[that is a cool link ,, coleman was married to my cousin about the same time as the coleman hinton project ,, her name is philomena ,, i checked out the cuba alabama site is this your own site ?? i like it ,,, i love the history of the bands of t-town ,, our band use to play down there ,, i love that place,,, slugger]
Slugger!-
Yo' cousin was the delectable Ms Philomena...??!!
COOOOOOLL....!
t.h.e. capt.
Lost And Found
The Coleman-Hinton Project 1969-71
Produced and Engineered by
Eddie Hinton and Jim Coleman
String Arrangements:
Jim Coleman and Eddie Hinton
Recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Muscle Shoals, Alabama
Quad Studio, Nashville, Tennessee; and
Olympic Studio, London, England
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1. I Wanna Die (J. Coleman)
2. Just Like The Fool That I Was (J. Coleman)
3. Before I Left Home (J. Coleman)
4. What Goes On (J. Coleman)
5. The Angels (J. Coleman)
6. Sha Na Boom Boom (Barry-Bloom)
7. He Kept It In The Family (J. Coleman)
8. Where You Come From (Hinton-Coleman)
9. In The Beginning (J. Coleman)
10. Never, Never, Never Again (J. Coleman)
11. Got Down Last Saturday Night (E. Hinton)
In the summer of 1969,
Eddie Hinton and I began a project that was to be a turning point in both of our lives.
Eddie had signed me as a writer with his publishing company and I had come up to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to try and get a song on the album being recorded there by Lulu of "To Sir With Love" fame. At the time, Eddie was the guitarist at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and had recorded on many great R&B tunes by Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Joe Tex and others. When I got to town,
Eddie said he wanted to save my songs for an album he had decided to produce on me.
It was summer and I was out of school so I moved to Muscle Shoals and began going to the studio with
Eddie. We would usually get in the studio on Friday night and stay up until Monday morning recording. During our formal recording sessions we used the
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section with
Barry Beckett on piano,
Roger Hawkins on drums and
David Hood on bass with
Jimmie Johnson helping
Eddie out with the engineering.
Lost And Found
Copyright 1995 Breathe Easy Music
Jim Coleman - Vocals, Guitar, Bass
Eddie Hinton - Vocals, Guitar, Piano, Harmonica
Tippy Armstrong - Electric Guitar, Vocals
Roger Hawkins - Drums
David Hood - Bass
Barry Beckett - Piano, Organ
John Hughey - Pedal Steel Guitar
King Curtis - Soprano Saxophone
Chuck Swartz - Clarinet
The London Symphony - Strings
Eddie's good friend and former roommate,
Duane Allman, was asked to played guitar, but, I told Eddie I wanted
Tippy Armstrong to play guitar instead.
Tippy was a great player and a great friend of mine. He played on albums for
Bobby Womack, Albert King, and
Jimmy Cliff among others.
Duane was planning to leave town anyway and had asked
Eddie to join him in a new band he was putting together with his brother,
Greg, to be called "
The Allman Brothers Band."
Eddie turned him down for his studio gig and to finish the album we had decided to call "
The Coleman-Hinton Project." Eddie had also picked
Tippy to replace him as the staff session guitarist at Muscle Shoals Sound when he and I left to go on the road to promote our record.
In addition to recording in Muscle Shoals, we also recorded at
David Briggs' Quad Studio in Nashville and at Olympic Studio in London where we recorded the strings. We used the same string players from the
London Symphony who had played on the
Beatles' records. Other notable musicians on this record include the late, great
King Curtis on Soprano Saxophone and
John Hughey on pedal steel guitar. I was a big fan of
Conway Twitty at the time and wanted to use Hughey who was Conway's steel player.
John Hughey now plays for
Vince Gill.
King Curtis was very popular in the 60's and was actually the opening act for the
Beatles during their 1965 US tour when I saw them in Atlanta.
King Curtis and
Tippy have both been gone now for many years along with
Duane.
Of the many stories I recall from these recording sessions the one about the string session in London remains particularly vivid in my mind.
Eddie had refused to allow either of us to begin writing the string parts until we were on the plane headed for England. We got on the plane with only blank music paper and began writing the arrangements for string quartet and string ensemble with 11 strings. This was all done in our heads without guitar or other instrument to help play the parts as they were being written. We had never heard the arrangements until we were conducting the sessions with the London Symphony string players. When we did the song "Where You Come From," an arrangement that
Eddie had written for the string ensemble, everything was going fine until they got to the short instrumental part at which time everyone stopped playing. The conductor turned to
Eddie and said, "
Mr. Hinton, the notes you have written are not on the viola and go off the fingerboard." Eddie responded without hesitation saying,
"When they get there just have them transpose down an octave." They did and it worked out fine.
Eddie Hinton was a great producer and a great guitar player, and, he was just about the most un- compromising man I have ever known. He was so full of talent but couldn't seem to find a way to get his feelings across without alienating someone along the way. He was one soulful dude with his own, intense 'philosogie' of life. His vocal on the Staple Singers' "Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom)" on this CD is to me the essence of
Eddie Hinton. I'll never forget watching him scream like
Mavis at the end. He was always in the pocket. Famed producer
Jerry Wexler said in a letter to
Eddie's mother, "He remains unique, a white boy who truly sang and played in the spirit of the great black soul artists he venerated. With Eddie, it wasn't imitation; it was totally created, with a fire and fury that was as real as Otis Redding's and Wilson Pickett's."
For a number of reasons this album never came out. We had worked out a deal with
Ahmet Ertegun and
Atlantic Records but
Eddie refused to accept
Ahmet's offer.
Eddie then contacted
Chris Blackwell of
Island Records and we actually left Muscle Shoals and moved to Atlanta to be where
Island was going to be based. But, the deal with
Island also fell through.
Eddie and I grew farther and farther apart and I never actually got to hear the final mix of the album after we returned from England. I went on to play guitar on the road for a couple of years waiting for word from
Eddie. Eventually, I went back to college and then medical school and now practice Internal Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. As the years slipped by, turning into decades, we communicated very rarely and
Eddie went down his star-crossed road. I last talked to
Eddie in 1979. I had all but forgotten about this album but not
Eddie and the influence he had on my life.
Eddie Hinton died July 28, 1995 at his mother's home in Birmingham, Alabama. About eight weeks after his untimely death, I got a call from
Eddie's second cousin in Tuscaloosa who told me that
Eddie's mother, Deanie Perkins, had said she wanted to talk to me. I later called
Eddie's mother and she told me that after
Eddie died she and her husband had gone into
Eddie's room and had taken out all the tapes and music manuscripts and other personal things that he left behind and had completely cleaned the room out. She said a few weeks later they realized that they were still bothered by the way the room looked because it reminded them so much of
Eddie. They decided to go back in and rearrange the furniture. When they started to take
Eddie's bed out of the room they picked up the box springs and found a tape underneath. This tape was the only known copy of the long lost
Coleman-Hinton project. With help from
Marc Harrelson at
Boutwell Studio in Birmingham, Alabama, I was able to restore the tape to its present condition and the finished product is contained on this CD.
I want this CD to be a tribute to
Eddie Hinton. It was really his album anyway. All I did was write a few songs and try to sing and play a little guitar. Like
Eddie use to sing to me, "I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see," finding this album after 25 years makes me see those early days in a much different light.
Those really were magic times when our dreams and innocence were great. Eddie Hinton got lost in this life. I hope he's found peace in the next. "You don't miss your water 'til your well runs dry," he used to say. We'll all miss you, Eddie.
Jim Colemanhttp://www.jjcoleman.com/LostAndFound.htm
