Maybe I was out of the groove … I was on my way down. I was singing at a place called the Southern Steakhouse. It was in Bessemer in 1961. There was a knockdown drag-out fight, and I ducked from many a beer bottle.”
Bobby Mizzell and Jerry Woodard cut acetates in Birmingham studios and radio stations in 1958. The duo formed a band (Bobby on piano, Jerry on guitar) and also did session work in studios, backing vocalists Sammy Salvo and Len Wade (whom Bobby recorded on his record label singing a song he had written called “Found Someone”). Bobby and Jerry added other band members over time: Newman Cohely on guitar, Billy Self on drums, Tommy Willingham on drums, Lee Hood Carzle on bass, Johnny Carter on drums, and Sam Newfill on guitar. They backed the big-name singers when they played in Alabama: Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, Mark Dinning, Brenda Lee, George Morgan, Roger Miller, and Tex Ritter. Their first record on Reed was Jerry’s “Don’t Make Me Lonely,” and Mizzell had the instrumental “Atomic Fallout” as the flip side — an appropriate title for a country in the grip of the Cold War. Mizzell played on Jerry Woodard’s “Who’s Gonna Rock My Baby” and on numerous other records cut in downtown Birmingham. Two tracks he produced for Reed in 1959 caught the attention of 20th Century Records and were released on their label. “Heart and Soul,” his best-known song, was issued in instrumental and vocal versions. It had more than a hint of the boogie-woogie piano style that was to make Jerry Lee Lewis famous. On the B side was “Same Thing,” with vocals by Jerry’s brother Lee Wayne Woodard.
Dinky Harris met Jerry Woodard at Birmingham International Raceway, where he was racing his car, “TV6.” Jerry needed work done on his car, Jerry had his tool kit handy, and the two got to know one another while working on the motor. Dinky had been playing music since high school, where he had gotten together with a classmate who played bass and with guitarist Carl Hanson. Dinky was the only member of the band with a day job, so he bought a drum set and they started to play a few gigs. After meeting Woodard, Dinky reorganized his band as the Spades, with Jerry Woodard, Bobby Mizzell, Johnny Carter, and Frankie Benefield. In 1959 they recorded “She Left Me Crying,” written by Jerry Woodard. It was recorded at Homer Milam’s Reed Studios and released on the Fad label, a company formed by Woodard that Jerry, Dinky, and Bobby used as the vehicle to market their music. “She Left Me Crying” was an outstanding rockabilly number — a song described later as capturing “lightning in a bottle.” It became a Birmingham favorite. Duke Rumore had a call-in request show that most teenagers listened to, and “She Left Me Crying” became the number 1 song on the station’s chart.
As rock ’n’ roll became more and more popular, the output of Reed, Heart, and Fad Records increased exponentially. Dinky Harris was recording under many different names: Dinky Harris and the Nuggets (“Linda”), Dinky Harris and the Draft Dodgers (“Who’s Gonna Rock My Baby”), Dinky Doo (“Think It Over, Baby”), and plain Dinky Harris (“I Need You”). Bobby Mizzell formed his own Kim Record label (named after movie star Kim Novak) and released rockers like “Rock and Bop Blues,” “Birmingham Boogie,” and “Knockout” (an outstanding piano instrumental still prized by collectors).
Producing a hit record was something like winning at the roulette table: so much of it was chance. Charlie Colvin had been producing Jerry Woodard’s records on the Heart label, but in 1960 he released Woodard’s “You Just Wait” on his Colvin label. The A side was written by Kenny Wallace, and the B side was penned by Woodard’s bass player Henry Strzelecki, who noticed a guy with a big cowboy hat in a restaurant where he was bussing tables (it was Tex Ritter). Henry Strzelecki played in several local bands in Birmingham, including the Four Flickers and the Four Counts. “Long Tall Texan” had a laconic vocal and a certain charm, and its history reveals how the record business worked. Ken Shackleford: “The original song ‘Long Tall Texan’ was done at my studio. Jerry Woodard and Bob Cain had been there all night long. They phoned me early on Sunday morning, and he [probably Woodard] said: ‘We got a hit record.’ We leased the song to Johnny Vincent [who founded Ace Records in 1955 in Jackson, Mississippi], and then Murry Kellum covered it.” Kellum’s version on the MOC label (financed by his parents) was the national hit in 1963. Heart Studios was selling its output to whatever record company, big or small, which was interested: “We would record black artists and send the masters to people like [Berry] Gordy in Detroit, who was struggling just like us.”
