Walden, Phil

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Phil Walden

Recording company executive, manager

Over his more than four decades in the music business, Phil Walden set many high profile careers in motion. As a manager, promoter, and recording company executive, Walden helped reshape American popular music. As Otis Redding's manager in the 1960s he showed that hardcore Southern soul music could cross over from its African-American base and appeal to white audiences. In the 1970s, as head of his own Capricorn label, Walden nurtured the bands that took Southern rock to the top of the charts. In a comeback as head of a revived Capricorn in the 1990s, he recorded a range of alternative rock bands and strengthened a growing Southern recording industry. Walden himself was not a musician, but he understood musicians well. "From everybody I've talked to that's been associated [with him], whether they hate him now or love him," Georgia Music Hall of Fame curator Joseph Johnson told Joe Kovac Jr. and S. Heather Duncan of the Macon Telegraph, "he created this environment where they could be free to create without the pressure from the big labels to create the hit songs."

Born Philip Michael Walden in Greenville, South Carolina, on January 11, 1940, Walden grew up in Macon, Georgia. His interest in popular music was stimulated by local radio station WIBB and its rhythm-and-blues "Night Rider" program. It seems to have been the uninhibited early rock and roll of Little Richard that made him think about a music career. "I had never been exposed to something that raw in my life," Walden told the authors of an Allman Brothers biography (as quoted by Kovac and Duncan). "When I heard 'Wop bop a lubop a lop bam boom,'I knew I didn't want to sell insurance or used cars. I wanted to be in the music business."

Painted Office with Otis Redding

Walden attended Mercer University in Macon, graduating in 1962. He began working in music while he was still a student, booking musical acts into local fraternity parties. One singer he managed was Otis Redding. The two had been friends in high school, and Redding helped Walden paint the office of the Phil Walden Artists and Promotions Agency, when young Walden opened it as a college sophomore. If his friendship with the African-American Redding was unusual, his blurring of musical color lines in the heart of the segregated South was even more so. "For Phil to work with a young black guy back then was hard," said Little Richard, addressing mourners at Walden's funeral, as quoted by Richard L. Eldredge of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I was there. I know. I'm so grateful I met this man." Walden signed up the young Redding as a driver for Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, a blues act in his stable, and then arranged for Redding to cut a pair of singles of his own as vocalist with the group.

After spending two years in the U.S. Army in the early 1960s, Walden soon picked up where he had left off. He executed a long-range plan for Redding's career, getting him out of a disadvantageous contract so he could sign with the hot Memphis label Stax. Walden "understood he could take Otis and put him at a predominantly white university in the South with no problem whatsoever. He didn't just try to put Otis on the 'Chitlin' Circuit' but exposed him to a mass market. It was a breakthrough to do that with a country soul singer," Macon mayor Jack Ellis observed to Kovac and Duncan. In 1963 Redding notched his first hit with "These Arms of Mine," and by 1965 Redding was competing with Detroit's Motown artists at upper chart levels with his Otis Blue album, containing "Respect" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)."

Walden, riding high, also signed soul singer Joe Tex and the duo Sam and Dave as clients in the mid-1960s. He put together soul revues that made a successful European tour in 1966 and appeared at the giant Monterey Pop Festival in California in 1967. But Walden was personally and professionally devastated by Redding's death in plane crash in December of 1967, on the eve of the release of his biggest hit, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay." The Redding family in Macon remained close to Walden, who took nearly two years off from musical activities.

Founded Capricorn Label

What brought Walden back to the table was the talent of a long-haired rock guitarist, Duane Allman, whom he heard playing the slide guitar on soul vocalist Wilson Pickett's cover of the Beatles' "Hey Jude." Walden and Atlantic label head Jerry Wexler devised a plan to merge rock and Southern blues sounds, with a new Allman Brothers Band at the forefront of what they correctly guessed would be a new musical movement. Walden suggested that Wexler open a new studio in Macon, but Wexler instead decided to finance a whole new label, Capricorn, which was founded by Walden and Atlantic executive Frank Fenter in 1969 and distributed by Atlantic. Walden served as manager for the Allman Brothers, taking a 25 percent cut of their earnings, and quickly signed them to Capricorn.

