Maybe they gave me the wrong address or something but we never could find it. “I had two days of rehearsal and on the first day, I missed the rehearsal! I can’t find the place. “This was back in the day before they even sent limos for you,” Thomas recalls. He’s asked about the days leading up to the live telecast. pop charts in the new decade. Three months’ later, Thomas was needed again in Los Angeles, this time to perform the song at the Academy Awards, where the song was nominated for Best Original Song. 3, 1970, it became the first song to top the U.S. And with Steve ’s help, he gave me the shot.” ![]() I just had ‘Hooked on a Feeling,’ I was selling records and I was kind of right there. “I just started working with Mister Bacharach and just going by his apartment and we’d go through songs and within the first couple of months the bicycle scene came up for Butch Cassidy. The opportunity to work with one of the most successful songwriting collaborations was too good to pass up. But the owner of Scepter, Florence Greenberg, came to me and said, “BJ, would you move up to New York City? Because if you do I think I can get you a session with Burt Bacharach and Hal David.” “I loved Memphis and I was pretty much rockin’ down there. Not long after Thomas’ hit recording, it was time for a change. Man about town: This ad for another one of Thomas’ hits appeared in the Jissue of Record World “That’s one of the classic guitar rides.” Eventually, when he played the fade-out, he played what Chips wanted and Chips spliced that up as the instrumental. But it was not like a rock and roll record, you know. ![]() He had it on the intro but when he did the instrumental, he played a kind of 18-bar Ravi Shankar kind of thing, which I wish I had a tape of it… it was incredible. Chips said, ‘Let Reggie really fire the thing up.’ It took a while for him to catch the grooves. “Reggie Young, of course, was the guy who played it. And also Gamble and Huff were using it in Philadelphia. “We knew the Beatles were using it and, of course, we were all huge fans of theirs. Thomas is asked how the prevalent use of sitar in the recording came about. In ’68, they recorded “Hooked on a Feeling.” There’s Thomas’s magnificent vocal and that gorgeous instrumentation. Tommy Cogbill, who produced “Angel of the Morning” with Moman, played rhythm guitar and acoustic guitar. Bobby Woods was on piano, Bobby Emmons played organ, Mike Leach was the bass player and Gene Chrisman was the drummer. “He eventually became the most-recorded guitar player in music history,” says Thomas proudly. The core team was guitarist Reggie Young. They cut 20 percent of the pop chart for two years running. They were equally as good as the Wrecking Crew or Motown’s. That American Studio group was one of the greatest bands of all-time. He and I were like brothers we made a lot of hits together. Thomas with a fan, NYC, 2017 (Photo: © Greg Brodsky)
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