Our "celebrity culture" is a royal load of crap, because any society in which Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and any number of teenaged vampires are followed breathlessly from moment to moment deserves to be blown up. Filming your sex acts, not wearing underwear in public and teen angst over who is dating whom are not bases for choosing objects of worship.
That said, I have been thrilled to meet exactly three legitimate celebrities, truly accomplished people, in my life: Sam Phillips (not the woman who sings; the Real One), Stan Musial, and Jim Dickinson.
Jim Dickinson was Memphis Music. His resume is being widely rehearsed in his obituaries. Would Bob Dylan have had this late-career renaissance if he hadn't crossed paths with Dickinson during the recording of Time Out of Mind? Could he?
Would Alex Chilton have become, well, Alex Chilton without Dickinson at the board for those Big Star albums?
Would Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Son House and so many others hold their hallowed places in American music history without the efforts of Dickinson and several other young white boys in the 1960's to find them, get them performing again, and fight for their just due?
Would the Beale Street Festival have been conceived without the Blues festivals Dickinson staged and performed in at the Overton Park Shell?
Would anyone care about Wild Horses without Jim's piano?
And there is still the film scoring with Ry Cooder, the upbringing of the North Mississippi All Stars, the performances all over creation (Brownsville with Luther and Cody at the dedication of Sleepy John Estes' cabin, all the times at the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival, hundreds of others that I was privileged to hear), the gift to Mose Vinson of finally giving him an album under his own name, and so much more.
Jim was Memphis Music. Jim was American Music. And I'm sick that he's gone.
But as he left his own epitaph: "I'm just dead. I'm not gone."
Amen, brother! Amen!
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