Recording
Due to the location of the recording sessions of Tupelo Honey, having moved from New York to California, the only musicians from Morrison's previous band that could work with him were saxophonist Jack Schroer and his wife Ellen (who contributed backing vocals). However two of the three percussionists on the album had recorded with him in the past; Connie Kay contributed drums to Astral Weeks and Gary Mallaber played drums and vibraphone on Moondance. On this album, Kay played drum kit on four songs and new recruit Rick Shlosser was used for the remaining tracks, while Mallaber played percussion and vibraphone. Biographer Howard DeWitt was convinced that Morrison's music benefited from his move to California, as he comments that "the musical explosion in Marin County also added a great deal to Van's music. In particular, Ronnie Montrose's guitar work made Tupelo Honey a rock classic." Mark Jordan and John McFee made up the rest of the rhythm section. The remaining members of the horn section were Bruce Royston and "Boots" Houston on flutes and Luis Gasca on trumpet. The band was augmented by producer Ted Templeman who contributed organ to the title track.
The first recording sessions took place in the spring of 1971 at the Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco and continued for three weeks. Only four of the songs recorded were chosen for Tupelo Honey: "Wild Night"; "Moonshine Whiskey"; "I Wanna Roo You" and "Like a Cannonball". Rick Shlosser and John McFee played on these tracks, but were dropped from the second sessions. Engineer Stephen Barncard remembered that "We'd get the band rehearsed, then Ted Templeman would go to the hotel, pick up Van ... We did one or two takes, he'd go back to the hotel and the band would go onto the next tune."
Morrison relocated in the late spring of 1971 to the Columbia Studios, San Francisco to record a second session of tracks for the album. This time Morrison rehearsed the songs before recording began, which helped to make the sessions run more smoothly. "You're My Woman" was recorded a few days after the other songs, with Rick Shlosser back playing drums.
The vocals on the album were always live after rehearsing each song five or six times, according to saxophonist and flautist "Boots" Houston, who further commented that when Morrison and the band went into the studio: "we would then just play a whole set straight through without repeating anything. We would have played maybe twenty songs and Van would go back and cut out the songs he didn't want. The only time we'd go back would be to overdub backing vocals or horns." Ted Templeman remarked that he had to go through three engineers during the recording of the album, due to Morrison's "ability as a musician, arranger and producer": "When he's got something together, he wants to put it down right away with no overdubbing ... I've had to change engineers who couldn't keep up with him."
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