Donnie Fritts: The Cream Interview [Updated]

Update: Fritts' Dec. 11 show at City Winery has been canceled due to illness. He is scheduled to play a Single Lock Records showcase at The Basement on Jan. 20.

Donnie Fritts, an architect of Southern soul music, has made his name as a songwriter over the course of his half-century career, but it took him a while to find his voice as a solo artist. His 1974 debut full-length Prone to Lean is a tentative effort from a singer who hadn’t yet learned how to put his message across. Meanwhile, his 1997 Jon Tiven-produced collection Everybody’s Got a Song collapsed under the weight of the contributions of its many guest stars, and Lucinda Williams’ rendition of Fritts’ great co-write with fellow soul tunesmith Eddie Hinton, “Breakfast In Bed,” was less than compelling. However, Fritts’ 2008 record One Foot In the Groove, produced by his longtime associate and co-writer Dan Penn, documented what I heard during Fritts’ yearly appearances over the last decade at Nashville’s Douglas Corner Cafe, where he fronted Muscle Shoals band The Decoys (which includes bassist David Hood and guitarist Kelvin Holly).  

Born in Florence, Ala., in 1942, Fritts broke through with his 2015 full-length Oh My Goodness, produced by Americana stalwarts John Paul White and Ben Tanner. Oh My Goodness features Fritts’ performance of his 1968 Box Tops hit “Choo Choo Train” (written with Hinton), as well as his collaboration with John Prine, “The Oldest Baby in the World.” His work for Alabama-born soul singer Arthur Alexander is worth your time — check out Alexander’s 1972 full-length Arthur Alexander, which features Fritts and Penn’s great “Rainbow Road.” Fritts is also an actor, appearing in a trio of Sam Peckinpah films and in Michael Mabbott’s 2007 country-rock mockumentary The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico. The Scene caught up with Fritts at his home in Alabama, where soul music still lives.  

How are you, Donnie? What’s going on in northern Alabama today?

I went down to my record label [Single Lock Records] a while ago. I really like being with those guys, you know. John Paul [White], you can’t beat him. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met.  

It’s great to see you playing Nashville again.

It was kinda [Swiss-born producer and guitarist Andreas Werner’s] idea to bring that back — Silent Night, Funky Night, like we used to do at Douglas Corner, you know. [Werner will accompany Fritts at tonight’s show at City Winery.] We’re also gonna play at The NuttHouse, a recording studio here, and invite people there.

When did you first move to Nashville?

Well, I moved up once — my wife and I moved up in 1968. We stayed a few months and had to move back down here, and then we moved when I started with Kris [Kristofferson] in 1970. [Fritts played keyboards in Kristofferson’s band for two decades.] I stayed up there until about 1982. I had some great years there.

What were your early days writing songs in Nashville like?

Of course, I started writing down here, and started getting songs cut down here and around. I met [head of Nashville music publisher Combine Music] Bob Beckham when I was with Raleigh Music, which was owned by [producer and record label executive] Shelby Singleton. That was in about 1963, I guess. I went from there to Screen Gems and then EMI, which was a CBS-owned company, and wound up, after I started with Kris, at Combine. It was 1970, right around there, maybe ’71. Billy Swan was there, and he and I and Kris were very close at that time. Tony Joe [White], of course — I’d been close with Tony for a few years. It was a natural place for me to be. Me and David Briggs, the keyboard player, had my publishing on “Choo Choo Train,” and Eddie and a guy down here had a publishing company. “Breakfast in Bed” was EMI. That was ’68.

“Breakfast in Bed” is one of the highlights of Dusty Springfield’s 1969 album Dusty In Memphis. Were you around for any of the recording sessions?

I was for a few days, yeah, when they cut the track for “Breakfast in Bed.” In my memory of it, she was a little bit in awe of being there, or nervous. I don’t know what it was. She wouldn’t really sing that much. She sang along when they were doing the track, but when it came time to do her vocals, I wasn’t there. I heard she wouldn’t sing, couldn’t do it. She did vocals later on up in New York. She’s one of the greatest singers of all time. That’s one of the great honors, to be on that album. I know I talked to [guitarist] Reggie Young, and he said, “That’s the best record I ever played on,” or his favorite record.

You were good friends with Atlantic Records executive and producer Jerry Wexler, who produced your Prone to Lean album with Kristofferson, and co-produced Dusty in Memphis with Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin.  

