Jim Gaines brings it all back home

" Producer returns to Memphis "

By Norm Shaw

Jim Gaines may be one of the most famous Memphians you may have never heard of - high praise in his mind.

For someone with his credentials, Gaines is a remarkably low-key, low-ego kind of guy. After all, the former Stax man worked with Carlos Santana, Van Morrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jefferson Airplane/Starship and a host of other West Coast bands. He made stars out of Huey Lewis and the News, Journey and Toto. He even worked with on a Charley Brown TV special.

Gaines has worked with enough big starts for any two careers. As a matter of fact, he's basically had to careers, interrupted in the middle by two years of retirement in the early 1980s.

But despite the success, he remains level headed and accessible. And now he's back in Memphis with a mastering studio, a World Wide Web project and plans for a new studio. When asked how he hooked up with local favorites FreeWorld for the band's new record, he says with a shrug, "They called me up."

Gaines got his start in Memphis when he went to work for the Pepper-Tanner jingle studio in the 1960s. He literally worked himself up from the mailroom to the control room.

"I started out as a gopher, and worked my way into a job that didn't really exist as an engineer, making tape copies," he says. "I was there nine years, and running the place after four."

After leaving the jingle house, Gaines went to work for Steve Cropper of Stax Records fame. He stayed about a year before the lure of the West Coast finally won out. He left to go to Wally Heider's in 1970 as an engineer. He did everything from belly dancing music to rock stars. The move to producer was inevitable.

"The natural evolution is that once you are a successful engineer, bands will want you to co-produce with them. You evolve into a producer. You then share in the record and have some say so in the production. It goes from that to just producing. That's where I'm at now," he says.

Gaines' journey back to Memphis began with one of his best-known records, Stevie Ray Vaughan's In Step.

"I came here in 1989 to do Stevie Ray's In Step album. I had been traveling quite a bit from my home in San Francisco, and my father was having some heart problems. He lives here, and I wanted to be close to him. I left here in 1970 to move to San Francisco and work at Wally Heider's, which at that time was the biggest studio out there. I came back here, and I just decided I wanted to be close to him, especially since I spend about six months a year traveling. And I've loved it ever since," he says.

Gaines' work with Vaughan allowed him to work on more blues records. He produced Luther Allison's Blue Streak, which swept the W.C. Handy Awards this year, and has made records with Lonnie Brooks, Coco Montoya and others. And he made them here in Memphis.

A key element in keeping Gaines in Memphis is CryRock Productions. Gaines came to CryRock to work on a project for the owner. The relationship clicked, and a decision was made to build a mastering studio. He went to work full-time at CryRock last December, but he still has the freedom to work on outside projects, such as the new Allison record.

CryRock has other big plans for Gaines.

"CryRock wants to build me a studio," Gaines says. "We are looking for space Downtown. I want build Downtown. We want to be involved in Downtown. I want to be more involved in Memphis music scene, which unfortunately I haven't had time for before. I travel so much, I could never really participate. But it looks like more and more of my work is coming back to Memphis."

He also oversees the CryRock Web site, which offers unsigned bands a place to put up a Web site for a nominal fee. Based on the success of the IUMA Web site, the CryRock Showcase (http://www.cryrock.com) features several bands.

"I'm really excited by be back here," Gaines says. "Memphis is a music town. I feel real comfortable here. I'm excited about the mastering work. I'm excited about building a studio. I'm real excited, and fascinated, by the Internet. I think it all adds up to something special."