| About Us | Ec Dev | Business Council | Foundation | Member Directory | News | Chamber Calendar | Contact | |||||||
|
|||||||
 |
|||||||
|
 |
||||||
|
This article ran as a special series in the local Times Daily. It was written by Terry Pace & Robert Palmer and is reproduced on the chamber site with permission of the writers and the Times Daily. Photographs are courtesy of Times Daily and Jimmy Johnson Music For the first half of the 20th century, the deep, rich musical talent so abundant in northwest Alabama followed the flow of the Tennessee River out of the Muscle Shoals area to richer horizons... For aspiring musicians, the saying "you can't get there from here" seemed all too true -- until two pioneering efforts in the 1950s... It started with water rushing over rocky shoals — a sound the American Indians living along the banks of the Tennessee River said "sang" to them in the beautiful voice of a woman. They called the great inland waterway the "Singing River." That musical rush of water has syncopated its melody into the souls of countless generations since the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Creeks populated this tiny corner of north Alabama. The sound they heard lingers still. In another form, the music of the Muscle Shoals has been heard both here and around the world. W.C. Handy heard it. So did Sam Phillips and Buddy Killen, James Joiner and Bobby Denton, Rick Hall and Arthur Alexander, Jimmy Hughes and Percy Sledge and hundreds of others. Together they transformed that faint melody into popular music that has influenced the last century of the millennium. The family of Irish immigrant James Jackson, one of the founders of Florence, recorded tales told to them by the Indians living along the river in the early 1800s. One tale told of the disembodied spirit of a goddess that inhabited the river. Another told of a voice from the river that sang. The voice, which belonged to a woman or possibly a princess, sang loudly and quietly, the Indians said, depending on the mood of the river. Tom Hendrix of Florence, an Indian historian of Creek heritage, says the building of dams by the Tennessee Valley Authority softened the river's voice. But descendents of the people who lived here centuries ago return each fall to celebrate their heritage at the Festival of the Singing River. "The Native Americans have passed down the Singing River name — the Choctaws and Chickasaws who are now in Oklahoma," he said. Hendrix also says there is evidence the early Indians living near the shoals were very musical people. He said flutes or whistles made of waterfowl wing bones and cane have been discovered in the area. Handy, in his 1941 autobiography "Father of the Blues," tells of growing up in Florence in the late 19th century near the banks of the Tennessee and Cypress Creek, and of the musical sounds he heard from the wildlife around his family's cabin. Born in Florence in 1873, Handy also embraced the spiritual sounds of Greater St. Paul, the AME church where his father and grandfather served as pastors. Handy soon seasoned his musical tastes with more secular sounds. "It was my good fortune as a youngster to be the water boy in rock quarries, iron furnaces, on farms and on the Tennessee River canal," Handy would later recall, "where I heard Negro laborers and steamboat roustabouts sing many work songs, which since those days have been a part of musical America. It was such snatches of song that turned my attention to what we now know as the blues." Handy moved to Memphis as a young man and established his reputation as the "Father of the Blues," writing songs that still influence musicians today -- songs with titles like "St. Louis Blues," "Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues" and even the "Muscle Shoals Blues." Phillips, born on a tenant farm outside Florence in 1923, also moved to Memphis as a young man. Trained as a disc jockey at WLAY Radio in Muscle Shoals, the future "Father of Rock 'n' Roll" considers his native area a "melting pot" of musical influences. "When I was growing up, we heard it all," Phillips said. "In the fields we heard the black man's blues, in the churches we heard black spirituals and white gospel, and on the radio we heard the Grand Ole Opry and those glorious songs from Tin Pan Alley. Out of that we created a sound that's hard to define, hard to pigeonhole, because it includes the best elements of all those tremendous sources." Inspired by Handy's worldwide renown, Phillips followed his fellow Florentine to Memphis in 1945. He worked in radio for five years before opening a custom recording studio, the Memphis Recording Service, at 706 Union Ave. The studio's slogan was, "We record anything — anywhere — anytime." Phillips began by recording Delta-based blues and R&B artists -- Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Little Milton, Rufus Thomas and Roscoe Gordon. One of his early recordings, 1951's "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats (featuring a young Ike Turner), today is generally considered the first genuine "rock 'n' roll" record. "I was hearing something in black music that others had heard, but it seemed like nobody wanted to do anything about it," Phillips said. "Then we started supplying material to labels like Chess and RPM. That's when I decided to start my own label." Phillips' Sun Records scored a national hit in 1953 with Thomas' "Bear Cat." The next year, searching for "a white man who could sing with a black man's soul," Phillips recorded the fateful first sessions by a Tupelo, Miss., truck driver, Elvis Presley. The singer's first Sun single combined radically revamped covers of blues (Big Boy Crudup's "That's All Right, Mama") and bluegrass (Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky"). "Nobody could put a label on what I was doing," Phillips said. "Nashville tried to get Billboard not to review our stuff. They called it junk. Preachers preached sermons about it. Parents hated me for putting out rock 'n' roll. They said, 'Man, this is ruinin' my young-uns.' 'The devil's music,' they called it. But I didn't see it that way." After Presley's breakthrough success at Sun, Phillips continued discovering and recording young, white country boys who, under his guidance, altered the course of popular music and, many say, Western culture. Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and other Sun artists combined country, blues, gospel and rhythm-and-blues into the first international burst of rock 'n' roll. "I didn't want professionals," Phillips said. "I just wanted to take these boys, these young men, and say, 'We either get it or we don't.' If I couldn't communicate with them through music, I felt like I hadn't done my job. I had to find that one piece of what I call soul magic." Like Phillips, fellow Florence native Buddy Killen, born in a shanty shack on the east side of town in 1933, left home to pursue musical fortunes in a larger metropolitan area. At that time, Killen's musical tastes centered almost exclusively on country music. As a result, the struggling young musician moved to country's capital, Nashville, Tenn., within 24 hours after his high-school graduation. "Growing up, I remember playing all those spoon houses and dances down in Florence," said Killen, who remains today one of Nashville's top publishers, producers and entertainment entrepreneurs. "That experience helped me get to the point where I was good enough to go to Nashville." After backing up Grand Ole Opry acts and touring with Music City legends Hank Williams and Jim Reeves, Killen worked as a song plugger for Tree Music, making $35 a week. Eventually Killen would own Tree, a company he developed into the world's largest publishing house. In 1991 the so-called "Quincy Jones of country music" sold Tree for $40 million. "I was the first from here to move to Nashville, but I certainly wasn't the last," Killen said. "That just started the ball rolling. Once I was there, I was able to help open some doors for people back home — people who had their own dreams about the music business. Years later many of them stayed here and made those dreams come true. But in those early days, if your heart was set on music, you couldn't stay in Alabama." Local Artists, Producers Get Their First Taste of Real Fame-1959-63 James Joiner was at his Florence home one fateful day in 1959, considering his next musical move. The phone rang, and the voice on the other end of the line presented a proposition that planted the seed for a musical revolution. Fresh off successes with singer Bobby Denton, Joiner was looking for new ideas and talent for his 3-year-old Tune Records company. Denton was giving up the music business, and Joiner's partner, Kelso Herston, had left Florence recently to become a Nashville publisher and session guitarist. The caller that day, Tom Stafford, asked Joiner to invest in a new musical enterprise that would include a publishing company and small recording studio above the City Drug Store, at the intersection of Tennessee and Seminary streets in downtown Florence. Joiner agreed, put down his money, and Spar Music was born. That moment proved to be pivotal in the development of the Muscle Shoals recording industry. "Tom's dad was the pharmacist, and he was giving him that space above the drug store for a little studio," Joiner said. "Tom wanted me to invest $300." Stafford's influence on the early Muscle Shoals music scene cannot be overstated. A tall, lanky, hunchbacked man, Stafford managed Florence's Princess movie theater and was an engaging conversationalist who had struck up friendships with a group of young, aspiring musicians. "We were just kids who hung out at the theater and the drug store," said David Briggs, who became one of Spar's early keyboardists and songwriters. "We'd go to the drug store, buy a hot dog, see a pretty girl, get horny, then go upstairs and write a song about it." Musicians Briggs, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Donnie Fritts, Billy Sherrill, Rick Hall, Bill Blackburn, Earl Montgomery and Arthur Alexander all spent their spare time "upstairs" at Spar, writing songs and recording demos. "Tom was the kind of guy who encouraged you to continue writing," said Oldham, who was in high school at the time. "And he brought you together with all these wonderful people." Fritts, a Florence songwriter and musician, said Stafford sensed that something big was about to happen in Muscle Shoals music. "Tom was the guy who had this great vision," he said. "He was a weird guy in a lot of ways, but he cared about people and about music, and he could see it happening here." The studio above Stafford's family drug store was crude by most standards, with egg cartons stapled to the walls to baffle sound. "I remember the first time I walked into that room," Oldham said. "There was a tape recorder and a piano. It was the first 15-speed recorder I had ever seen." Old sofas and chairs were scattered around the room, where musicians and songwriters often found Stafford "folded up like a bat" on the corner of one of the sofas or reclining at a seemingly impossible angle on a two-by-four. "I feel lucky to have hung out with Tom," said Penn, a songwriter, singer and producer from Vernon who later oversaw some of soul music's brightest moments. "He just made this exciting place for us. When others would fall short, Tom would always be there with a good word: 'Keep on singing and you can do it.' " Within a year, Joiner sold his Spar interest to Stafford for $900, devoting more time to his own Tune projects. In 1962 he published "Six Days on the Road." Dave Dudley's 1963 cut of the classic trucker's anthem — which has been covered more than 300 times --- hit No. 2 on the country charts and crossed over to the pop market. Stafford took on two new partners in 1959 -- Phil Campbell natives Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill, a pair of musician-songwriters who had earned regional renown touring in a rock 'n' roll band called The Fairlanes. The following year, young singer and hotel bellhop Arthur "June" Alexander became the first black artist to arrive on the Muscle Shoals music scene. His first single, "Sally Sue Brown," was quickly released on Jud Phillips' Florence label, Judd Records. "When we first heard Arthur sing, we knew he was the guy — he had his great voice," Fritts said. "He could make it happen." Throughout that era, dozens of local musicians were performing in bands, playing clubs, dances and college fraternity parties. Their music of choice — and the sound demanded by audiences — was rhythm-and-blues. A center of Muscle Shoals musical inspiration proved to be the Sheffield Community Center. Headliners ranged from Hank Williams to Louis Armstrong. Florence native Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records in Memphis, brought Elvis Presley to the Sheffield stage in 1954 and '55. "Every artist I had of note played the Sheffield Community Center," Phillips said. "In fact, the feeling was