R/E/P > Terry Manning

sam and dave ?

(1/1)

gevermil:
were you a part of any of those sessions ?
who were the other musicians besides isaak hayes and
steve cropper ?
gary

compasspnt:
Hi Gary,

Thanks for the question.

I was a part of some post-tracking on Sam and Dave stuff (like horn overdubs, mixing), but wasn't actually an engineer on any of the tracking.  These tracks were all recorded at the Stax large Studio 1 on McLemore Street.

The musicians were Al Jackson, Jr. on drums, Steve Cropper on guitar ["Play it, Steve!" from 'Soul Man'], Duck Dunn on bass, and then Isaac Hayes and Booker T. Jones on various keyboards.  Usually Isaac would play piano, but sometimes Booker.  Booker played a great clavinet part on 'I Thank You.'

Although there was no producer listed, pretty much Isaac and his partner David Porter produced these.

The horns were, of course, The Memphis Horns, which were led by Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Andrew Love on tenor sax, but there were at that time several other members of The Horns.  Often a second tenor, a baritone, and a trombone at times.

The drums were always in a separate drum booth, which was quite small.  The studio room itself was a former movie theatre, so the floor was actually sloping.  This was a pretty large studio area, but they concentrated the band mainly near the control room end.  The control room itself was at the far end, where the "stage" area (and screen) would have been.  There was a huge Altec Voice of The Theatre A7 mono speaker left over from the cinema days, and Jim Stewart (founder, partner, producer, even engineer) loved that speaker!  Tape machines there were, early on, Ampex, and later, Scully.  There was the obvious evolution from 2 tr to 4 tr, to 8 tr, to 16.  I don't remember if it ever went 24; don't think so.  The console was a Flickinger for a while, although I think there was a SpectraSonics in there at one time or another.  Mics were the usual contingent of Neumann, Shure, EV, etc.  The guitar amp was almost always a small-ish Fender, such as a Deluxe, or slightly larger Concert, Super, etc.  Bass amp was usually a Fender Bassman, although I think he had an Ampeg Portaflex in there, too.  The drums were Rogers.

Good stuff!

gevermil:
wow .. fantastic !
thanks a million
gary

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