Tune Tuesday

Happy Birthday to The Wicked Mr. (Wilson) Pickett who was born on this day in 1941.

He was born in Prattville, Alabama where he began singing in the Baptist church choir. He was the fourth of 11 children and eventually left to live with his father in Detroit in 1955. It was there that he joined a gospel group called The Violinaires. He toured with them for four years. He was lured by the success of gospel singers who had moved to the lucrative secular music market, joined the Falcons in 1959.

His work with the Falcons helped him to embark on a solo career. In 1965, he had his first hit “In the Midnight Hour,” which featured Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn from Booker T & the MGs. Many hits followed including Land of 1000 Dances, Funky Broadway, and 634-5789.

It is hard for me to pick a favorite Wilson Pickett song, because they are all SO good. There is one song, however, that always sounds fresh to me. It is still a song that people dance to at parties and weddings. It always seems to be on the Top 200 list of songs that DJ’s get requests for, as well. That song? Mustang Sally!

According to Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Songs, “Mustang Sally nearly ended up on the studio floor – literally. After Pickett finished his final take at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the tape suddenly flew off the reel and broke into pieces. But the session engineer, the legendary Tom Dowd, calmly cleared the room and told everyone to come back in half an hour. Dowd pieced the tape back together and saved what became one of the funkiest soul anthems of the ’60s.”