Music - Influential Albums, Part 4
"What If" We Take a Look at the Dixie Dregs' Second Studio Released LP?
It’s time once again to explore the world of Music. This is Part 4 of a series that reviews albums I have particularly enjoyed — ones that have significantly impacted my musical tastes, and ones that I would like to share with others. Here are some thoughts about my favorite album of all time, recorded by my favorite band of all time! It’s the Dixie Dregs’ LP from 1978. It’s called What If.
I stood fixed and still after drawing up close to the radio. I turned the volume up and listened and waited. There were no vocals. No lyrics. Just music. Pure music.
What is this stuff? Who are these guys? I needed to know. But when the tune was over, the radio station cut straight to a car dealership commercial.
I stretched the coiled white telephone cord far from the wall as I flipped back and forth through the phone book’s yellow pages on the kitchen counter. Real Estate. Radiators. There … Radio Stations and Broadcasting Companies. I punched the numbers for KSAN Radio into the handset, grateful that my parents had finally replaced the old rotary dial telephone with a new push-button model. I kept getting busy signals before I finally got through.
“KSAN 94.9, San Francisco. How can I help you?” answered a voice on the other end of the line.
“Hi. What was that music you guys just played?”
“You mean, before the station break?”
“Just before the car lot commercial, yes. There was no singing – just a band playing music,” I added.
“Let’s see … That was the Dixie Dregs. The tune’s called ‘Take It Off the Top’. Nice stuff, huh?”
“Yeah, it was great! Are they a new band?”
“I’m not sure, but it looks like the album is brand new. We just got our promo copy yesterday.”
“What’s it called?”
“What If.”
“What??”
“What If. That’s the name of the album.”
Less than thirty minutes after that brief phone conversation I was pedaling my bike back home from the nearest record store with a vinyl copy of What If hanging from the handlebars in a white plastic bag.
The words above are an excerpt from my fictional book, Encores, published in 2018. I say fictional, but these particular lines are true and biographical — about myself forty years earlier, in 1978. Suddenly, I had a new favorite band! And despite the fact that I’ve only ever met six other people who have even heard of them, the Dixie Dregs have held firm as my favorites for nearly half a century.
Of the sixty-one studio tracks recorded by this band, only two of them feature lyrics1 — ones that are remarkably void of drug references and vulgarities so common to rock music from that era. The remainder of the band’s catalog is composed of highly sophisticated instrumental tunes. They span such genres as progressive rock, jazz fusion, bluegrass, baroque, and (U.S.) Southern rock, plus some works that simply defy easy labeling. The What If album offers an exemplary sampler of this band’s eclectic variety with the following eight tracks:
UK readers may recall hearing Take It Off the Top as the theme music for BBC Radio 1’s The Friday Rock Show with Tommy Vance, which ran from 1978 to 1993. An acquired taste is required for some of Dixie Dregs’ music, but what’s not to like about this fun, accessible tune?
Odyssey - With its complex time signature changes, counterbalanced by the sweetest of violin melodies, Odyssey has become my favorite Dixie Dregs tune of all time.
What If - This title track is a slow, dreamy, almost hallucinogenic tune. It is said to have been played in concert early on with band members lying down on their backs to produce the proper “mood”!
Travel Tunes - Not unlike Odyssey, this piece starts as a fast-driving rocker but mixes in a variety of tempos and peculiar time signatures.
Ice Cakes - A jazzy treat featuring some great solos but otherwise positions the percussion and bass way up front. Listen closely and you can hear Rod Morgenstein’s background “vocals” picked up by his drum microphones.
Little Kids - A beautiful melodic duet on acoustic guitar and violin. I’ve seen the Steve Morse Band perform Little Kids on electric guitar and bass, and surprisingly with the same amount of finesse.
Gina Lola Breakdown - Toe-tapping, rollicking bluegrass showing the breadth and virtuosity of these talented musicians.
Night Meets Light - I just don’t have adequate words to describe this wondrous piece. But there is one question to consider here: Can a musical work have three melodies going on simultaneously?
Over the decades, the Dixie Dregs might have been described as an “art band”, never achieving great fame or wealth, but rather playing for the pure love of music and thus preserving its integrity. After their heyday, the band would only get together and do relatively short tours every few years, supporting this habit with more profitable gigs in the interim. Guitarist Steve Morse was with the band Kansas for a time before joining Deep Purple for twenty-eight years. Rod Morgenstein has been Winger’s drummer since that band’s inception. Violinist Alan Sloan is an anesthesiologist by trade. Bassist Andy West has had a long career in the software industry, and so on.
I was a little late with finally seeing the Dixie Dregs perform live for my first time. It was on a snowy winter’s night in Salt Lake City, Utah, the day after they performed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1993. I’ve since had the privilege of watching the Dixie Dregs play five more times in the ensuing years. The highlight, of course, was meeting the band backstage in Atlanta, Georgia in 2018. It was my chance to shake their hands and thank them for filling my life with so much musical happiness.
Both tracks, sung by guest artists, are found on the 1982 Industry Standard album. "Crank It Up" features vocals by Patrick Simmons of the Doobie Brothers, while "Ridin' High" was sung by Alex Ligertwood of Santana.