that you hadn't made it until you'd played there." One of Presley's dynamic performances inspired young Shoals musician Hollis Dixon to open a new chapter in local music history. "I saw Elvis there in 1955, and that kind of excited me," Dixon said. "I knew some boys who had a band out at Spring Valley. They'd just get together and play. So we put together a band, just to see what it would sound like." The musicians liked what they heard, and so did their audiences. The fledgling band — Hollis Dixon and the Keynotes — performed across the Southeast from 1956 to 1982. Early on, Dixon provided training and exposure for up-and-coming session players. "Hollis always had a great band — everybody wanted to play with Hollis," said Fritts, who worked as a drummer for the Keynotes. "Whenever anybody left his band, you always had a lot of great musicians waiting in line to take their place." Other bands quickly emerged — The Del Rays, The Mystics and Dan Penn and the Pallbearers, who traveled the circuit in an old hearse. Between gigs, those musicians found their way to Stafford's studio, where things were not going well with Stafford and his new partners. Hall was determined to make it in Nashville, and he made no secret that he wanted to become rich and successful as quickly as possible. His approach was to outwork everyone. "When you're young, you're eat up with ego," Hall said. "You think there's nothing you can't do." Hall's work ethic began to grate on Stafford and Sherrill, who took luxurious breaks for movies and long, philosophical discussions. "They would sit and talk for hours about any subject in the world," Hall said. "I was constantly kicking butt and taking names, trying to get the business going. I was a man on a mission." One thing led to another, and Hall was invited to leave. He took with him the name they created for their business — Florence Alabama Music Enterprises (FAME). "It was thought that Billy was the talent, the genius," Hall said. "In people's eyes, I was the country bumpkin who was riding on Billy's coattails. That just served to fire me up more and make me want to dig in my heels and prove myself." That same year, Sherrill left for Nashville, where Sam Phillips hired him to work as the engineer in his new Nashville studio. By the late '60s, Sherrill had become Music City's top producer, helming hits for George Jones and Tammy Wynette (including "Stand By Your Man," which he co-wrote) and reviving the career of former Sun artist Charlie Rich. "I've always had the same approach," Sherrill said. "Find a good idea, good lyrics and a good melody, then find the right artist who can bring it to life. That's why what we did worked in those early days." In the summer of 1961, Hall leased a tobacco warehouse on Wilson Dam Highway in Muscle Shoals, recruited musicians from Penn's band, and cut "You Better Move On." The song was written and sung by Alexander. "I always wrote from experience — right from the heart," Alexander said. "When I cut that song, everybody here knew who I was talking about." The track, issued by Dot Records, reached No. 24 on the Billboard pop charts in January 1962. "Rick Hall lived with that song like a hermit," Alexander said. "He wouldn't quit until he knew it was right." Alexander's music had a profound impact on '60s music. He remains the only artist-songwriter covered by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Otis Redding. By 1963, Hall's astonishing success was attracting even more attention. The Tams and Tommy Roe came in from Atlanta to record Top 10 hits at FAME. Then, in 1964, Hall produced his second R&B smash, Jimmy Hughes' "Steal Away." "I was batting a thousand," Hall said. "I had cut two records and both of them were hits. That had a big bearing on my psyche. I was thinking, 'Hey, man, I'm a white man, but I'm a black record producer.' My confidence level went up — way up." By the end of 1965, business was brisk at Rick Hall's FAME Recording Studios, where the fuse had been ignited for an explosion of musical creativity. Riding recent Muscle Shoals chart successes with Jimmy Hughes, the Tams, Tommy Roe, Joe Simon and Joe Tex, Hall was looking for an R&B artist he could mold into a star with pop-crossover appeal. That artist could become the voice for a growing catalog of songs penned by Hall's stable of writers. "It started to bloom and blossom," Hall said. "One guy was telling another one, and this guy was telling another one. They were all intrigued by this white guy in Muscle Shoals and these white musicians who were cutting hits with black artists. How could that be? That's when it started happening. People started coming in from all over." In one of the great ironies of the music industry, Hall missed the golden opportunity he was looking for -- Percy Sledge's historic recording of "When A Man Loves A Woman." The immortal love song became Muscle Shoals' musical anthem. "Wherever I go, all over the world, people just go crazy and cry their eyes out when they hear it," said Sledge, a Leighton native who rose to musical stardom with that milestone hit. "I've heard so many beautiful stories about how people have been moved or touched by that song — not just here at home, but all over the world." The pioneering work of Hall and his fellow Muscle Shoals musicmakers set the stage for Sledge's 1966 single. In addition to topping the R&B charts, "When a Man Loves a Woman" hit No. 1 in the pop field, becoming the first record from Muscle Shoals to muscle out the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Motown artists at the top of the charts. "When a Man Loves a Woman" sold millions of copies worldwide. It also turned the trick that Hall had been seeking to achieve. The song caught the attention of top national producers who wanted their artists to share in some of the Muscle Shoals magic. But the story of how former field hand Sledge broke into recording and how the classic song was written remains murky at best. "When a Man Loves a Woman" emerged soon after one of FAME's songwriters, Quin Ivy, decided to open his own recording studio. "I saw that Rick was getting a lot of calls from people who were interested in making a record," recalled Ivy, who was a popular WLAY disc jockey and also operated a Sheffield record store called Tune Town. "Rick would give them some outlandish price because he just didn't have time to fool with them," Ivy said. "I saw an opportunity to take some of that work off his hands, and Rick said he thought it was a great idea." Soon