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James Luther Dickinson was a legend and a cult hero: a maverick Memphis sideman and producer whose fingerprints were all over records by artists as diverse as Bob Dylan and Big Star, Ry Cooder and the Replacements – not to mention the Rolling Stones. His death following cardiac complications last week prompts us to offer these excerpts from a huge Joss Hutton interview conducted in 1998.-- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

THIS MAIN COURSE is a hearty Southern dish, marinated in worldly wisdom and good humor, matured slowly in honky-tonks, recording studios and bars the world over. It is accompanied by side dishes of Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan, with a hefty slice of Big Star for dessert.

Ostensibly a trip to take in the annual Memphis In May music festival, which promised everything from Bob Dylan to the Grifters, the Staples Singers to the Box Tops, right alongside the muddy banks of the mighty Mississippi, I journeyed to Memphis a second time during 1998. Apart from the opportunity to check out so many good gigs and reunite with friends like Ross Gohlke of Grinz Interactive and Tad Pierson of American Dream Safari, I was keen to meet up again with the man that Memphis author Robert Gordon referred to as "The beast from the underground who travels in the corporate world", gentleman Jim Dickinson.

From his early days playing R&B with high school band the Regents, through the years as a member of crack house band the Dixie Flyers, escapades with Mud Boy And The Neutrons in the late '70s and current involvement with artists as diverse as Dylan, Mudhoney, Primal Scream and ex-Replacement Tommy Stinson, Jim has remained committed to his ever-evolving love of that indefinable moment when it's possible to feel molecules coalesce into sound.

He remains the ultimate industry outsider, giving a myriad of musicians the benefit of the musical knowledge seated deep in his bones, yet also a devoted family man, content to live in the woods just outside Memphis with Mary Lindsay Dickinson, multimedia artist and wife of thirty years, and sons Luther and Cody, who play together as the North Mississippi Allstars.

At this point, he could be forgiven for setting on his ass and looking back on a fruitful, if mostly unintentional, thirty-year career but, as the following interview clearly shows, there's more life-affirming passion and drive in him than in many musicians half his age. Suffice to say, he's quite a man. So, without further preamble, ladies and gentlemen, may I proudly present some genuine north Mississippi meat...

When did you start hooking up with British musicians?

Dickinson: I guess that the first one I met was Jimmy Page, which was quite by accident. We didn't play together but I took him to Sam Phillips' studio. The Stones I met through Stanley Booth, the rock writer, who was travelling with them. When they cut at Muscle Shoals studio, where they did "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses," that was kinda my idea. Stanley called while they were on the road and asked if the Stones could record in Memphis – they had three days at the end of the '69 tour – 'cause they wanted to record when they were, y'know, "hot" from playing together. With [Musicians] Union regulations back then – I don't know if they're still the same way – you could get either a touring or a recording permit but not both. They were in a position where they could tour but not record and had been prevented from recording in Los Angeles. So, they were looking for a place where nobody would care and I told 'em that they couldn't record safely in Memphis at that time – 'cause the Beatles had tried to record at Stax and had had word that there was no way - but I told 'em about Muscle Shoals.

What happened next?

So Stanley called [Jerry] Wexler, who put it together, and then Stanley called me back and, when the Stones got to Muscle Shoals, I was there. I was the only outside person who was allowed to stay. On the third day, when they recorded "Wild Horses," which began with a minor chord and Ian Stewart [Stones pianist and road manager] wouldn't play minor chords, [laughs] y'know...[Jim got roped in to play piano] I didn't find out why, for years, and Stu finally told me one day, at a hotel in New York, about his thing of not playing minor chords, and I thought "thank God," man [laughs]. But for that, I would have no "claim to fame." Actually, my true claim to fame with The Rolling Stones comes with a line in "Brown Sugar," It was the first night, when he was doin' the vocals, he was singing the line "...just about midnight" – the second night, when he was overdubbing it, he was leaving it out and I told him to put it back in [laughing] and I think that's my true 'claim to fame'!

Were you aware of Ry Cooder's work with Captain Beefheart before you hooked up and recorded with him (on Boomer's Story, Southern Comfort, The Border, Paris, Texas, etc..)?

