Tempe producer celebrates 40 years of work
It’s been 40 years since Clarke Rigsby launched Tempest Recording, the studio that sits behind his Tempe home, where he’s recorded sessions for such legendary figures as Glen Campbell, Waylon Jennings, Pharoah Sanders and Bo Diddley.
Late this summer, Rigsby brought in trumpeter Sam Oatts to record the new “CBS Morning News” theme.
Frankie Valli cut the vocals to his latest album, “Touch of Jazz,” at home, but the rest of the album was tracked and mixed at Tempest.
Rigsby also did the backing tracks when Eric Burdon and the Four Tops rerecorded their old hits for use in films.
“You know at the end of ‘Casino’ when they’re killing Joe Pesci with a baseball bat out in the field and his brother?,” Rigsby asks. “That’s our version of ‘House of the Rising Sun.’”
Lee Hazlewood, Stevie Wonder and 2 Beatles are connected
Two prominent figures in the early history of Arizona rock ‘n’ roll — Lee Hazlewood and Al Casey — recorded an album titled “Farmisht, Flatulence, Origami, ARF!!! And Me...” at Tempest for a label run by Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley.
“He was a pain in the ass,” Rigsby says, with a laugh, in response to a question about Hazlewood.
“But he was cool. And he actually sang my mom ‘Happy Birthday’ in Swedish.”
Ringo Starr is featured on a new recording of the Beatles classic “Come Together” for which session legends Steve Gadd and Dom Moio recorded tracks at Rigsby’s place.
Still other opportunities required Rigsby leaving his own property, recording Stevie Wonder at the Musical Instrument Museum and Paul McCartney near Nogales, Arizona.
And it’s all because he didn’t care for playing live.
Rigsby, a guitarist, didn’t like playing live
Rigsby grew up in Los Angeles. By the time he was 15 or 16, he was playing guitar with Western swing and country stars from the ‘40s and ‘50s.
“That was just the thing I could make money doing,” Rigsby says.
He played his first recording date at 15.
“And I kind of realized that the studio is very cool,” he says. “Because I never really liked performing. But the studio is just musicians.”
After doing several other sessions through years, he started thinking that could be his ticket out of live performances while giving him a way to make a living in music.
He left L.A. to go to Arizona State University, taking mostly music classes but earning a degree in political science.
At first, he had every intention of returning to Los Angeles.
But by the time he finished school in 1981, he had already opened his first studio with a four-track machine on a girlfriend’s patio, mostly working with friends who were songwriters.
“That was a particularly dark period in L.A.,” Rigsby says.
“There was a lot of drugs involved in everything. There were some big budgets in those days, but it just seemed really weird to me. And a lot of my friends weren’t doing well as far as the drugs went. So I just decided that I would stay here.”
How Rigsby became one of Burt Reynolds guys
Around the same time, Rigsby met Snuff Garrett, who produced several 60s pop hits.
Garrett had also left L.A. for Arizona and it was through him that Rigsby and his partner, Kevin Stoller, starting working with Burt Reynolds on the TV series “B.L. Stryker” and “Evening Shade,”
“We were Burt’s guys,” Rigsby says. “And he was funny, man. I mean, great stories.”
He met Diddley and Ike Turner through Bob Corritore, the local bandleader who’s cut several albums at Tempest. He also met a number of musicians he calls heroes through Joey DeFrancesco, a Scottsdale-based organist Jazz Times once called “the best B3 player on the planet.”
“He brought in George Coleman,” Rigsby says. “We did a record with Pharoah Sanders. Bobby Hutcherson. Jimmy Smith. James Moody. All these incredible jazz guys that were my heroes in the early days.”
How Rigsby got a chance to record Stevie Wonder
The Stevie Wonder session at the MIM was about four years ago, a collaboration between Wonder and the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a group of kids from Paraguay whose instruments are made from scrap materials.
During a break, the kids asked Wonder if he’d play a song for them so he sat at the piano and launched into “My Cherie Amour.”
“In the original key!,” Rigsby says. “I’m like, holy crap, was that cool!”
Of course, it’s all been quite a thing for Rigsby.
“I don’t really work for people,” Rigsby says.
“I work with people. To work with creative people on a consistent basis to me is worth way more than getting rich at something, you know? And I feel like that’s happened here. So that’s been the greatest for me.”