afterward, in 1965, Ivy opened his Norala Sound Studios on Second Street in Sheffield, right across the street from Tune Town. "I had a total investment in that studio of $7,000," Ivy said. "It was put together on a shoestring. I was ready to record anything anybody wanted recorded." There are at least three versions of how Sledge and the song found their way into a recording studio... Ivy said Sledge wandered into his record shop one day, and they were introduced by a mutual friend. "An old friend of mine, Leroy Wright, was in there chatting when Percy walked in," said Ivy, an Oxford, Miss., native who settled in the Shoals in 1961. "Leroy had been in the hospital with a broken back when Percy was an orderly at what was then Colbert County Hospital. He said Percy would go up the hall throughout his shift, singing." Wright introduced the aspiring record producer to the aspiring singer. Later that afternoon, Sledge and members of his band, The Esquires, auditioned for Ivy at Norala. "They hauled an organ down there on a pickup truck — a Hammond B-3 for Andrew 'Pop' Wright to play," Ivy said. "Percy sang for me, and I liked what I heard and signed him." Sledge recalls a different version of how his partnership with Ivy began. He says he met Ivy at the Sheffield Elks Club, where the Esquires — including Calvin Lewis on bass and Wright on keyboard — were in the midst of a smoldering live set. "I told Lewis and Wright to hit me a chord," Sledge said. "Then I started wailing away, 'Why did you leave me, baby?' I made the song up on the spot. Quin was there, and he told us that if we put some lyrics behind that great melody, we'd have a hit record. "I told Quin, 'You know how it is when a man loves a woman — he can't think.' He said, 'Man, that's a hit — 'When a Man Loves a Woman.' He said, 'I've been a DJ for 10 years, and I've never played a record with a title like that.' So it went on from there — a few lines from Lewis and Wright, a few lines from me." Once the song was published, however, songwriting credit was reserved solely for Lewis and Wright. "It was published with Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright as the writers on the lead sheet," Ivy said. "It's been all over the world numerous times, sold millions of records with the writers on the record listed as Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright. As far as I'm concerned, the writers on that record are Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright." Singer-songwriter Dan Penn, Hall's engineer at the time, remembers an earlier attempt to capture the beauty of Sledge's sweet, soulful tenor -- unsuccessfully -- at FAME. "I wanted to cut a record for myself," Penn said. "All of a sudden one day Rick told me, 'There's some guys coming in here, three black boys, to lay down a tape. It's some kind of demo or something. How about cutting 'em for me?' " Before long, the musicians arrived with the B-3 in tow. "I cut the tape," Penn said. "They didn't have the song written, but they had, 'When a man loves a woman …" Then it just went to nothing. "They didn't have the chords just right," Penn said, "but they had that B-3 and they were black and they had 'When a man loves a woman …' As far as I was concerned, what else did you need? Man, I thought it was great. I wanted to cut it right then and there." When Hall returned, Penn played the tape for him. "Rick said, 'I just don't think so, Dan,' " Penn said. "I understand now what he was doing, and I don't blame him. I wanted to produce that song, and Rick wanted me writing songs. He didn't want me stretching out. So I sent Percy over to Quin." Once Ivy had cut the song, Hall re-entered the picture, playing a decisive role in its success. By that time, "When a Man Loves a Woman" had been polished to perfection. "Quin called and said he had a song he wanted me to hear," Hall said. "I had him bring it over here one Sunday and play it, and he asked me, 'What do you think?' I had him play it again. I said, 'It's a smash.' " Hall contacted Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records in New York, the nation's premier R&B label. Wexler had told Hall to call if he had anything that sounded like an R&B hit. Atlantic quickly released "When a Man Loves a Woman," and Muscle Shoals had its first international smash. "I firmly believe that if you have fun with what you're doing, you'll be successful," said Ivy, who later became a business professor at the University of North Alabama. "We didn't know what we were doing, but we were having fun." Most of the musicians on the song were members of Hall's rhythm section at FAME. Spooner Oldham played organ, Marlin Greene, who co-produced the track with Ivy, played guitar, Albert "Junior" Lowe was on bass, and Roger Hawkins played drums. The horn section included Jack Peck on trumpet, and Billy Cofield and Don "Rim" Pollard on tenor saxes. The backing vocals were sung by Jerry Eddleman, Jeannie Greene, Sandy Posey and Hershel Wiggington. The session was engineered by Jimmy Johnson. The rhythm section featured on "When A Man Loves A Woman" had just been recruited by Hall. His first rhythm section — made up of drummer Jerry Carrigan, keyboardist David Briggs and bassist Norbert Putnam (guitarist Terry Thompson died unexpectedly in '65)— moved to Nashville and also toured with singer Tommy Roe. "Soon we were opening shows for the Beatles," Briggs said. "We shot from being Alabama rednecks to opening for the hottest act in the world." In addition to a number of other musical accomplishments, Briggs and Carrigan went on to work with Elvis Presley, both in the recording studio and on the road. In 1969, Briggs and Putnam opened Quadrafonic, one of the most successful Nashville studios of the 1970s. Over the years, Sledge's heartbreaking rendition of "When a Man Loves a Woman" has been reissued, covered (including a 1991 No. 1 hit by Michael Bolton) and used in countless movies, television shows and commercials. Sledge recorded a number of other Muscle Shoals '60s soul and R&B hits — "Take Time to Know Her," "It Tears Me Up," "Out of Left Field," "Warm and Tender Love" — but "When a Man Loves a Woman" remains his signature tune. "It's been my calling card, man, my meal ticket," said Sledge, who now lives in Baton Rouge, La., and continues to perform and record. "We captured something very special with that song. Even today, whenever I sing it, it still brings tears to my eyes — I just can't help myself." Shakespeare wrote poems Rick Hall's FAME