Spooner Oldham's Life in Music by Haley Walden

An Unlikely Place and Time: Spooner Oldham’s Life in Music By Haley Walden (published in Alabama Music Magazine, 2009) A passing glance at Spooner Oldham’s quiet life in Rogersville, Alabama would give few people reason for pause. His country home is situated on several lush acres off a scenic county road, and a creek flows steadily behind the house. Visitors to the neighborhood might notice Oldham relaxing on the patio with his dogs, Oscar and Porter, and his cats, Waylon and Cash. Or if the front screen door is propped open, a hint of a familiar tune from his baby grand piano may reach their ears. What they probably won’t realize is how much Oldham’s musical career has influenced their lives. Oldham handles the extraordinary details of his life with little ego and a great deal of humility. From Muscle Shoals to Memphis to Los Angeles and all over the world, he has worked with the likes of musical talents Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Duane Allman, Jewel, Wilson Pickett, and Percy Sledge, among many others. His songs have appeared on albums by Janis Joplin, Hank Williams, Jr., and The Box Tops. He’s a seasoned songwriter and studio musician with a flair for piano and organ, and on April 4th, he’s being inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Born June 14, 1943 in Sheffield, Alabama, Oldham grew up as the music business was blooming in Muscle Shoals, a city a few miles from his hometown of Center Star. Music was a shared passion among many of his family members. When Oldham was a toddler, his father, Dewey (or “Dot”), played music and harmonized with his brothers, Milford and Gail, in his grandparents’ home next door. Oldham’s mother, Marie, sang nursery rhymes and gospel songs to him in their rocking chair. His uncle Jimmy sang and played guitar. Members of both sides of Oldham’s family were musically inclined, and they became his lifelong influences. Oldham began playing music when he was about 14 years old. “Back in those days, there really wasn’t anywhere for youngsters to play,” he said. “All the musicians in the neighboring counties would […] hit the high schools, recreation centers, and so forth. They’d have talent shows. “Now that’s where I met a lot of the local musicians. I don’t think we were really that interested in winning the prize so much as getting around other music folks.” Oldham wrote his first songs during his teenage years. “[T]here was an upright piano in mom and dad's basement. I wrote two songs. One, I let my sister, Judy hear. She would sing it and I would play the piano. It was ‘Sweet on Him.’ “The other is ‘Please Come Back.’ They never left the piano stool or basement, but began the fascination with the process.” In eighth grade, Oldham and a group of friends from Killen Junior High School formed a band called The Spooners. He and vocalist Ronald English got the idea at school, Oldham said. “One day we were walking down the hall and there was an empty room with an old upright piano, and I said, ‘Ronald do you ever sing any?’ “He said, ‘Sometimes. I sing a little.’ So we went in there and did some kind of rendition of […] ‘A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ by Jerry Lee Lewis. We got through it start to finish.” The notion of a band got Oldham and English brainstorming. They recruited Roger Hawkins to play drums, and Oldham’s cousin, Bruce, to play guitar. The Spooners practiced once a week, learning cover songs and later adding bass player Junior Lowe to the mix. Soon, they started playing gigs for pay. At a performance at Collinwood School, for instance, students paid 25 cents to attend the assembly program. “I remember we made $12 each, and we were off and running then,” he said. “Hey, this is the way to go.” Oldham played piano next with a seven-piece Dixieland jazz group called The Tempests. The band played high school and college dances, and at one point they entered a contest in the instrumental category at the North Alabama State Fair. They won, and went on to win again at the Midsouth Fair in Memphis. “I remember the prize was $50 each,” Oldham said. “I immediately went out off the stage, and there was a door out to the fairway. I spent $50 at one booth.” Next, Oldham joined Hollis Dixon and the Keynotes. They played shows throughout the Southeast, traveling with two cars and a trailer to fraternity and sorority parties on the weekends at colleges like Auburn University, the University of Alabama, Ole Miss, and Mississippi