The Associated Press: Obituaries in the newsJim Dickinson
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Jim Dickinson, a musician and producer who helped shape the Memphis sound in an influential career that spanned more than four decades, died Saturday morning. He was 67.
His wife, Mary Lindsay Dickinson, said he died in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital after three months of heart and intestinal bleeding problems. The couple lived in Hernando, Miss.
Dickinson recently had bypass surgery and was undergoing rehabilitation at Methodist University Hospital, his wife said.
Perhaps best known as the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson, two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated North Mississippi Allstars, Jim Dickinson managed an outsider's career in an insider's industry. His work in the 1960s and '70s is still influential as young artists rediscover the classic sound of Memphis from that era — a melting pot of rock, pop, blues, country, and rhythm and blues.
A dabbler in music while in college and later in shows at the famed Overton Park Shell in Memphis, Dickinson spent time on the road playing live in both his own projects, like Mudboy and the Neutrons, and with others until Luther was born. He gave up the road, built a home studio and settled in to a hard-scrabble life he jokingly compared to hustling.
Dickinson's career touched on some of the most important music made in the '60s and '70s. He recorded the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" in Muscle Shoals, Ala.; formed the Atlantic Records house band The Dixie Flyers to record with Aretha Franklin and other R&B legends; inspired a legion of indie rock bands through his work with Big Star; collaborated with Ry Cooder on a number of movie scores, including "Paris, Texas"; and played with Bob Dylan on his Grammy-winning return to prominence, "Time Out of Mind."
His later work as a producer veered wildly across genres, skipping from Mudhoney to T Model Ford and Lucero.