Eddie Hinton was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 songwriter

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

 and session musician

Session musician

Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...

 best known for his work with soul music

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

 and R&B singers. He played lead guitar for Muscle Shoals

Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section

The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, also known as The Swampers, are a group of American soul, R&B, and country studio musicians based in the town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama...

 Sound Rhythm Section from 1967 to 1971.

As a session guitarist, Hinton played on hit records recorded by Wilson Pickett

Wilson Pickett

Wilson Pickett was an American R&B/Soul singer and songwriter.A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, and frequently crossed over to the US Billboard Hot 100...

, Arthur Conley

Arthur Conley

Arthur Lee Conley was an American soul singer, best known for the 1967 hit "Sweet Soul Music".-Career:...

, Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...

, Joe Tex

Joe Tex

Joseph Arrington, Jr. , better known as "Joe Tex", was an American Southern soul singer-songwriter, most popular during the 1960s and 1970s...

, Solomon Burke

Solomon Burke

Solomon Burke was an American singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, mortician, and an archbishop of the United House of Prayer For All People. Burke was known as "King Solomon", the "King of Rock 'n' Soul", and as the "Bishop of Soul", and described as "the Muhammad Ali of soul", and as "the most...

, Percy Sledge

Percy Sledge

Percy Sledge is an American R&B and soul performer who recorded the hit "When a Man Loves a Woman" in 1966.-Early career:...

, The Staple Singers

The Staple Singers

The Staple Singers were an American gospel, soul, and R&B singing group. Roebuck "Pops" Staples , the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha , Pervis , Yvonne , and Mavis...

, The Dells

The Dells

The Dells are an R&B and crossover musical group. Their successful recordings spanned more than four decades. Formed in 1952 after attending high school together, the Dells' repertoire has included doo-wop, jazz, soul, disco and contemporary rhythm and blues...

, Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly (musician)

Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...

, Johnny Taylor

Johnnie Taylor

Johnnie Harrison Taylor was an American vocalist in a wide variety of genres, from rhythm and blues, soul, blues and gospel to pop, doo-wop and disco.-Early years:...

, Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

, The Box Tops

The Box Tops

The Box Tops were a Memphis rock group of the second half of the 1960s. They are best known for the hits "The Letter," "Neon Rainbow," "Soul Deep," "I Met Her in Church," and "Cry Like A Baby," and are considered a major blue-eyed soul group of the period...

, R.B. Greaves, Boz Scaggs

Boz Scaggs

William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He gained fame in the 1970s with several Top 20 hit singles in the United States, along with the #2 album, Silk Degrees. Scaggs continues to write, record music and tour.-Early life and career:Scaggs was born in Canton,...

, Evie Sands

Evie Sands

Evie Sands is a Brooklyn-born singer, songwriter and guitarist, whose career began as a young teenager in the mid-1960s...

, Looking Glass

Looking Glass (band)

Looking Glass was an American pop music group of the early 1970s that was part of the Jersey Shore sound. They are best remembered for their million selling 1972 song, "Brandy ".-Career:...

, Toots Hibbert

Toots Hibbert

Frederick Nathaniel "Toots" Hibbert is a ska and roots reggae singer and leader of the reggae band Toots & the Maytals.-Biography:...

 and Otis Redding

Otis Redding

Otis Ray Redding, Jr. was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger and talent scout. He is considered one of the major figures in soul and R&B...

.

Hinton was a songwriter in his own right as well. His most well known song is "Breakfast in Bed

Breakfast in Bed

"Breakfast in Bed" is a soul–R&B song written by Muscle Shoals songwriters Eddie Hinton and Donnie Fritts for Dusty Springfield. It takes a knowing spin on the line "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me", the title of a song which had previously been a number one hit for her in the UK...

" which has been recorded many times, most notably by Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...

 and by UB40

UB40

UB40 are a British reggae/pop band formed in 1978 in Birmingham. The band has placed more than 50 singles in the UK Singles Chart, and has also achieved considerable international success. One of the world's best-selling music artists, UB40 have sold over 70 million records.Their hit singles...

 with Chrissie Hynde

Chrissie Hynde

Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde is an US musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.-Early life and career:Hynde is the daughter of a part-time...

.

Legacy and Influence

The song "Sandwiches for the Road" by fellow Alabamians Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers are an alternative country/Southern rock band based in Athens, Georgia, though three out of six members are originally from The Shoals region of Northern Alabama, and the band strongly identifies with Alabama. Their music uses three guitars as well as bass, drums, and now...

 is based on the life of Eddie Hinton. It appears on their 1998 debut LP

LP album

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

, Gangstabilly

Gangstabilly

Gangstabilly is the 1998 debut album of Athens via Alabama rock group Drive-By Truckers. The album, was recorded "live in the studio" over the course of two days and was produced by Andy Baker and Andy LeMaster. The album's cover art was created by Jim Stacy...

.

A full-length documentary of the life and musical career of Eddie Hinton was made by New Mexico Filmmakers Deryle Perryman and Moises Gonzalez. Narrated by bluesman Robert Cray, "Dangerous Highway" screened in film festivals across the US and made its European premiere at the 2008 Porretta Soul Festival in Porretta, Italy.
The film, a critical and popular success, was never allowed commercial release as Hinton's mother, controller of most of the rights to the songs in the film, didn't approve of the story.

Dangerous Highway

Beginning in 2009 Shake it Records out of Cincinnati, Ohio began releasing entries from their series "Dangerous Highway: A Tribute to the Music of Eddie Hinton". This series will feature covers of Hinton's songs by artists who were inspired by and continue his legacy. Volumes one and two were released on 11/08/09.

Volume 1 - Greg Dulli

Greg Dulli

-Biography:Greg Dulli was born and brought up in the working-class city of Hamilton, Ohio. Although he was raised a Catholic, he is now agnostic. Dulli first came to public attention in the late 1980s with The Afghan Whigs when he joined D.C. transplant bassist John Curley and Louisville, Kentucky,...

Side A - "Hard Luck Guy"; Side B - "Cover Me"

Volume 2 - Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers are an alternative country/Southern rock band based in Athens, Georgia, though three out of six members are originally from The Shoals region of Northern Alabama, and the band strongly identifies with Alabama. Their music uses three guitars as well as bass, drums, and now...

Side A - "Where's Eddie?"; Side B - "Everybody Needs Love"

Personal Life

Eddie was born to Deanie McGee Hinton Perkins and Horton Hinton and grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he formed a band, The Five Minutes who received local fame quickly. He was the grandson of a preacher and used the gospel influences in his music to tell his stories of pain and redemption. Former record giant, Jerry Wexler

Jerry Wexler

Gerald "Jerry" Wexler was a music journalist turned music producer, and was regarded as one of the major record industry players behind music from the 1950s through the 1980s...

, heard Eddie while he was doing session work in Muscle Shoals and called Hinton, "the next big thing", unfortunately, Hinton's battles with mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction prevented that from happening.

He died at home with his Mother, Deanie Perkins and stepfather, Paul Perkins in Birmingham, Alabama from a Heart Attack at age 51.

Discography

• Very Extremely Dangerous (1978)
• Letters From Mississippi (1987)
• Cry & Moan (1991)
• Very Blue Highway (1993)
• Hard Luck Guy (1999)