Recording Studios served as a college of rhythm-and-blues refinement for the session players working there in 1966.? "Rick would suggest something to the drummer, bass player or guitar player," Hawkins said. "They would try it, and then they would suggest something back. It was a constant flow of ideas." Hood started session work as a trombone player, but worked his way into the role of bass player after Lowe switched to lead guitar. "I was kind of waiting in the wings," Hood said. "Before that, I thought I knew how to play the bass, but I didn't. I didn't really know anything. I had one, and that was about it. I actually had to start learning at FAME — and I did." In the studio, Hall took on the role of teacher and taskmaster. "Rick was tough," Hood said. "It was mono back then, and if you made a mistake, you had to start all over again. There was no such thing as overdubbing. It put the pressure on you not to mess up. I owe that to Rick. The browbeating was necessary to get me to the point where I could do it." Into this heady mix stepped cosmopolitan producer Wexler and Prattville native Pickett, who had been living in the urban environment of Detroit since he was 15. "We sized each other up as soon as he got here," Hall said. "It was summertime, and he had this houndstooth coat on when I picked him up at the airport in this old beat-up Chrysler car. "He was intelligent, trim, young and black as coal — shiny black," Hall said. "He had that hair slicked back and plastered down. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye like I was some country bumpkin. It was classic in that we couldn't have been further apart." Pickett had scored two hits from Stax sessions in '65 — "In the Midnight Hour" (No. 21) and "634-5789" (No. 13). Almost immediately, Pickett had a hit Muscle Shoals single, "Land of 1,000 Dances." It was his first Top 10 pop success, peaking at No. 6. "Once I hit Muscle Shoals and hooked up with Rick and his guys, we were smoking," Pickett said. "We made some funky music — 'Mustang Sally,' 'Funky Broadway,' 'A Man and a Half.' Those were great records." At FAME, Pickett established himself as a premier soul artist — in the Southern style. "Wilson and I understood each other, and we were a lot alike," Hall said. "He could be belligerent in the studio. He was a live wire, you know — always ready to fuss and fight -- but he was my friend. He called me 'Rick Holmes,' and I called him 'Wilson Puckett.' There was a charisma between him and me. It was a brotherhood — a very good brotherhood." While Pickett's Muscle Shoals singles were climbing the charts, Wexler signed a promising young singer to Atlantic whose earlier records had made almost no impact on the charts. Wexler's first destination with his new find — Aretha Franklin — was Muscle Shoals. The infamous Jan. 24, 1967, session Wexler booked at FAME produced Franklin's first pop smash, "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)," which went to No. 9 (No. 1 R&B) in early spring. "She had the feel, and she had the soul — she had everything," Hawkins said. "She gave you the groove with what she did and how she sang." The cut clicked with a cool riff from Oldham's electric piano. "It just needed a little help to get it off the ground," he said. "Then it just exploded." The session began to fall apart after remarks by a horn player angered Franklin's husband and manager, Ted White. The influence of alcohol made matters worse. "I think the horn player was making smart remarks, thinking that they would think he was cool," Hood said. "They were not taking it that way from a white boy from Memphis. That started it, and it grew from there. The worst part of it took place after the session." Hall drove to the hotel in an effort to "smooth things over" with White. The conversation erupted into a fistfight. The singer and her husband left Muscle Shoals the next morning, never to return. "Rick was trying to do the right thing — he wanted to patch things up and salvage the session," Johnson said. "But then it just blew up in his face." Wexler flew the FAME rhythm section to New York to finish recording with the future "Queen of Soul." For Hawkins, that New York session was an affirmation of Muscle Shoals music's universal appeal. "For some reason that made it more real," he said. "When I was sitting in that drum booth there in New York City, I was thinking, 'Wow, we've really done something. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.' " Other soul artists found their way to Muscle Shoals, including Otis Redding. Although he never recorded any solo projects at FAME, Redding produced other artists (including Arthur Conley, whose 1967 "Sweet Soul Music" hit No. 2) and cut several demos. "I just couldn't believe it," Hood said. "We were in the room with Otis Redding. He had just great ideas. He'd get us to play licks that weren't orthodox ideas, but they were his ideas -- and cool ideas." As 1967 ended, so did Hall and Wexler's musical association. "I had my own ideas, which of course at the time didn't correspond with his ideas," Hall said. "I was young and rebellious. He was considerably older and smarter and all the things I didn't like. He was always trying to sway me, and I was not to be swayed." But Hall also had — and has — utmost respect for Wexler. "Jerry was a tremendous influence on me," Hall said. "I got New York smart through him. I don't mean that Alabama smart's not important. But if you're from down South, it's much easier to make it if you're New York smart." Even without Atlantic, FAME kept cutting hits. Hall began recording such Chess Records artists as Etta James ("Tell Mama"), and Laura Lee ("Up Tight, Good Man"). Another Alabama-born R&B artist, blind singer-songwriter Clarence Carter, began a string of chart successes with 1968's "Slip Away." "We'd lock ourselves in a room and write songs at the old Holiday Inn in Florence," Carter said. "Alcohol was illegal, so there was nothing else to do. We wouldn't come out of that room until we knew we'd written a hit record." New session players were added to Hall's lineup as well. Birmingham native Barry Beckett, who had been living in Florida, took over keyboards when Oldham moved to Memphis in '67. "Working at FAME was like walking into a workshop — here's how you cut a hit record," he said. "I told myself, 'If I don't learn anything here, I'm not going to learn anything anywhere.'" Imported from Macon, Ga., guitarist Duane Allman impressed everyone with his innovative, fluid slide work on Pickett's "Hey Jude" and Franklin's "The Weight." Decatur-based producer Johnny Sandlin, a member of Duane and Gregg Allman's early band, Hourglass, said Duane was hired for the Pickett sessions after Hall heard a demo the band made at FAME. "Jimmy Johnson was knocked out by Duane on the Hourglass tapes, and he passed it on to Rick," said Sandlin, who later engineered and produced several Allman Brothers Band records. "That's how Rick started using him. How could you deny Duane?"