It was fitting that the Grammy Awards’ televised ceremony took place on February 1st, the first day of Black History Month, with both the Best Compilation Soundtrack and Best Score Soundtrack awards going to music from Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Evocative of Black history on many levels, albeit with extra vampires, and set in Depression-era Clarksdale, Mississippi, this film about enterprising twins, evil, and the blues scored an auspicious double win from the Recording Academy that night.
As the Flyer noted last year, Boo Mitchell of Royal Studios was the film’s music consultant, bringing Mississippi’s best and the brightest to the project. So when he took the stage to accept the Best Compilation Grammy, he did it on behalf of artists as diverse as Bobby Rush, Sharde Thomas-Mallory, Tierinii Jackson, Cedric Burnside, and Alvin Youngblood Hart, all of whom participated in the soundtrack. And when the award for Best Score fell to Sinners’ twin release, with composer Ludwig Göransson receiving it, that moment too had Memphis reverberations.
Two titles on Göransson’s score, “Grand Closin’” and “Elijah,” are tagged with those telltale words: “feat. Eric Gales.”
You can’t get more Bluff City than Gales, the guitar wunderkind of the ’90s whose playing has only grown more soulful and nuanced with age. As Gales stood side by side with Mitchell to help accept the first Grammy, he quipped, “I’m just a little old cat from Memphis, Tennessee, mane … I’m so thankful.” After Göransson joined Gales and Mitchell, all three remained onstage to accept the award for Best Score together.
“It was just amazing,” says Gales, recalling that night as we spoke on the phone. “It was mesmerizing to experience not only being a nominee, but to be the recipient of not one, but two awards, connected to an iconic movie that’s shattering records right now. One could not make this up!”
And yet accepting the Grammys with Mitchell and Göransson was arguably not even the most emotional moment for Gales that night, which came when he joined Lauryn Hill’s tribute to D’Angelo and Roberta Flack. The memorial performance also included Lucky Daye, Leon Thomas, Bilal, Jon Batiste, Leon Bridges, October London, Lalah Hathaway, John Legend, and Chaka Khan, with Wyclef Jean joining the ensemble for “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” the grand finale.
“It was an amazing coming together of people to honor the legacy of two great, grand individuals, as well as giving homage to others that passed away last year,” says Gales. “It was just highly emotional — a very beautiful encounter to be a part of.”
It was also a reunion of sorts. “I was Lauryn Hill’s guitar player for four years. And so she hit me up prior to the Grammys, before even knowing that I was going to be there, and asked if I would be a part of this tribute thing. And I said yes, of course.”
Gales would have been at the ceremony even without Hill’s tribute or Sinners, as his most recent album, A Tribute to LJK, was nominated in the Best Contemporary Blues Album category, his second such nomination after 2022’s Crown. Though Robert Randolph’s Preacher Kids ultimately took the prize, Gales was delighted to see his own work recognized, as it’s a tribute to his late older brother, Manuel, aka Little Jimmy King, also a left-handed blues guitarist. In 1996, Eric, Eugene, and Manuel even released Left Hand Brand as the Gales Brothers. The Gales, like the Mitchells, remain one of the great musical families of Memphis.
“My brother had a style of his own,” says Gales. “He lived it, had his own career. It was just great to be in a family of brothers and a bloodline that was blessed with a gift from the big man upstairs to play music. My brother passed away in 2002 and after all these years, I decided to do a record honoring him. He was a very powerful, powerhouse blues player who worked his way from one end of Beale to the next and earned his note on the Beale Street Walk of Fame. Many years later, I got one of those brass notes myself, and it’s right beside my brother’s. It was very emotional.”
Eric Gales will headline an invitation-only event in support of Junior Achievement of Memphis and the Mid-South on Friday, February 20, 6 p.m., at the Memphis Masonic Temple.