keyboards) and David Hood (bass). Muscle Shoals shines a light on these musicians and gives them a voice in the same manner Standing In The Shadows Of Motown did for the Funk Brothers in Detroit.

That Rick Hall (who now sports a very stylish and covetable moustache) and the Swampers were Southern white guys playing in such a gritty soul style – even helping to define soul music itself– was a source of regular surprise. A sceptical Wilson Pickett wondered of Rick Hall, “What does this white man know about the blues?” before clocking the cotton picking fields outside FAME and leaving with “Land of a 1000 Dances”, “Mustang Sally” and all his other smashes tucked in his bad ass pocket. Even Aretha – all dolled up, plonked on a chair and filmed from the other side of an empty room as if the bailiffs have removed the rest of her possessions – recounts her shock of how “greazy” the Swampers were; disproving the notion Caucasians ain’t got no rhythm.

In 1969 Hall struck a deal to work for Capitol Records. Meeting the Swampers to share the good news they suddenly announce they’re quitting and setting up their own studios with the help of Wexler and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios is born. After picking himself off the floor Hall assembled a new band, The Fame Gang, and in effect the music world got two for the price of one although both would diversify into fields outside the soul patch.   

Within two years Rick Hall was crowned Producer of The Year and his rivals, after a slow start, got a huge boast to their fortunes after Keith Richards’ snakeskin boots led the Rolling Stones into town to cut “I Gotta Move”, “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses”. A member of the Swampers now insists the Stones – in 1971 remember – were model professionals and weren’t indulging in any drink or drugs; Keith and Mick (good value throughout) both have a cheekily smirk at such a claim. Such was the apparent naivety of the Muscle Shoals musicians Stevie Winwood says Traffic felt guilty taking them on tour with them and exposing them to certain (unnamed) practices.

A squillion recordings have taken place since then – some massively successful, others less so – and Hall and the Swampers have kissed and made-up. Muscle Shoals is ultimately a feel-good movie with a brilliant soundtrack - what I like most about films like this is how they breathe fresh life into familiar songs - and one which puts helps put firmly fix Muscle Shoals to the musical map for many more years to come.

Muscle Shoals is in selected cinemas now.