... The Muscle Shoals Sound Goes "Pop" — and Then Some-1969-77 Say I won't be coming home — By the close of the 1960s, Muscle Shoals had settled into its own deeply soulful spot on the worldwide musical map. For most of the decade, the intimate, homemade recording industry had charted a steady stream of international hits by such black R&B artists as Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Clarence Carter. Those funky, richly textured Muscle Shoals hits — songs that defined the golden era of "Southern soul" -- featured the unmistakable sounds of the tight, versatile, all-white rhythm section housed at Rick Hall's FAME Recording Studios at 603 E. Avalon Ave. "Those players made the difference," said producer and label executive Jerry Wexler, who brought Pickett, Franklin and other Atlantic Records artists to Muscle Shoals in the mid-'60s. "Listen to Aretha's first single that we recorded down there — 'I Never Loved a Man.' Astonishingly, she was the only black person in the room. Yet there never was a funkier record made." The rhythm section's personnel changed gradually over the decade, with some members leaving for Nashville and others departing for Memphis. But by early 1968, Hall's core group had solidified into a fearless, red-hot musical foursome — Roger Hawkins on drums, Jimmy Johnson on guitar, David Hood on bass and newcomer Barry Beckett on keyboards. "A lot of the artists we worked with, especially at first, thought we were black," Hood said. "I was flattered by that, because most of the artists we liked were black. We loved that music, and we felt like we had earned the right to play it." A native of Birmingham, Beckett attended the University of Alabama before moving to Florida, where he played in R&B bands. Disc jockey-turned-record producer Papa Don Schroeder brought him to FAME in '66. "I was in awe of how Rick's band worked together -- they all seemed to be dedicated to cutting a hit," Beckett recalled. "They weren't just fooling around. They knew they could cut a hit because they'd done it before. That kind of focus starts to rub off on you." When FAME keyboardist Spooner Oldham moved to Memphis in '67, Beckett was ready. "Those guys were my heroes," Beckett said. "When I was at Alabama, Roger and Jimmy were in a fraternity band, the Del-Rays. Walking down Fraternity Row, I could hear them playing. I'd think, 'That's Roger Hawkins. That's Jimmy Johnson.' Had I known I'd end up working with these guys, I would have gone up just to get their coffee. They were awesome." In 1969, with the soul era fading, FAME songwriter Terry Woodford — who had performed alongside Hood in another '60s frat band, The Mystics -- planted the seed for studio insurrection. "I had the idea that the producer wasn't as important as he really is -- that it was the musicians cutting the hits and not getting paid like producers or publishers," said Woodford, who now lives in Colorado Springs, Colo. "There was a studio there that was not making it, and I thought it would be cool for those musicians to own it." That studio — at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield — belonged to Fred Bevis, the song leader at Sherrod Avenue Church of Christ in Florence. Inspired by Woodford and led by Hawkins and Johnson, the rhythm section explored a chance to make music on its own terms. "Fred started this country-music studio, but after two years he wanted to unload it," Johnson explained. "Terry was working as a textile engineer and hated what he was doing. He called Roger and said, 'You're crazy if you don't buy that studio.' Roger called me one Sunday, and we talked on the phone eight hours. Roger at that time was kind of the key. He was the heaviest-weight player we had." Pooling their life savings, Hawkins and Johnson masterminded the plan. "All of this went on in a booth at Pasquale's pizza parlor, around the corner from FAME," Johnson said. "We weren't mad at Rick — he was like our big brother. It scared us to death to think about competing with him in his town." Hood and Beckett signed on as secondary partners in the venture. "We thought we could record as well as anybody else," Beckett said. "Rick's a smart guy. I love him like a father. But he's a one-man show. We'd gone as far as we could." Tensions between Hall and Wexler had escalated since the aborted Franklin session at FAME, and Hall was about to sign a lucrative deal with Capitol Records. "Rick was ending his relationship with Atlantic, and Wexler was one of our biggest clients," Johnson said. "We were working maybe three days a month with Rick. The rest of that time was booked with Atlantic, at Quin Ivy's or in Nashville. We went everywhere." The Capitol deal would have Hall's players to work exclusively at FAME. "We were making more money working with other people than what he was offering us to be his exclusive band," Hood said. "The pressure to be exclusive pushed us over the line." The day that the rhythm section informed Hall of their decision coincided with a visit by Capitol executives. "Rick had a vibe that something wasn't right," Johnson recalled. "We went in his office, and he looked like death warmed over. It was like telling daddy or big brother that you've just done a bad thing." It was Hawkins, the architect of the plan, who ultimately broke the news. "I was appointed to do the talking," he said, "and I was scared to death." Hall was "dumbfounded" by the announcement. "It was a heartbreaker," Hall said. "But it never crossed my mind that I wouldn't survive. I felt, as always, that one monkey don't stop no show. It was hardcore bitterness on my part. But I knew it stemmed from my fight with Wexler." Wexler insists that he never actively encouraged the players to defect. "They came to me a year before, to my house on Long Island," he said. "It was a revolt -- they couldn't take it anymore. I told Rick, 'You can't treat them like this. They're human beings.' I told him they'd leave him. He said, 'I'll get new pickers.' But it shocked him when they left." Hall recalled