Donnie Fritts, a good ol' (72) boy still cranking
Donnie Fritts didn't think he'd ever get the chance to make another album. "Seventy-two-year-old men don't get record deals," the songwriter's songwriter and sometime movie actor says in his molasses-thick drawl from his home in his native Muscle Shoals, Ala. "But I did think in my mind I had a good one left in me."
Donnie Fritts didn't think he'd ever get the chance to make another album.
"Seventy-two-year-old men don't get record deals," the songwriter's songwriter and sometime movie actor says in his molasses-thick drawl from his home in his native Muscle Shoals, Ala. "But I did think in my mind I had a good one left in me."
As it turns out, he had a great one. Oh My Goodness - only his fourth album ever - finds Fritts delivering songs originally performed by the pals who cowrote them with him, such as Arthur Alexander's "If It's Really Gotta Be This Way," John Prine's "The Oldest Baby in the World," and Dan Penn's "Memphis Women and Chicken." The title track is an old collaboration with another old friend, Spooner Oldham. Fritts also delivers two terrific new originals ("Good as New" and "Tuscaloosa 1962") along with material by such ace writers as Jesse Winchester and Paul Thorn.
Fritts has obviously slowed down some - a kidney transplant and heart trouble will do that - so he may no longer be the guy his old boss and running buddy Kris Kristofferson described in the liner notes to Fritts' 1974 debut, Prone to Lean: "He's got the look of a legend about him which he wears like an old hat, and they tell Fritts stories like they do about Jerry Lee, Ronnie Hawkins, and a few others crazy enough to live out our fantasies for us." But he puts that lifetime of experience into every performance here, and the result is a supremely moving set that reaffirms why all his better-known peers revere him.
(You can hear Kristofferson, Prine, Penn, Oldham, Tony Joe White, Willie Nelson, and Jason Isbell sing his praises in a coming documentary, Undeniably Donnie.)
"Without bragging, which I never do on myself . . . with this album I think I'm singing better, or at least I found my own voice," Fritts says.
Oh My Goodness was produced by John Paul White, late of the Civil Wars, and Ben Tanner of the Alabama Shakes, and released on White's Single Lock label. They crafted a record that is more spare than Fritts' previous work while remaining rooted in R&B and soul and not completely sacrificing the style that earned him the nickname Funky Donnie Fritts.
"When John was at the house, I was doing these songs for him, and I was playing my Wurlitzer piano," Fritts recalls. "And he said, 'If we do this thing, I want to do exactly what you're doing now. Because that's a part of you that's never really been shown.' That's what he really liked, just me and that Wurlitzer. And then we would overdub everything else we needed. We tried to keep it sparse, and it worked out really well."
Among those fleshing out the sound on the album are Prine, Oldham, Isbell, and Brittany Howard.
White, who had been recommended to Fritts by T Bone Burnett, also provides the sole accompaniment for Fritts and his Wurlitzer at the live shows, and Fritts has already come to hold him in the same regard as he does the artist in whose band he played for 25 years:
"Kris Kristofferson is one of the best people God ever put on this earth, and John is right there with him."
Two of Fritts' best-known songs do not appear on Oh My Goodness. "We Had It All," cowritten with Troy Seals, generated scores of cover versions and gave Fritts a now-I-can-die moment when his idol, Ray Charles, cut it. And he and the late Eddie Hinton wrote "Breakfast in Bed" for Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis album.
" 'Breakfast in Bed' was a new experience for me and Eddie," Fritts remembers. "It was a little more sophisticated. . . . We worked harder on that song than any we ever wrote. And it paid off - it's really one of my favorites."
Fritts has also appeared in 16 movies, including three by Sam Peckinpah (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and Convoy). The most recent was 2012's Jayne Mansfield's Car, by his friend Billy Bob Thornton.
Yes, it's been quite a life.
"You know what? I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world," Fritts says. "I got to work in the beginning of the Muscle Shoals thing, then I was involved in Nashville at probably the best time ever to be in Nashville - the end of the '60s into the mid-'70s. . . . And then all the stuff on the road, and we got to do all the movie things.
"A little old hick from Alabama did pretty good."
@NickCristiano
MUSIC
Donnie Fritts
8 p.m. Tuesday at World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St. Tickets: $15. 215-222-1400, philly.worldcafe
live.com.
EndText