Two legends stack `the deck with great songs'
A pair of guitar kings will lay out their high cards this weekend in Oklahoma City.
The pot will get richer, musically speaking, Sunday when Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dave Mason's “Feelin' Alright” tour stop at the Tower Theatre adds fellow rock hall inductee Steve Cropper.
“There's — let me think — over 125 years of combined history with both of us,” Mason said in a phone interview last week. “We've stacked the
deck with great songs.”
Co-founder of the landmark band Traffic, Mason will bring to the table songs he wrote and/or recorded with the English rock outfit, as well as during his solo
career, including “We Just Disagree,” “Only You Know and I Know” and, of course, “Feelin' Alright.” He said he has known Cropper, a founding member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s whom film fans also will recognize as part of The Blues Brothers' band, for a long time.
“For me, it's fun because I get to do material that I would never normally do,” Mason said. “Most people, which for me I find fascinating, know him from probably `The Blues Brothers' movie. His career is so much bigger than that, but I don't think most people really know. I was listening to him when I was 16 or 17 years old. There's a guy here that co-wrote `(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay,' `In the Midnight Hour.' ... And he backed with Booker T. & the M.G.'s pretty much every Stax recording artist that ever existed."
Since their premiere performance together in May 2018, the two legends have been shared stages across the country with their “Rock & Soul Revue.” Although Cropper was supposed to end their current run with three gigs this week in Texas, Mason invited him to play on the OKC show, too.
Classic career
During his tenure with Traffic, with whom he was inducted into the rock hall in 2004, Mason penned the seminal song “Feelin' Alright,” and the band's jangly, original rendition was featured on its self-titled 1968 album. Joe Cocker recorded his bluesy and betterknown version of the song for his debut album “With a Little Help from My Friends,” released the following year.
“`Feelin' Alright' is a song that's been recorded by over 50 different artists from Grand Funk to all kinds of different people. … Joe Cocker did it, and
that was what sent it over the top,” Mason said. “So, it's open to interpretation … and like most things, most people relate to it in different ways.”
Over his more than five-decade career, Mason has made music with the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. He played 12-string acoustic guitar on Jimi Hendrix's iconic cover of Bob Dylan's “All Along the Watchtower,” another classic song featured in Mason's shows.
In 1969-70, he toured with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, along with Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Oklahoma native Leon Russell. And, Mason was a member of Fleetwood Mac from 1994-96, so he will play “Black Magic Woman” on Sunday with bandmate Gretchen Rhodes, who also performs with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band.