Rita Coolidge returning to Jacksonville for 'Mad Dogs' concert film screening at Sun-Ray

In 1970, British singer Joe Cocker set out across America on his "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour, and Rita Coolidge was there.

In 2015, Jacksonville-based Tedeschi Trucks Band set out to recreate "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" for a one-off show at a Virginia music festival, and Rita Coolidge was there.

On Wednesday, a documentary about the 1970 tour and the 2015 show will be screened at Jacksonville's Sun-Ray Cinema and Rita Coolidge will be there.

Coolidge, who graduated from Jacksonville's Andrew Jackson High School, will be part of a question-and-answer session on Wednesday, following a sold-out screening of "Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs and Englishmen." Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi from the Tedeschi Trucks Band and director Jesse Lauter will also participate.

The film will show again at Sun-Ray at 7 p.m. on Jan. 20, but without the Q&A session. Tickets are $10.75.

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"Learning to Live Together" looks back at the 1970 tour, which spawned a hit live album and a 1971 concert film, as well as the Tedeschi Trucks Band show at the 2015 Lock'n Festival in Virginia that reunited a dozen members of the original tour for one night.

Coolidge said the 2015 show was a delight because it allowed her to reconnect with old friends and wasn't nearly as hectic as the original tour.

"Well, I think it was more pleasant because it was just one gig, it wasn't one every night for two months," she said in a phone interview last week from her home in Tallahassee.

The original Mad Dogs tour has been described as a traveling rock 'n' roll circus. Cocker was a rising star at the time but parted ways with his band just before he was set to tour America. He tried to cancel the tour but promoters weren't agreeable, so he contacted American rocker Leon Russell, who put together a 24-piece band, arranged the songs and got them ready for the tour in less than two weeks.

"Leon knew the caliber of those musicians," said Coolidge, who had sung with some of them previously as part of Delaney and Bonnie's band. "They were the best band I ever worked with."

Coolidge was part of the "Space Choir" group of backing singers and took the spotlight nightly to sing Russell's "Superstar." The tour was grueling, she said, but the shows were something special.

"Everybody in that band was under 30 years old," she said. "If you put together 24 people now in their 20s, I think it would be a lot harder because of social media. I think it would have been very hard to accomplish."

The 2015 festival show was a real thrill, she said. Tedeschi and Trucks brought together as many "Mad Dogs" veterans as they could find, along with guest musicians, to recreate the vibe of the original shows. "It was so much more interesting to look back as a grownup, it gave me a whole different perspective on things. I was so grateful this time to just be in it and be part of it and appreciate it."

Coolidge put out her first solo album the year after the original Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and went on to a long career that saw big hits with "(Your Love is Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," "We're All Alone" and "All Time High," which was the theme song from the 1983 James Bond film "Octopussy." She won two Grammy Awards, served as one of the first hosts on VH1 and published an autobiography in 2016.

She retired in 2020, and just in the nick of time. Her last show was in February of that year aboard a cruise ship, just before the first outbreak of Covid. "When that ship came back and let us off and left again, they wouldn’t let them dock in Mexico."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Rita Coolidge to share 'Mad Dogs' experiences in Jacksonville