Rock and Roll; Interview with Spooner Oldham, David Hood, and Jimmy Johnson [Part 3 of 3]

Interviewer: … Oldham: I'm sure I've heard him, no, I don't listen to jazz, I really don't listen to much of it. I don't buy jazz and I hear it sort of as a matter of passing in the… I don't look for it. It's everywhere on the other hand. But it's not me. Interviewer: … Oldham: I love his playing, yeah. Good feeling, I loved his playing before I met him, you know. He's a real talent. Interviewer: ... 4th of July. Oldham: Oh, good, I'd like to be there for that.

Interviewer: We may do a session with them the way we did with you guys today. Okay. Jimmy let me talk to you a minute. You must have been heavily. Johnson: Somewhat, ah… Less him than the others but, ah, I think, I think my main influence probably was Chuck Berry, that's my main inspiration to play. And, ah, Jimmy Reed and definitely T-Bone Walker. And, ah, and of course Robert Johnson, that goes without saying. And, ah, I think that, ah, I listened a lot to Steve Cropper as well in the very early Stax records, you know, I mean and the Motown players, I don't know all the guitar players from there but everything they were doing. And, ah, but we were real big fans of Stax and Motown. Interviewer: Briefly tell that radio…

Hood: Well when my first remembrance of listening to rock and roll was riding in a car and my daddy would control the, the radio in the car and we listened to what he wanted to hear but whenever we got a chance my sister and I would change the station from what he was, he was listening, Guy Lombardo or somebody and we would change to the rock and roll station. And they were playing Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and, ah, all, all those and later Elvis, all those guys. And my daddy just hated that music. And we just thought it was the greatest thing because it was free, you know, it was funny and it was wild. But my daddy hated that music. And that was it. It, it was our music instead of his music I think. Johnson: I think it was a coming together of the country music, the R and B music of the time and the gospel influences of both white and black gospel, came together and there was, became a rock and roll sound, you know, with a beat. Oldham: This may be debatable in a…

Interviewer: Early awareness of rock and roll. Oldham: Oh yeah my, my remembrance of hearing rock and roll for the first time from my point of view on the radio was probably Hank Williams, "Jambalaya" that struck me as straight out rock and roll. And also "A Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On" with Jerry Lee Lewis, those were my two first impressions of what later I learned to probably be rock and roll.