a warning from Wexler: "He said he'd put me out of business," Hall said. "My reaction was something like, 'You're not man enough. I've got 20 years on you. I'll kick your (butt).' I'd worked hard and paid dues. I said, 'How dare you come into my territory, into something I built, and take my people.' " Once the rhythm section relocated, Wexler and Atlantic financed a new tape machine and soundboard, then guaranteed the studio 18 months of business. "Rick's perception was that I was a carpetbagger coming down there to wreck his operation," Wexler said. "But I loved these guys. I loved their music." Hood suggested a name for the new studio -- Muscle Shoals Sound. "We all laughed," Johnson said. "That was like saying the 'Valdosta sound' or 'Margerum sound.' Nobody had ever used that name, geographically, to describe the music. But there was a Memphis sound and a Motown sound. Why not a Muscle Shoals sound?" Hall doesn't blame his musicians for leaving. "They did what I would have done," Hall said. "My venom went toward Wexler. He was getting back at me. He didn't like a young whippersnapper bucking him." Today, those fences are finally mended. "A few years ago, Jerry came by when he was writing his book," Hall said. "He remembered pieces of things, and I remembered pieces of things. We put it all together, and it started to make sense. We clashed, but we always respected each other. He kicked my butt, but I needed it then. I was not to be conquered." In its first eight months, Muscle Shoals Sound cut Cher (whose "3614 Jackson Highway" album cover immortalized the studio) and Lulu. Neither yielded a breakthrough hit. "There was a theory then that you couldn't cut a hit outside of FAME," Johnson said, "so we were sweating. Our compadres in Memphis and Nashville laughed and took side bets on how long we'd last. Finally, we cut 'Take a Letter, Maria' with R.B. Greaves -- and we hit a home run." Following the money, the music scene heads to Nashville-1978-89 Current of change After nine years on their own, the hit-making musicians at Muscle Shoals Sound in Sheffield had outgrown their cramped, deteriorating quarters at 3614 Jackson Highway. The intimate recording studio — where the drip of the leaking roof was considered an element of the musical ambience — had hosted far-reaching pop-rock projects by the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Bob Seger, the Staple Singers, Traffic and Rod Stewart. By 1978, however, the studio owners known around the world as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section — guitarist Jimmy Johnson, drummer Roger Hawkins, keyboardist Barry Beckett and bassist David Hood — reluctantly agreed to search for a larger, more accommodating facility... "We stayed in Sheffield, but we ended up moving to the old Naval Reserve building at 1000 Alabama Avenue, on the banks of the Tennessee River," Johnson said. "Our old fraternity bands, The Del-Rays and The Mystics, had played there back before we ever became studio musicians. There was already a great vibe in that building." The last single to come out of the old Muscle Shoals Sound studio was Dr. Hook's No. 6 hit "Sharing the Night Together," a tender love song penned by Muscle Shoals songwriters Ava Aldridge and Eddie Struzick. "The very last things we cut at the old studio were some demos on (Muscle Shoals songwriter) Mickey Buckins," Hood said. "Once we moved into the new studio, the first things we did were demos for (local songwriter) W.C. Quillen. The next day we started working with Joe Cocker." Once relocated, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section continued cutting tracks for top-name recording artists — Seger ("Stranger in Town"), Cocker ("Luxury You Can Afford"), Dire Straits ("Communique"), James Brown ("The Original Disco Man") and Jimmy Buffett ("Coconut Telegraph"). "People would ask us, 'How can you be satisfied playing other people's music?' " Hawkins recalled. "I would tell them, 'Other people's music is my music.' It's a challenge playing other people's music. That was an art in itself — and it still is." The foursome also continued to expand its musical operation into production, publishing and the establishment of their own label, Muscle Shoals Sound, in association with Capitol Records. "We started our own publishing company because we knew that was where the real money was," Hood said. "We started a stable of writers, and we would play on their demos — writers like Philip Mitchell and George Jackson. That was a big, important step, and it worked. Working with artists like Paul Simon and Bob Seger, we started branching out into new territory." One of those multi-faceted projects resulted in Seger's hit 1979 single "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll," a song written by Jackson and co-produced by the rhythm section. "That was a thrill," Johnson said. "So many of those songs we published, produced or played on went on to become classics. People say things like, 'You did that? I had no idea.' That's a great feeling." Beckett and Hawkins produced hits for McGregor and Mel and Tim, while Hood worked with red-hot rock guitarist Wayne Perkins. "Once we started producing, we found out how much fun it was, putting it all together from scratch," Hawkins said. "We always had a ball doing that." Johnson produced sessions for Levon Helm, the Amazing Rhythm Aces and Muscle Shoals discoveries Lynyrd Skynyrd. In the lyrics to their 1974 Southern-rock anthem "Sweet Home Alabama," Skynyrd immortalized Muscle Shoals' funky-sounding rhythm section as "The Swampers." "We had these gold records on the wall for Leon Russell," Johnson recalled. "They said, 'Presented to The Swampers.' Leon was trying to find a name for us. We hung those up around the time Skynyrd got here. They saw those records and said, 'That's it — you guys are The Swampers!' Pretty soon the whole world knew who we were." Even after he left Atlantic in the late '70s, producer Jerry Wexler — who had helped the rhythm section finance its first studio — remained the influential "Godfather" of Muscle Shoals Sound. In 1979, Wexler brought one of music's most revered talents, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, to Muscle Shoals Sound for "Slow Train Coming" — an album centered on Dylan's born-again-Christian conversion. "I was surprised," Wexler said, "but I'd produce Dylan singing the Yellow Pages if that's what he wanted. Besides, I liked the irony of Bob coming to me, the Wandering Jew, to get the Jesus feel." Once