By 1959 rock ’n’ roll was in full swing in Birmingham as its recording studios produced a stream of up-tempo dance music with a pounding beat and loud guitar accompaniment. Pat Riley and the Rockets cut “I Need You Baby” and “Little Bop a Little.” Lawrence Shaul and the Aristocats covered Little Richard’s ribald hit “Tutti Frutti” and another R&B standard, “Hey Little Mama.” Paul Ballenger and the Flares produced several records, including one just called “Pig.” Reed’s output in 1959 shows the diversity of music in Birmingham: rock ’n’ roll and rockabilly, country ballads, comedy numbers, and sacred songs. Gene Cole with Clyde’s String Masters recorded “Coal Miner’s Blues,” and the Jubilaires quartet produced their version of the old blues and vaudeville standard “Birmingham Jail.” Sacred music was recorded by several other quartets: the Rhythm Masters recorded “Rainbow of Love,” the England Brothers covered “Jesus Save Me,” and Wallace Odell and the Chordaires did “Walking Towards Heaven.”
Country music dominated Reed’s output in 1959, especially when it leaned toward pop. They made covers of hits like Hank Williams’s “I Don’t Like This Kind of Livin’,” Mason Dixon’s “Cold Cold Heart,” and Newt James’s version of Hank’s big hit “Jambalaya.” Country music fans enjoyed comedy numbers such as Ronnie Wilson’s “You Love That Guitar More Than Me” (backed by Jerry Woodard) and Country Boy Eddie’s “Hang in There Like a Rusty Fish Hook.” Rock ’n’ roll was man’s music, with female voices only as backup, but Birmingham had a few women rockers such as Abby Lee, whose “Waitin’” is a classic of rockabilly. The sound is raw and powerful. She also recorded “I Want Your Lovin’” for Reed. Patsy Tidwell was another female rockabilly singer from Birmingham with two records on Reed: “I Dig You the Most” and “Sit and Rock and Roll Blues.”
Reed and Fad Records were Birmingham’s own versions of Sun Records: small operations run by entrepreneurs in the same mold as Sam Phillips and staffed with local talent. The pioneers of commercial recording in the New South formed a business and social fraternity; Ken Shackleford, Ed Boutwell, Charlie Colvin, and Gary Sizemore knew Phillips personally and did business with him over the years. They are full of engaging stories about this legend of rock ’n’ roll, oblivious to the fact that it could easily have been one of them. Yet it was not to be, and for one simple reason: Sam Phillips and later Rick Hall found success and a measure of immortality by recording African American artists and by incorporating a lot of black music into the records they produced. All of these Alabama record producers shared an appreciation of African American music, but this was the segregated South, and nowhere was segregation stronger than in Birmingham, Alabama. As African American bass player Cleve Eaton pointed out, “They did not let blacks into the studio then.” The idea that a hybrid form of country and R&B — an amalgam of white and black music — could be the music of teenage America, which seems so logical today, was frighteningly novel in the Deep South of the 1950s.
CHAPTER THREE
The Garage Bands
Rock ’n’ roll had been pioneered by the front man — the handsome singer — and the first wave of Birmingham rockers followed this pattern: Baker Knight and the Knightmares, Sammy Salvo, Pat Riley and the Rockets, Jimmy Wilson and the Flames, and so on. Elvis had been their inspiration and guiding star — southern boy done good. Henry Lovoy was five years old in 1953: “That’s when rock ’n’ roll was getting started and so was I. I was singing and dancing at dancing
