Lost And Found The Coleman-Hinton Project          1969-71 Produced and Engineered by Eddie Hinton and Jim Coleman String Arrangements:  Jim Coleman and Eddie Hinton Recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Muscle Shoals, Alabama Quad Studio, Nashville, Tennessee; and Olympic Studio, London, England

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In the summer of 1969, Eddie Hinton and I began a project that was to be a turning point in both of our lives.  Eddie had signed me as a writer with his publishing company and I had come up to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to try and get a song on the album being recorded there by Lulu of "To Sir With Love" fame.  At the time, Eddie was the guitarist at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and had recorded on many great R&B tunes by Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Joe Tex and others.  When I got to town, Eddie said he wanted to save my songs for an album he had decided to produce on me.

It was summer and I was out of school so I moved to Muscle Shoals and began going to the studio with Eddie.  We would usually get in the studio on Friday night and stay up until Monday morning recording.  During our formal recording sessions we used the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section with Barry Beckett on piano, Roger Hawkins on drums and David Hood on bass with Jimmie Johnson helping Eddie out with the engineering.

Eddie's good friend and former roommate, Duane Allman, was asked to played guitar, but, I told Eddie I wanted Tippy Armstrong to play guitar instead.  Tippy was a great player and a great friend of mine.  He played on albums for Bobby Womack, Albert King, and Jimmy Cliff among others.  Duane was planning to leave town anyway and had asked Eddie to join him in a new band he was putting together with his brother, Greg, to be called "The Allman Brothers Band."  Eddie turned him down for his studio gig and to finish the album we had decided to call "The Coleman-Hinton Project."  Eddie had also picked Tippy to replace him as the staff session guitarist at Muscle Shoals Sound when he and I left to go on the road to promote our record.

In addition to recording in Muscle Shoals, we also recorded at David Briggs' Quad Studio in Nashville and at Olympic Studio in London where we recorded the strings.  We used the same string players from the London Symphony who had played on the Beatles' records.  Other notable musicians on this record include the late, great King Curtis on Soprano Saxophone and John Hughey on pedal steel guitar.  I was a big fan of Conway Twitty at the time and wanted to use Hughey who was Conway's steel player.  John Hughey now plays for Vince Gill.  King Curtis was very popular in the 60's and was actually the opening act for the Beatles during their 1965 US tour when I saw them in Atlanta.  King Curtis and Tippy have both been gone now for many years along with Duane.

Of the many stories I recall from these recording sessions the one about the string session in London remains particularly vivid in my mind.  Eddie had refused to allow either of us to begin writing the string parts until we were on the plane headed for England.  We got on the plane with only blank music paper and began writing the arrangements for string quartet and string ensemble with 11 strings.  This was all done in our heads without guitar or other instrument to help play the parts as they were being written.  We had never heard the arrangements until we were conducting the sessions with the London Symphony string players.  When we did the song "Where You Come From," an arrangement that Eddie had written for the string ensemble, everything was going fine until they got to the short instrumental part at which time everyone stopped playing.  The conductor turned to Eddie and said, "Mr. Hinton, the notes you have written are not on the viola and go off the fingerboard."  Eddie responded without hesitation saying, "When they get there just have them transpose down an octave."  They did and it worked out fine.

Eddie Hinton was a great producer and a great guitar player, and, he was just about the most un- compromising man I have ever known.  He was so full of talent but couldn't seem to find a way to get his feelings across without alienating someone along the way.  He was one soulful dude with his own, intense 'philosogie' of life.  His vocal on the Staple Singers' "Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom)" on this CD is to me the essence of Eddie Hinton.  I'll never forget watching him scream like Mavis at the end.  He was always in the pocket.  Famed producer Jerry Wexler said in a letter to Eddie's mother, "He remains unique, a white boy who truly sang and played in the spirit of the great black soul artists he venerated.  With Eddie, it wasn't imitation; it was totally created, with a fire and fury that was as real as Otis Redding's and Wilson Pickett's."

For a number of reasons this album never came out.  We had worked out a deal with Ahmet Ertegun and Atlantic Records but Eddie refused to accept Ahmet's offer.  Eddie then contacted Chris Blackwell of Island Records and we actually left Muscle Shoals and moved to Atlanta to be where Island was going to be based.  But, the deal with Island also fell through.  Eddie and I grew farther and farther apart and I never actually got to hear the final mix of the album after we returned from England.  I went on to play guitar on the road for a couple of years waiting for word from Eddie.  Eventually, I went back to college and then medical school and now practice Internal Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.  As the years slipped by, turning into decades, we communicated very rarely and Eddie went down his star-crossed road.  I last talked to Eddie in 1979.  I had all but forgotten about this album but not Eddie and the influence he had on my life.

Eddie Hinton died July 28, 1995 at his mother's home in Birmingham, Alabama.  About eight weeks after his untimely death, I got a call from Eddie's second cousin in Tuscaloosa who told me that Eddie's mother, Deanie Perkins, had said she wanted to talk to me.  I later called Eddie's mother and she told me that after Eddie died she and her husband had gone into Eddie's room and had taken out all the tapes and music manuscripts and other personal things that he left behind and had completely cleaned the room out.  She said a few weeks later they realized that they were still bothered by the way the room looked because it reminded them so much of Eddie.  They decided to go back in and rearrange the furniture.  When they started to take Eddie's bed out of the room they picked up the box springs and found a tape underneath.  This tape was the only known copy of the long lost Coleman-Hinton project.  With help from Marc Harrelson at Boutwell Studio in Birmingham, Alabama,  I was able to restore the tape to its present condition and the finished product is contained on this CD.

I want this CD to be a tribute to Eddie Hinton.  It was really his album anyway.  All I did was write a few songs and try to sing and play a little guitar.  Like Eddie use to sing to me, "I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see," finding this album after 25 years makes me see those early days in a much different light.  Those really were magic times when our dreams and innocence were great.  Eddie Hinton got lost in this life.  I hope he's found peace in the next.  "You don't miss your water 'til your well runs dry," he used to say.  We'll all miss you, Eddie.

Jim Coleman