God, yeah! I first heard Ry play on a tape that Dale "Susie Q" Hawkins had, in what must've been 1967 or '68, when Ry must've been about nineteen. That Beefheart record [Safe As Milk] was one of my ultimate favorites but I didn't know that was Ry on there until I met him. Cooder's first solo record [Ry Cooder] came out when I was in Miami and I remember sitting in my music room with the earphones on listening to it. We [Atlantic session band the Dixie Flyers] had just been recording with someone who was, er, not quite as impressive and I thought to myself "What would I give to be working on music like this?" Anyway, within two years, I was.

I met him through Chris Ethridge [Flying Burrito Brothers], who I'd been with on a Ronnie Millsap session that Dan Penn was producing, and it got to be like a joke. I would talk about Duane Allman and Chris would be like "Duane Allman ain't sh*t compared to Ry Cooder!" [Laughs] So I hired Chris for this Brenda Patterson session, my first in Los Angeles – I had Dr John in there too – and I said to him "OK, bring me your Ry Cooder, if he's so good bring him on" – just like I didn't know who he was. Cooder played the first day of the session, he was in the middle of his Into The Purple Valley album, had just fired Van Dyke Parks, and I fit right into the square peg in his round hole.

Don't you think it's weird that people come to Memphis because of the "cult of personality" surrounding Big Star's Alex Chilton, when he doesn't even live in the city anymore?

Most people leave Memphis because they have problems and they come back and still find that they have them! Alex is one of those people who it's worked for, he's much happier in New Orleans, which is the only other place I could ever envision living apart from here. He's got too much baggage here. Y'know, people talk to me all the time about Big Star's 3rd or whatever you want to call it and – I just figured this out a coupla weeks ago – somebody asked me if I could see the 'geography' of the record. It really dawned on me that I could, I could see a specific location for virtually every song and that it was all in Midtown, that's what that f**kin' record's about. Midtown is very different from the other sections of Memphis. See, I'm about East Memphis, I grew up there. I, literally, represent the East Memphis mindset and Alex represents the Midtown mindset – which he had to get away from when his house burnt down. That did it and broke his last tie to Memphis. I think he's a much happier person now.

How did you meet Bob Dylan?

His manager said that they'd looked for me a coupla times. The Dixie Flyers were supposed to record with Dylan when we were down in Miami in 1970. In fact, we didn't know the session was cancelled until the Monday. It was cancelled because [late Dylan manager Albert] Grossman and [Jerry] Wexler were fighting over the rights to the Woodstock soundtrack. Grossman pulled the plug on it at the last minute. I've been a Dylan fan since before he made a record, it was something I've wanted to do for 30five years. Dylan – it's trite to say – is the voice of a generation and he is the ultimate white artist.

How does Memphis work for bands like Primal Scream and Spiritualized, who come in to record with you from outside? What sort of experience did you have producing them?

Well, I think it works better with some people than with others. Even if you're just passing through for the night, I think that you can pick up on it a little but some people come to Memphis with the wrong leadership and have not exactly gone to the right places. I think Primal Scream could've done better, in terms of finding and getting what they were actually after.

Any thoughts on pop music in general?

I think people make records out of a primal urge – it's a fear of death. Every western religion is about the search for immortality and I think that people who make records understand that – consciously or unconsciously. I think that – to an extent – the degree to which people understand that makes the difference between a good and a bad record. Certainly Robert Johnson understood that – intuitively – he was singing to the ages 'cause of the words he used. He wouldn't have sung them at a honky-tonk, where nobody could hear them or give a sh*t anyway. I think that fact will preserve the record business, at least long enough for me.

The idea of pop success is so seductive that you're trapped by it before you know you're in it. Everyone who ever stood in front of a mirror and strummed a tennis racket wanted a hit record. I had punk guys say to me "I don't want a f**king hit," well hold on – nobody who started in this business didn't want one! It's all a compromise, from start to finish, Tom Dowd taught me that. The record itself is a compromise – it's not a performance, it's a recording of a performance.

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