Harry Aldridge
The Seemingly Endless Saga of Harry Aldridge (AKA "Bootleg") Cont'd
1971 - 1972 "Sweet Memories"
by Harry Aldridge
Hello Memphis! Elvis! The Blues! What a great music city! We moved into Whitehaven "Home of Graceland" and there was fresh snow on the ground.
Ronnie and Joyce let us live with them until we got our own place on "Singing Trees Drive". When we pulled into town I bought a nice Fender jazz bass from Mike Ladd's Music Store, right across the street from Presley's "Graceland". Unreal!
I practiced for two weeks at Ronnie's House with tapes of the material that we would play at TJ's, a local Memphis club that Milsap packed about six nights a week. It was quite a change for me to not only learn to play both a new instrument and stage material that I'd never played, but also adjusting to playing in clubs night after night versus one-nighters.
It was a great learning experience working with Milsap. He's both a great talent and teacher, and he became my best friend while I was there.
I came to know all of the Stax and American Studios musicians who were turning out a great deal of hits at the time. Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Dan Penn, Tony Joe White, a lot of the Elvis crowd, John Fogerty and Creedence, etc., were steady visitors. I started playing on sessions at Stax with David Porter, who was Isaac Hayes' writing partner and right-hand man. Ronnie also recorded one of my original songs. I started to write constantly. I continued to be Milsap's driver to the gigs and his eyes when he needed assistance.