By the early 1970s Al Kooper was well known in the music business not only for his musicianship and songwriting talents, but also as a skilled, influential producer. He had been a founding member of The Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He released solo projects as well, but Kooper was perhaps most revered for his collaborations with Mike Bloomfield, Stephen Stills, and Shuggie Otis, along with a goldmine of backup players. (Famed illustrator Norman Rockwell notably created the double portrait for 1969's "Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper," a personal favorite.) Atop all these credentials, Kooper is cemented in music history for not only having played organ on Bob Dylan's pivotal "Like A Rolling Stone," but for presenting Lynyrd Skynryd to the world along with eternal chants for "Free Bird."
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The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper
Columbia Records, 1969 |
In March 1972, Al Kooper was in Atlanta for performances at The Music Connection in Underground Atlanta. He caught up with friends there, musicians who had been members of Roy Orbison's back-up band The Candymen. The group, known and respected for their quality session work, had recently stepped out front to present their own music as the Atlanta Rhythm Section [ARS]. They worked out of Studio One, their own recording facility in Doraville, an Atlanta suburb they would make famous in song. Kooper sat in with ARS one night at the studio and, suitably impressed, booked a month's time at the facility that summer to record his own backup band Frankie & Johnny. In a 2014 interview with Huffington Post he recalled:
"In 1972, I had been in the studio in Atlanta for several weeks with another band, working really hard during the day and then going out with the guys at night to unwind... We were going out pretty regularly to this place called Funochio's and there was this band there."
"This band" was Lynyrd Skynryd.
I was already immersed in the Atlanta music community by the time Al Kooper showed up at Funochio's. Admittedly, I was a fangirl. The Blues Project had played the Christmas dance my sophomore year in high school. I'd been collecting his albums ever since, so when I saw him at the upstairs bar in Funochio's, I walked right over and asked how his sister Alice was doing. I deserved the unamused smirk in return. In the last week of his Studio One session work, Kooper decided to stay in Atlanta. He sent for his things in NYC and began steps toward launching his own label to compete with Phil Walden's burgeoning, only-game-in-town, Capricorn Records. [Will write more about Sounds of the South in another post.] Time passed. Goals were accomplished. In 1974, Al Kooper pulled up roots again, this time headed for LA. I was happy to attend the small going-away party that Richards' management threw for him. As a parting gift, they gave him the latest hi-tech toy of the time: a slimline pop-up Polaroid camera with leather details.
Then *poof*, Kooper was gone.
Sources:
Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, by Al Kooper, published by Billboard Books, 1998, and Backbeat Books, 2008