College for Women. In 1961, Oldham began college at Florence State University in Florence, Alabama. His stint was brief, however; Oldham, who had learned music mostly by ear, chose music as his major. “I didn’t have a lot of background in music,” he said. Oldham quickly grew frustrated with the university’s structured environment, and decided to move on. “The prescribed course of learning is what drove me away from college,” he said. Oldham soon began doing studio work around the Shoals area, primarily at the legendary FAME Studios. He played on his first hit record – Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” – in 1962. Shortly after came Jimmy Hughes’ hit, “Steal Away.” Pieces started to fall into place; soon, Oldham was the house keyboard player for the first FAME Rhythm Section. The hits kept rolling out, and soon the Muscle Shoals music business was booming. It was during this time that Oldham and FAME house songwriter Dan Penn began writing songs together. “Dan Penn and I met when we were teenagers, and we were starting to write songs,” Oldham said. “I guess the first one that was like a mediocre R&B hit was ‘Let’s Do it Over’ by Joe Simon.” Simon’s song had distribution through Chicago-based Vee-Jay Records, the company that distributed many of The Beatles’ early recordings in the United States. But Vee-Jay was falling on turmoil in 1966. “[…] Dan and I had this song [and it] was becoming a hit, so I’m excited about a bigger check than normal. Well, the company went bankrupt before I got paid,” Oldham said. “That’s sort of my introduction into the record business.” Oldham and Penn continued writing songs at FAME, where they penned hits like “I’m Your Puppet,” performed by James and Bobby Purify, “Out of Left Field” and “Tears Me Up,” both performed by Percy Sledge. Penn soon left for Memphis, but Oldham stayed behind to play in the studio at FAME. The rhythm section learned as they went, writing and performing demos to keep up their chops. Performers who came to record used the musicians as their backing band. Some of the most well-known hits recorded during that time included Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You);” Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally;” Etta James’ “Tell Mama;” and Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves a Woman” (recorded at Quinn Ivy’s studio in Sheffield). “We had a good run there at FAME, a lot of good records and fun, and then I decided to move to Memphis,” Oldham said. “My buddy Dan Penn had already been up there a year [at] American Recording Studio. I was missing writing with him.” Oldham stayed in Muscle Shoals until he could find a replacement keyboard player for the FAME Rhythm Section. He chose session musician Barry Beckett, who played with him on “I’m Your Puppet.” In 1967, Oldham moved to Memphis to write with Penn, who had recently produced The Box Tops’ number one hit “The Letter.” Penn received requests for a follow-up hit, but he hadn’t found anything yet that he felt was fitting for the group. He asked Oldham to help him write a new song for The Box Tops, and to play keyboards on their album. Oldham agreed. “We got together to try to write a song,” he said. “We wrote all night and brought our ten best ideas to the studio to present to each other, and every one of them ended up in the trash can. We were exhausted by daybreak.” Penn already had a recording session booked within the next couple of days. “I think he was thinking about just shutting it down for a while, ‘cause we didn’t have a song,” Oldham said. Exhausted, discouraged and drained of ideas, Oldham and Penn crossed the street to order breakfast. “There was no one in there, I don’t think, except the cook. I laid my head on the table and raised up, looked at him and said, ‘Dan, I could just cry like a baby.’ “And he said, ‘What’d you say?’ “I said, ‘I could cry like a baby!’ “He said, ‘I like that.’ I wasn’t expecting to hear that phrase, of course.” Oldham and Penn wrote the first verse of “Cry Like A Baby” as they crossed the street toward the studio. They finished the song in the recording studio, and Alex Chilton, The Box Tops’ lead vocalist, stopped by to hear the song. “I didn’t know what we had at that point; I was so tired,” Oldham said. “And Alex smiled and put his hand out to shake and said, ‘Thank you.’ I figured, well, he likes it, anyway.” “Cry Like A Baby” made it to the number two slot on the Billboard charts, while Oldham continued his writing and session work in Memphis.

Load more