For the great funnyman who taught me so much about songs and songwriting...
info
How to obtain copies of my personal recordings, live and studio, that I recorded of Tom alone or with his bands. Beginning in 1963...
CLICK HERE!
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| TOMMY RIGGS TRIBUTE PAGE For the great funnyman who taught me so much about songs and songwriting... |
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| I first met Tommy Riggs while I was working at radio station KPBA on West Sixth Avenue in Pine Bluff, Arkansas during 1962. I had been employed there about six months when Tom arrived to replace Eddie Braddock, (currently the husband of Jerry Lee Lewis's sister, Linda Gail) a DJ from Memphis who knew and introduced me to all the people at Stax Records there, plus Sam Phillips and his gang, and had worked with me for just a few months before being canned. I instantly resented Tom replacing my buddy until his humor won me over three seconds later, or perhaps less, and we then decided to write a few songs together, the first of which I took to Nashville and played for Floyd Cramer at his office next to the RCA Studio. It was not accepted, but for a couple of years I visited Nashville several times a year and was around the creative geniuses of artists like Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, Anita Kerr, the Jordanaires, Owen Bradley and session engineers such asTommy Strong and Selby Coffeen. Once, Duane Eddy almost ran me down in his Lincoln between sessions at the RCA studio! I have lots of great memories of the sessions I sat in on at Bradley's (click to see rate card) and RCA. Tom and I continued on to create about 20 more songs during our early relationship, many of them still unpublished and unheard. In 1966, Tom became "Rock Robbins" at the legendary KAAY in Little Rock until the late sixties when we were once again teamed up at KCLA in Pine Bluff. However, in the meantime, he had taught me so much about songwriting and recording. Sadly, from there our lives took very different paths and they only crossed a few times in the years since. I last had a conversation with him by phone from Nashville about 1994, and was shocked to learn of Tom's death in July of 2000. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| JUST FOUND-The first ever publicity photo of Tom! Click here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| LEFT: Copy of a publicity photo I shot for Tommy Riggs at my studio circa 1975 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Another photo from the same session | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stella, Tom's wife | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The SONGWRITING STORY... Tommy Riggs and I, Adventures in Memphis and Nashville, plus latest info |
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| Wonderful stories of the great times I shared with Tommy Riggs.. I know you will certainly appreciate seeing how he positively influenced so many peoples' lives.... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| NEW! TOMMY RIGGS MUSIC PAGE! How to obtain copies of my personal recordings, live and studio, that I recorded of Tom alone or with his bands. Beginning in 1963... CLICK HERE! |
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| Links to Ken Parsons and others... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SADIE LYNN NAIL (Okle) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HARRY PEARSON | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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