like Paris at the turn of the century

When I was writing here yesterday about Sun Records, I got to thinking, comparing photographs:


It's true that when I was a very young child, people still looked like this --





but within 5 or 6 years in the part of the sixties that I can remember, it got so that people looked like this





instead.  The two pictures above are the same guy, Sun Records' Sam Phillips.  That was how fast the styles changed.


After receiving that impression when I was very young -- impressionable, you might say -- I now remain surprised or sort of -- "thrown" by the modern phenomenon of styles not changing nearly that fast anymore.  (Example:  slacks hanging low -- hasn't that style been around, like, 20 years a'ready??)  In the sixties and seventies, style evolution traveled a much quicker and quirkier trajectory.


The Rolling Stones in 1964:





and in 1970:








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And in reviewing Jim Dickinson's quote from Keith Richards' autobiography, I have to laugh because it made me think...


When Mr. Dickinson talks about meeting the Stones in 1969 at Muscle Shoals, he says, "They still to this day think I'm a country piano player.  I'm not sure why, because I can barely play country music."


But see, here's what it is -- when you're these people:





from England, and you see





this guy


at a recording studio,


in Alabama...your logical assumption / conclusion is -- no doubt he plays country music!


(lol - instead of "racial profiling," MUSICIAN profiling!  No, REGIONAL musician profiling! -- uh-oh...!)


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"...Like Paris at the turn of the century, we saw a change in Memphis that affected the whole world."


-- Jim Dickinson





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