The Allman Brothers took several years to find an audience, but Walden's knack for artist development was undiminished. By 1971 their live album The Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East became a major hit, and the band achieved stardom despite the deaths of Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley in motorcycle accidents. Walden quickly signed other Southern rock acts, including the Marshall Tucker Band and Elvin Bishop, and he released some of the early music of innovative country songwriter and Kris Kristofferson protégé Billy Joe Shaver. Capricorn prospered, and by the mid-1970s Walden's Macon home was outfitted with a painting by Pablo Picasso, and his white Rolls-Royce was a familiar site on Macon's dusty streets.

Several of Walden's Capricorn acts performed in fundraisers in 1976 as part of Georgia governor Jimmy Carter's successful campaign for the U.S. presidency. Walden was an early and important backer of the campaign, which was regarded as the first one marked by involvement from rock musicians. Carter, in a letter read at Walden's funeral, called Walden a close personal friend.

In the late 1970s, however, Walden fell on hard times as the result of confluence of factors: disco displaced Southern rock as a chief interest of music buyers, and he began a bruising legal battle with the Allman Brothers Band over unpaid royalties. After the Polygram conglomerate, Capricorn's new distributor, cut off the label's financial lifeline, Walden filed for bankruptcy in 1980, losing Capricorn's Macon studios in the foreclosure process.

Fought Depression and Substance Abuse

Walden quickly burned through a personal fortune estimated at $20 million. He moved to Nashville, founding the short-lived Triad label and for a time managing the career of actor Jim Varney (aka Ernest P. Worrell). In 1986 he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Plagued by substance abuse problems and thoughts of suicide, he reportedly joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1987. The worst was yet to come. "The dreadful thing is to become clean and sober and find out how badly you destroyed things," he was quoted as saying by the Journal-Constitution's Nick Marino. "I'd come in, turn the TV on, turn the sound down, turn on the stereo. I'd pull a bag of dope out, get a bottle of cognac, get a pile of cocaine, and stare at the screen 'til 4 or 5 in the morning, then stumble into bed, and would literally pray I would not wake up."

Even with these problems, Walden never lost his eye for talent. After several abortive attempts, he succeeded in reviving the Capricorn label in 1991. Widespread Panic developed into a major success under Walden, as did the sardonic alternative rock band Cake. Walden, who had a strong interest in historic preservation (and whose sole favor called in from Carter was an appointment to the White House Preservation Commission), moved Capricorn into new offices in downtown Atlanta in 1998. He cashed out in 2000, selling Capricorn for a reported $13 million to the Volcano label. His last years were busy ones even as he battled cancer; he and his children Philip Jr. and Amantha formed a new label, Velocette, and he started a movie production company, Capricorn Films. He died on April 23, 2006, and his funeral in Macon was attended by a crowd of hundreds that included President Carter's chief of staff Hamilton Jordan, members of the Redding family, Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickie Betts, Widespread Panic vocalist John Bell, Little Richard, and many other figures from a sector of the music industry that he had created largely from scratch.

For the Record …

Born Philip Michael Walden on January 11, 1940, in Greenville, SC; died on April 23, 2006, in Atlanta, GA; married and remarried wife, Peggy Hackett Walden; children: Philip Michael Jr. and Amantha Starr. Education: Mercer University, Macon, GA, bachelor's degree, 1962.

Began booking fraternity parties at Mercer University, c. 1960; managed Otis Redding, Joe Tex, and other soul artists, mid-1960s; formed Capricorn label, 1969; signed Allman Brothers band; formed Triad label, early 1980s; managed actor Jim Varney; revived Capricorn, 1991; operated Velocette label and Capricorn Films, early 2000s.

Awards: Georgia Music Hall of Fame, inducted 1986.

Selected discography

(As arranger) The Allman Brothers Band, The Allman Brothers Band, Capricorn, 1969.

(As arranger) Eat a Peach, The Allman Brothers Band, Capricorn, 1972.
(As producer) Sufficiently Breathless, Captain Beyond, Capricorn, 1973.
(As arranger) Win, Lose, or Draw, The Allman Brothers Band, Capricorn, 1975.