North Mississippi Allstars’ ‘Mean Old World’ With Jason Isbell, Duane Betts
Luther and Cody Dickinson set the stage for an epic guitar jam in collab off their forthcoming album ‘Up and Rolling’
On October 4th, the North Mississippi Allstars will release their new album Up and Rolling. It’s a fresh batch of 12 songs from Luther Dickinson and Cody Dickinson, the guitar and percussion siblings from Independence, Mississippi, and also includes a number of guest appearances. Mavis Staples and Cedric Burnside both show up, along with Jason Isbell and Duane Betts, who guest on the song “Mean Old World,” which was once cut by Eric Clapton and Duane Allman. Premiering today on Rolling Stone, the Dickinsons’ rendition of “Mean Old World” becomes a guitar duel with the addition of Isbell and Betts. Here, in his own words, Luther Dickinson tells us how it all came together.
Family legend has it that the Derek and the Dominoes version of “Mean Old World” was recorded on the day of Jimi Hendrix’s funeral.
At the time, our father, Jim Dickinson, was working at Criteria Studios in Miami for Atlantic Records. Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd had hired he and his crew of Memphis musicians to move to Miami and be their house band/rhythm section at Criteria. They recorded with Atlantic artists Jerry Jeff Walker, Sam Samudio, Sam and Dave, Ronnie Hawkins, Lulu, Carmen McRae and won a Grammy for Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark. Duane Allman was on the scene and a friend to all. Duane joined Dickinson and band often, playing on many of these records produced by Wexler and Dowd.
These were already wild times at Criteria Studios when Derek and the Dominoes showed up.
The Layla session was the wildest, furthest-out scene Dickinson had ever encountered, Jim Dickinson proudly boasted of these rock & roll outlaws, whose company he enjoyed, himself a self-proclaimed connoisseur of debauchery.
1970 was a dark time indeed, and Jimi Hendrix did not survive, passing away, taking the “alpha jerk.” The story goes that Derek and the Dominoes were planning on leaving Miami and going to Jimi’s funeral, but at the last minute Eric Clapton heard that he was expected to play at the service. Eric did not want to play Jimi Hendrix’s funeral and stayed behind in Florida as the Dominoes went ahead and attended.
That is the setup for Eric and Duane recording their acoustic version of “Mean Old World,” with Jim Dickinson on piano.
“Mean Old World” was not released on the Layla album but later surfaced on the Duane Allman Anthology, without the piano. To our family’s disappointment Tom Dowd had muted Dickinson’s piano track in the mix. Decades later the Layla box set was released including all the sessions’ outtakes. Finally, “Mean Old World” with the piano is heard. Cody and I have been playing the song ever since. It always pops up.
A few years back Jason Isbell invited me to record our own acoustic version of “Mean Old World” as a nod to rock & roll tradition and history, reuniting and reigniting the chemistry of Memphis and Muscle Shoals musicians. We recorded a nasty version with Dave Cobb producing, but the track was never released. Cody and I often played the song with Derek Trucks while on Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 2016 Wheels of Soul Tour. While recording North Mississippi Allstars’ Up and Rolling album in 2018, Cody had the idea of adding an extended instrumental outro that changes the groove to the Allman Brothers’ freight-train feel in honor of our mentor Butch Trucks.
We invited Jason Isbell to join us on this new twist on the arrangement and feel of “Mean Old World” and set up at Vance Powell’s Sputnik Sound in Nashville. Jason showed up with his new guitar, Red Eye, Ed King’s classic ’59 Gibson Les Paul, for even more historical inspiration. It was a great occasion for Isbell to open up his new ride out on the open road and he tore it up. We recorded “Mean Old World” fast, playing and singing live, loud and loose, and edited the first and second take together.
Duane Betts is a dear friend and inspiration to us and was the perfect choice to drive the new ABB inspired outro home. Duane overdubbed his part in California but locked into Cody’s groove as if he was right there in the moment, stomping his boots and “lookin’ in them eyes and checkin’ them chops,” as Duane Allman said. Duane Betts is living proof that rock & roll guitar is alive and well, and I believe proving that was Isbell’s intention when he initially invited me to join him in recording “Mean Old World.” World boogie is coming.
Recorded at Sun Records Studios, 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, TN. May 14, 1954
Heavily distorted power chords , creating "a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound," accomplished by turning the volume knob on his amplifier "all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming."
According to the album liner notes, "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" is "doubly morbid because he did just that". In December 1963, Hare shot his girlfriend dead and also shot a policeman who came to investigate.
RIP - A tribute to Pat Hare and Muddy Waters. Like the song suggests wicked guitar playing by Pat. Recorded June 1957 in Chicago.
Love pays a talking blues tribute to the title's product. In fact, the "Hart's Bread Show" ran regularly on KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas, and an alternate version of this song appeared on the Hart's Bread label.
