| Well it was a pretty successful breakfast gig
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| But It was Milton’s other option that would get me
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| moving in the direction that I wanted to be going
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| About six months later while we were in the studio
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| He told me he was planning one of his trips to Nashville
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| Which he did once or twice a year
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| to record demos of his songs, which he would then pitch
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| to recording artists in Nashville
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| He had a pretty good track record and
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| he had established pretty good contacts in music city as well
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| He asked me to come along
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| And then explained the plan
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| Travis had moved to Nashville a couple of months earlier
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| when a job opened up as a full time engineer at Spar Recording Studios
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| He would be engineering Milton’s sessions
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| Milton wanted me to do a vocal of one of his contemporary
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| songs called round like a ball
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| When that was finished we would use the time
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| left on the session to record three of my songs
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| With the ace studio players he had hired
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| He told me that the top pedal steel player at the time,
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| Lloyd Greene was from Mobile and a
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| friend and would be playing on the session
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| Milton had told him about me coming along
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| This would give us a Nashville recorded session of demos
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| that he could then pitch to record companies
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| I thanked him about 1000 times in
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| the minutes after he explained the plan
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| And with Milton’s help, it seemed that a few pieces of the puzzle
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| I saw as my future, seemed to be finally fitting together
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| I was anxious, excited and a bit uncertain
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| as I kept repeating to myself everyday
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| before we boarded the plane,
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| Damn, we’re going to Nashville
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| And make no mistake about it, Nashville was the big time
|
| There certainly weren’t any major career moves happening
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| for me at the Admiral’s Corner or the electrical department at
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| Alabhama Shipbuilding company
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| So as Mark Twain said, I was ready to light out into the territory
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| Meanwhile, back in Mobile, before we left,
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| the tape player kept on recording
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| This was another favourite Lightfoot song, called the Gypsey
|
| About a fortune-teller that was
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| very popular in our Bourbon Street days
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| and I had my fortune read a few times in that town
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| I will blame that habit on my favourite record of that era,
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| Fortune Teller,
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| written by Allen Toussaint and recorded by Benny Spellman
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| Benny seemed to have gotten a little
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| more of his money’s worth than Gordon did
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| Anyway, Here’s one of the last songs that i recorded in Mobile
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| before I went looking for my own fortune… Here is the Gypsey |