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A drummer celebrated for his work with
David Bowie,
Iggy Pop, and
Todd Rundgren among others,
Hunt Sales had a long and successful career behind the scenes before he released his first solo album at the age of 64. A versatile drummer well-versed in both jazz and hard rock,
Sales began playing professionally at the age of 11, and gained the respect of his peers for his technical skill and gift for cutting a solid groove. In 2019,
Sales finally stepped forward as a frontman with the album Get Your Shit Together, credited to the Hunt Sales Memorial, which found him matching tough but slinky blues-leaning melodies with lyrics that deal with his personal struggles in no uncertain terms.
Born on March 2, 1954,
Hunt Sales and his brother
Tony "Fox" Sales, a respected bassist, were the sons of well-known comedian and actor
Soupy Sales. Through his father,
Hunt met the legendary studio drummer
Earl Palmer (who played on
Little Richard's iconic '50s sides) and after seeing him at work decided he wanted to play the drums.
Soupy's show biz connections allowed
Hunt to get useful advice from jazz stars such as
Buddy Rich,
Louie Bellson, and
Shelly Manne, and at the age of 11,
Hunt started a band with his brother called Tony & the Tigers. The combo appeared on the popular rock music series Hullabaloo, and at one of their personal appearances they met
Jimi Hendrix, who invited them to watch him record. In 1970,
Hunt and
Tony joined
Todd Rundgren's band Runt, and appeared on the albums
Runt (1970) and
Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971).
Hunt went on to play with the group Paris, featuring former
Fleetwood Mac guitarist
Bob Welch and one-time
Jethro Tull bassist
Glenn Cornick, releasing the album
Big Towne, 2061 in 1976. In 1977, as
Iggy Pop hit the road as a solo act following the release of his solo debut
The Idiot,
Hunt and
Tony were hired to play in
Pop's road band (along with
David Bowie on keyboards). The Sales Brothers were brought in to play on
Pop's next album,
Lust for Life, with
Hunt contributing the title track's memorable drum intro. Some of
Hunt's road work with
Pop was later featured on the 1978 release TV Eye: Live 1977.
After working with
Pop,
Hunt and
Tony Sales spent several years leading an R&B-oriented group called the Sales Brothers; they didn't land a recording contract, but a collection of their unreleased material was issued by Perseverance in 2008 on an album titled
Hired Guns. In 1989,
David Bowie temporarily put his solo career on hold to form a band,
Tin Machine, which featured
Tony and
Hunt Sales on bass and drums, with
Bowie and
Reeves Gabrels on guitars. An adventurous group whose music anticipated the sound of guitar-based alternative rock of the '90s,
Tin Machine enjoyed moderate success with their self-titled 1988 debut album, but after 1991's Tin Machine II and the live album Oy Vey, Baby, the group quietly disbanded. After relocating to Austin, Texas,
Hunt took on a variety of live and studio projects, most notably with
Bob Dylan sideman
Charlie Sexton on 2005's album
Cruel and Gentle Things and
Heard It on the X, a 2005 album from the Latin rock supergroup
Los Super Seven. Problems with drug addiction had dogged
Sales for years, but in the mid-2010s, he finally got clean and started writing songs in earnest, many informed by his personal struggles. A couple years later, while playing a gig in Memphis with
Sexton,
Sales was introduced to Bruce Watson, founder of Fat Possum Records. When Watson heard that
Hunt had an impressive backlog of original songs, he offered to release two of them on a single. After
Sales cut six songs in a single session with Watson producing, they decided to scrap the single in favor of a full-length album, and Fat Possum's sibling label Big Legal Mess issued Get Your Shit Together by the Hunt Sales Memorial in February 2019. ~ Mark Deming