Feeling High: Psychedelic Sound of Memphis / Various

Memphis is well known as the birthplaces of the blues, the fount of southern soul - and the locale that begat rock 'n' roll. The city boasted a healthy rock scene well into the 1960s and 1970s, but few retrospectives have documented Memphis music in the psychedelic era when, as a major recording center, it was the nexus not just for local freaks, but those from neighboring Arkansas, Mississippi and beyond. Big Beat's Feeling High - The Psychedelic Sound Of Memphis shines a welcome light on this long-neglected area, and its survey is based principally upon the work of two renowned Memphis mavericks.

With a decades-long career as an iconoclastic musical polymath, Jim Dickinson needs little introduction. However, his rarely-discussed apprenticeship as a producer at Ardent Studios in the late 1960s made Dickinson responsible for many of the wildest and wackiest sessions ever held in Memphis. Some excerpts slipped out at the time on obscure singles on Stax and elsewhere, but much remains unreleased, such as the album Jim cut at Ardent with Knowbody Else, later known as Black Oak Arkansas.

In contrast, James Parks was a young wet-behind-the-ears punk who took over the control room at his uncle Stan Kesler's Sounds Of Memphis studio in 1968, bringing in his freak friends from counterculture hotspots like the Bitter Lemon. Parks' production work ran to groups like the Changin' Tymes, Mother Roses and Triple X, featuring future country star Gus Hardin, as well as some crazoid studio-only experiments like Rubber Rapper and Shoo Shoo Shoo Fly, all done under his Memphis Underground Music Association umbrella.

Dickinson and Parks represent the outer edge of the Memphis music scene in those years, and whilst the vast majority of tracks on Feeling High have not been issued before, their inspired lunacy makes the recorded evidence very special. Local notables including the Poor Little Rich Kids, 1st Century and Goatdancers share the track-listing, and the detailed liner notes spill the beans on this fascinating slice of Memphis music history. Compilation and note by Alec Palao.