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PrintSounding off on Eric Clapton and the Tulsa Sound
The musician will make a homecoming of sorts to Tulsa when he plays the BOK Center this month.
“There isn’t really any Tulsa Sound; we were just trying to play the blues and didn’t know how, so that’s what we came up with.” — John “J.J.” Cale
According to the U.S. Census, Tulsa’s 1940 population was 142,157. By 1960, Tulsa had grown to 258,271. Besides trouble, the resulting invasion of youth found music.
“We had a radio program late at night here in Tulsa, a black gentleman named Frank Berry … and he played gospel music,” says Rocky Frisco, a schoolmate of J.J. Cale at Central High School and subsequent bandmate to Cale and a slew of other musicians. “And that was Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke, people like that. When they started branching off into secular music, he continued to play them until finally his whole program was pretty raw rock ’n’ roll and R&B. That was an influence.”
Locally, many practiced what they learned by heading to north Tulsa.
“Tulsa was a segregated place back then,” Frisco says. “The Flamingo was a nightclub in the ’50s, just a little bit south of the (Interstate 244) bridge and Greenwood.
“That club and Flash (Terry) didn’t have any attitude at all about race or ethnicity. I was kind of scared to death to go there actually, but he was always really nice to me and encouraged me.”
The Tulsa Sound, for Frisco, was the result of several factors.
“Bill Raffensberger had the first electric bass in Tulsa … us trying to keep up with him and jam and the influence that we got from Flash and his band on the north side,” he says. “ … We borrowed from everything and everybody … That was the basis for what they call the Tulsa Sound.”
The Tulsa Sound went national thanks to Leon Russell, Frisco says.
“Leon Russell found out that Joe Cocker’s musicians were all strung out,” Frisco says. “ … Joe had this big tour of the United States and he didn’t have anybody that was capable of making it through the night. Leon said, ‘I can put a band for you together in a few days and we can do just fine … I’ll just get some Tulsa musicians.’ That was the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour.”
“Mad Dogs and Englishmen” was recorded March 27 and 28, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City and featured a mix of rock and soul. It went multi-platinum and launched the careers of many involved and even some who weren’t.
“That tour inspired us to write ‘God Love & Rock n Roll,’” says David Teegarden of Teegarden and Van Winkle about the Top 20 song. The group was a local band that went to Detroit and later earned a Grammy Award with Bob Seger.
Discussing Leon Russell, Teegarden adds, “He had it, boy, that’s for sure. He taught me. He taught a lot of us. I owe him a huge, big, incredible debt of gratitude.”
Russell recruited Tulsans Jim Keltner on drums and Carl Radle on bass guitar to join the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour.
Radle started playing with Eric Clapton the same year. When Clapton took a three-year break from music in the early ’70s, Radle repeatedly sent him music that he had been working on. On those recordings was the Tulsa County Band, including musicians Jamie Oldaker and Dick Sims.
Radle, Oldaker and Sims became Clapton’s band in the 1970s and early ’80s.
Sims and his self-designed Hammond B3 first played with Clapton on the album “461 Ocean Boulevard.” Songs such as “Give Me Strength,” “Eric After Hours Blues Jam” and “I Shot the Sheriff” are perfect examples of what the Tulsa Sound had become.
“‘461 Ocean Boulevard,’ it was Eric Clapton, but that was the Tulsa County Band,” Sims says. “They weren’t going to name it ‘Eric Clapton and Tulsa County’ because Eric was already a solo act. And the bands he’d been in before, they only lasted one album and then they’d break up. And we were with him for nine years.
“It was a great band. I was blessed to get to experience that quality of music.”
Besides multiple albums and world tours with Clapton, Sims went on to work with Peter Tosh, Joan Armatrading, Vince Gill and Cale.
Clapton later tapped his Tulsa connection with Cale and his songs “After Midnight” and “Cocaine,” which brought his songwriting talents to the attention of many other artists and bands, including Lynyrd Skynyrd, Santana, The Allman Brothers, Johnny Cash, The Band and Captain Beefheart, to name a few. Cale has even crossed over to a whole new generation with Widespread Panic and moe.
Cale and Clapton recently collaborated on “The Road to Escondido.” It went on to win the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
Some may ask, “When is Clapton just going to move here?”
On March 2, for one night, he will.
Who’s Who of the Tulsa Sound
J.J. Cale, a musician and songwriter, co-created the Tulsa Sound. He wrote two songs made famous by Eric Clapton, “Cocaine” and “After Midnight.”
Rocky Frisco is a piano-playing Tulsan and resident music historian. In addition to J.J. Cale’s band, he has worked with Tom Skinner’s Science Project, Flash Terry and the Gene Cross Band.
Leon Russell is a keyboardist, guitarist and songwriter who has been working with notable artists since the 1960s. He has also had a successful solo career, with such hits as “Tight Rope,” “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” and “Wabash Cannonball.”
Jim Keltner was a session drummer for artists such as Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Bob Dylan, as well as other famous artists of the late ’60s and ’70s.
Carl Radle, a bass guitarist, worked closely with Clapton and was also a song arranger; one of his most famous arrangements is “Motherless Children.” He died in 1980.
Jamie Oldaker joined Bob Seger’s band as a drummer; he toured and recorded “Back in ’72”.
Tulsan Dick Sims is an organist and worked with Clapton on “461 Ocean Boulevard” and other albums.