The lyric recounts the curative and restorative powers of the product in a manner which would no longer pass codes of Advertising Practice (imagine Love and Sam Phillips trying to argue the truth of lines like "You can't do the boogie if your heart's not in it" in court) Love's vocal is performed in the same greasy style as Ray Charles "It Should Have Been Me", which was highly popular in 1953 when this song was conceived.
BILLY 'RED' LOVE
Born Milton Morse Love, 8 December 1929, Memphis, Tennesssee
Died 2 May 1975, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Singer / pianist / songwriter / arranger. Until recently, very little information was available about Billy 'Red' Love, an R&B artist who recorded for Sam Phillips at 706 Union Avenue in the early 1950s. He was never interviewed and never featured in any music publications. Thanks to the admirable research of Martin Hawkins for the new Bear Family CD, many new facts have come to light. Billy's instrument was the piano. It is unknown whether he had any formal training on piano or what his basic influences were. By the late 1940s he was gaining a good reputation in Memphis as a player and as a teacher (Rosco Gordon was one of his pupils and called Love a formidable pianist).
In 1951 Sam Phillips was very busy in his part-time studio (the Memphis Recording Service), recording as much of the local blues and R&B talent as he could. He had not yet started his Sun label and leased most of his product to Chess and RPM/Modern. Billy Love did some session work for Phillips, backing Walter Horton, Rufus Thomas and Willie Nix, before he got the chance to cut his own record as a singer-pianist. This resulted in the storming drinking song "Juiced", probably cut on July 24, 1951. Phillips was under pressure from Chess to come up with a good follow-up for Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88" (a # 1 R&B record, produced by Phillips, his first big success), after "My Real Gone Rocket" had bombed. It was decided to issue "Juiced" under Jackie Brenston's name (Chess 1472). Brenston was a better sax player than a singer and hardly had time for recording, as he was in constant demand on the road. Love was a better singer, wrote his own songs and played a mean piano. "Juiced" was the finest record that Jackie Brenston never made - and that Billy Love was never credited with making. But it did not chart. Love's next session took place in October or November 1951 and yielded three songs, two of which, "Drop Top" and "You're Gonna Cry" were issued as a Chess single (1508), this time credited to "Billy 'Red' Love and his orchestra". "Drop Top" was in the same uninhibited style as "Juiced", an attempt to follow in the slipstream of "Rocket 88". There were four sessions in 1952, but only one single was released, "My Teddy Bear Baby"/"Poor Man" (Chess 1516, now very rare). These two singles seem to have received very little promotional support from Chess and sold poorly. Through 1952 (the year in which Sun Records was launched), Love continued to work as a session pianist at Phillips's studio, but Sam's files are completely silent on Billy Love for the whole of 1953.
On January 19, 1954 Love returned to the Sun studio with a new band and cut five titles. He must have had a real expectation of seeing his first Sun record out in the spring, and so must Sam Phillips, who scheduled "Hey Now" and "Way After Midnight" for release on Sun 205, registering their copyrights with BMI that May. Sam assigned Sun master numbers to the two titles (U 118 and U 119), but the record did not appear with the May batch of Sun discs. By July, the first record by Elvis Presley had been released on Sun 209 and Phillips was too busy promoting his hot new property to release Love's disc. It was the beginning of the end for most blues and R&B singers at Sun and particularly so for Love who had a reputation for unreliability. Phillips told Martin Hawkins : "Billy Love was a supergood musician but he didn't have the gut desire to succeed. Not that he didn't want to, but I didn't have time to waste and I think Billy's problem was lack of patience and devotion to what he was doing. He played well but there is a kind of dedication and belief in your music that extends beyond the doors of the studio. He did not have that."
One more session was recorded at the Sun studio, resulting in "Blues Leave Me Alone" and the promotional record "Hart's Bread Boogie" for the Hart's bakery in Memphis (released on Harts H B-66). Pat Hare played guitar on that session ; Billy played piano on Hare's "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" (recorded May 14, 1954, originally unreleased). Around this time Love had joined Rosco Gordon's band and he spent a good part of the 1954-56 years travelling with Gordon, who re-signed with Sun in 1956 (that's Billy playing piano on "Shoobie Oobie"). In 1957 Love disappeared from Memphis and nobody knew where he had gone. It later turned out that he had relocated to Colorado Springs, playing at Duncan's Cotton Club. He was still living there when he got in trouble with the law in January 1974, accused of selling heroin and possessing an illegal weapon, but apparently this did not lead to a jail sentence. Love's luck ran out the next year. He passed away on Friday May 2, 1975 and was buried at the Memphis National Cemetery. "Drank himself to death", according to Rosco Gordon.
Some of his unissued recordings were included on side 2 of an LP shared with Junior Parker in the "Legendary Sun Performers" series (Charly CR 30135, 1977). The Bear Family CD contains all of his known recordings that have survived (some of the tapes are lost) and was reviewed very positively in Now Dig This 336 (March 2011), by Pete Bowen, who calls Billy Love "a superb purveyor of Memphis music."
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