Extremely close. You know, it’s just one of those things. Reading was one of the things that brought us together. We had met, and at the time Eddie and I were writing a lot together, and Eddie was about to be the next big thing. Eddie was a brilliant guy, and everybody was saying, “Well, this guy is gonna be the guy, you know.” God bless him — Jerry said, “It was always next year for Eddie."

What a fine guitarist Eddie Hinton was, right?

Great guitar player, great songwriter. He could do all that, no matter what shape he was in. There was a lot of time he was his own worst enemy. He never made that next step up the ladder. [Hinton died in 1995.]

What were Wexler’s strengths as a producer?

He couldn’t play and he really couldn’t sing, but he knew, by God, what was commercial, obviously. He knew what the public liked. He didn’t give a damn — he’d get out there and dance when we got that groove, and that was the thing. He knew it when we got it. From all those years of doing it, he had that sense, man, of what makes a hit record. Everybody wants to cut records. That son-of-a-gun knew, man: If it feels good, leave it alone. [Wexler gave Fritts the sobriquet “The Elegant Alabama Leaning Man” in a 1969 Billboard article, “What It Is — Is Swamp Music — Is What It Is.”] What I do with the people I write with, we know kinda how the thing’s supposed to go, so that helps a lot. Again, it goes back to the song, and then you get that groove or get that feel. Like Dusty’s album — the feel on those songs is just brilliant. [Bassist and producer] Tommy Cogbill, are you kiddin’ me? He’s one of the greatest who ever picked up that damn instrument. And the stuff that [American Studios] band was cutting with Chips [Moman], the Joe Tex records they cut over there, just incredible records. “Skinny Legs and All,” just listen to that record and what Reggie comes up with. That’s some of my favorite records, those Joe Tex records. 

Tell me about meeting Dennis Hopper. I understand he asked you about what you thought, as a Southerner, about his work in the movie Easy Rider. 

He came up to me and Billy Swan and said, “I hope you guys aren’t mad about it,” because he knew we were real Southern. Billy’s from Missouri and I’m from Alabama. He said, “God, I hope you’re not mad at me about the way we did the end of that movie.” I said, “Shit, you got it 100 percent right, are you kidding me? I mean, that’s exactly what would happen to two guys going down through Alabama at that time back then.” Unfortunately, it was kinda that way. Prejudice against people that were different, you know. That’s all they were, just a little bit different. Shit, you could get killed for being different. 

One of your best-known songs is “Rainbow Road,” which you wrote with Dan Penn. The Arthur Alexander version of the song is classic. It’s been done by several other singers, including P.J. Proby. Is Alexander’s recording of it your favorite version of the song?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Really, to be honest with you, Arthur, he got to be where he was really bothered by that song.

The narrator ends up in prison.

Yeah, and that’s a thing where he became so identified with it, I guess. I know we recut that song on that last album he did [1993’s Lonely Just Like Me], and he just didn’t want to put it out. He didn’t want any part of it any more. We had written this beautiful gospel song that’s on that 1972 Warner Bros. album [Arthur Alexander], “Thank God He Came.” It was kind of a Jerry Lee [Lewis]-type thing, where Jerry’s always fighting that part where he thinks he’s doing the devil’s music, you know what I mean? He couldn’t separate the two. Arthur got to thinkin’ that we shouldn’t have written that song, and he thought maybe we shouldn’t be writing songs making money off that or whatever. Oh, God, we talked for hours and hours about that.  

You worked with Sam Peckinpah on three movies, including 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which stars Kris Kristofferson and features music by Bob Dylan. Did Peckinpah know about Dylan or Muscle Shoals music?

I don’t think he knew anything about Muscle Shoals. We never talked about it, I don’t think. He didn’t really know Dylan, if I’m not mistaken. But it seemed like he thought Dylan was the guy who wrote [Roger Miller’s] “King of the Road.” 

I think your work on your most recent album, Oh My Goodness, is excellent. John Paul White and Ben Tanner did a good job of producing the record.  

I can’t tell you how great everybody connected to that label was to me by giving me a shot when I was over 70 years old. It was a great experience. In fact, we’re doing one right now. I’m doing a tribute to Arthur Alexander. John Paul and Ben Tanner are producing. We did the basic little tracks at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where the [Rolling] Stones cut, with me, John Paul, David Hood and Reed [Watson] from Single Lock. We did a great version of “You Better Move On.” It was a version that John Paul had actually done in a show one time when he was in The Civil Wars. It turned out really good. I think people are either gonna love it or hate it. I think it’s not even the same song — we kept the words and everything. I had to get used to it.