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Don Nix |
Don Nix is a songwriter and music producer.
Although cited as being "obscure", he is a key figure in several genres of southern rock, soul and
blues.
He was instrumental in the creation of the trademark "Memphis Sound" and known for his work at
Stax Records.
A native of Memphis, Tennessee, he attended Messick High School, where he acquired a broad taste in music...you could find records from blues greats such as Freddie King and Sonny Boy Williamson alongside the Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra records in his collection. He first started playing guitar but picked up the saxophone for his first real band.
The Mar-Keys were "a high school band" formed by Messick High School students. Along with Steve Cropper,
Duck Dunn, Wayne Jackson,
Andrew Love, Charlie Freeman, Packy Axton and others, they recorded "Last Night", an instrumental record intended for local radio that became an international hit in 1961, establishing the foundation of Stax Records. The group had follow up hits "The Morning After" and "Popeye Stroll".
They toured the world (with acts such as the Yardbirds, Ike and Tina Turner, Sam the Sham, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, etc.) and backed up various other Stax artists (Carla and Rufus Thomas, William Bell, etc.) onstage and in the studio.
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singing with Claudia Lennear |
The band eventually broke up following a rowdy appearance on American Bandstand (Packy Axton arrived at the studio taping less than sober and the entire band gave Dick Clark the "finger" afterwards) with Cropper and Dunn joining Booker T. and the MG's, and Wayne Jackson forming the Memphis Horns with Andrew Love. Other members of the original group included renown session guitarist Charlie Freeman and Jerry Lee "Smoochie" Smith.
After years of touring with the Mar-Keys, Nix was tired of the travel and uninterested with the show business aspect of playing onstage. He found his niche creating and directing music production behind the scenes.
He played the part of backup musician to tracks cut at Stax studios (including William Bell's huge hit You Don't Miss Your Water and eventually wore the hat of record company exec, overseeing the day to day operations of Stax's rock themed subsidiary label Enterprise.
Nix honed his production skills at Stax, John Fry's Ardent Studios, and at Leon Russell and Denny Cordell's Shelter label, producing artists such as Albert King, Delaney and Bonnie, Joe Cocker, Sid Selvidge and Tracy Nelson.
Despite his reluctance to ever beome a front man or stage performer, Nix released brilliant (but underrated) solo albums on Shelter and Enterprise, such as Living By The Days and Hobos, Heroes, and Street Corner Clowns. Well worth the listen, Nix used the finest musicians and vocalists from Memphis (Larry Raspberry, Jeannie Greene, etc.), Muscle Shoals, and the crowd at Shelter, known as the Shelter People (Claudia Lennear, Kathi McDonald, Chris Blackwell, Carl Radle, Don Preston, etc.) as players.
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George Harrison and Don Nix |
The song "Goin' Down" became a blues standard and was covered by
Deep Purple,
Pearl
Jam, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mick Jagger, Maggie Bell with Stone the Crows and many others.
One notable career event was her collaboration with
George Harrison and many others in the production of the Concerts for Bangladesh - a pair of star-studded benefit concerts held at Madison Square Garden.
Harrison asked Nix to assemble a "soul choir" for the show (Claudia Lennear, Marlin and Jeannie Greene, etc.) and later told Nix that he should join the singers onstage. Though reluctant, Nix explains that "you don't say 'no' to a Beatle." The project's net proceeds were used to help alleviate dire conditions for
the Children of Bangladesh.