completed, the soulful, passionate "Slow Train Coming," co-produced by Wexler and Beckett, rose to No. 3 on the charts. The album's first hit single, "Gotta Serve Somebody," earned Dylan the first Grammy of his career. "We brought Dylan back to Muscle Shoals the next year for a follow-up called 'Saved,' " Wexler said, "but it didn't match the intensity of that first album." Another high point at the riverside studio occurred when Texas-bred R&B troubadour Delbert McClinton struck musical paydirt with his album "The Jealous Kind" and its infectious Top 10 single, "Givin' It Up for Your Love." "When I found out I was going to come down here and record with these guys, I'd been listening to their music for at least 10 years," McClinton said. "I knew it was going to click, because they could do it already. I wasn't worried at all. I mean, how could it miss?" By the dawn of the 1980s, pop music was undergoing yet another radical industry transformation. Studios such as Wishbone, East Avalon and Music Mill closed their doors. The remaining Muscle Shoals producers were forced to re-evaluate their musical priorities. "The trend shifted toward disco and some of the funkier, hard-line acid-rock bands of the day," said FAME founder Hall, who had switched from R&B to pop in the early '70s. "That kind of left us out in the cold, so we had to find another way to survive," Hall said. "The end result was that I decided I would go back to my roots, which were in country music." Country had been enjoying a popular resurgence since the early '70s — and musical talent from the Shoals was largely responsible. Local natives Buddy Killen, Kelso Herston, David Briggs and Norbert Putnam remained some of Nashville's most influential producers and publishers. Expanding their fortunes even further, Killen branched out into other areas of entertainment (including his popular Stock-Yard restaurant), Briggs and Putnam scored pop hits with Buffett and Dan Fogelberg, and Herston began creating some of the world's best-known commercial jingles (from "7-Up, the Uncola" to "I Wish I Were an Oscar Mayer Weiner"). "Many of us could have stayed there in Muscle Shoals, but we would have starved to death," Briggs said. "We loved that little town, but down there it was all fame and no fortune." Meanwhile, Billy Sherrill, Hall's former FAME partner and fellow Phil Campbell native, helped unite pop and country audiences in the '70s with a smooth, lush crossover sound called "countrypolitan." Hailed as Nashville's "Tuscanini of Twang," producer-songwriter Sherrill had scored classic country hits with George Jones and Tammy Wynette. In the early '70s, he resurrected the career of former rockabilly artist Charlie Rich — one of Sam Phillips' early Sun Records discoveries — and conquered the pop charts with the Rich hits "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl (in the World)." "My daughter was in grammar school when I was working with Charlie," Sherrill recalled. "After we released 'The Most Beautiful Girl,' she came home from school one day and said, 'Daddy, you finally did something my friends have heard on the radio.' " Country soon became an essential component of the Muscle Shoals sound. The Oak Ridge Boys scored a string of country-pop hits at Muscle Shoals Sound ("Bobbie Sue," "Thank God for Kids"), while the rhythm section traveled to California to record hits with Eddie Rabbitt (including "Suspicions"). At FAME, songwriters Walt Aldridge and Tommy Brasfield penned Ronnie Milsap's 1982 "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me," one of the biggest crossover hits of the decade. Hall later nurtured a local bar band, Shenandoah, into one of country's hottest recording acts. "Country is the music of the common man," Hall said. "It's music that appeals to the guy who, in my book, makes America tick. It's music he can relate to." Songwriting talent became the cornerstone of the country era. One of the biggest hits to emerge from the area was the Alabama anthem "Old Flame," penned by Mac McAnally and Donnie Lowery. Even Muscle Shoals' R&B songwriters enjoyed country success. Spooner Oldham penned Bob Luman's "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers," Dan Penn wrote Milsap's first country hit, "I Hate You," and Donnie Fritts charted hits for Rich ("You're Gonna Love Yourself in the Morning") and Jerry Lee Lewis ("A Damn Good Country Song"). "When R&B dried up, we went country," said Fritts, who also played keyboards for a country-pop superstar Kris Kristofferson on concert tours from 1970-1992. "A lot of those country stars of the time — guys like Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee, Charlie, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings — had rock 'n' roll backgrounds anyway. They were the original outlaws of country music." Through the end of the '80s, Muscle Shoals continued to chart hits with such hot country acts as John Conlee, T.G. Sheppard, The Forester Sisters, T. Graham Brown and Sawyer Brown. Country veteran Jerry Reed, who had played guitar on early R&B sessions at FAME, returned to the studio to record one of the biggest hits of his career — the tongue-in-cheek "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)." "In the old days, the most a country album would sell was 100,000 copies," Hall said. "By the time country came back around, artists started selling 2-3 million. Country was the place to be." In 1985, Beckett — who by then was gaining considerable acclaim as a producer — decided to make the move to Nashville. "My wife left the radio on one day, and while I was washing the car I heard John Anderson — then I heard Rodney Crowell," recalled Beckett, who soon became one of Nashville's top players and producers. "I thought, 'This is country, but it's also rock 'n' roll and it also has that blues feel.' I thought, 'Nashville's about to bust wide open — that's where I need to be.' " Country, however, was by no means the be-all and end-all of Muscle Shoals music. Working with engineer David Johnson, former FAME R&B artist Clarence Carter recorded his sly, swaggering sexual sermon — the X-rated underground single "Strokin' " — at Johnson's Broadway Sound Studios in Sheffield in 1985. "After 1975, the music business was not so kind to me," Carter said. "Disco came along and damn near sent me into bankruptcy. I thought it was all over, but then 'Strokin' 'gave me the biggest hit of my career. It sold millions." Meanwhile, Muscle Shoals Sound reconnected with its R&B roots, recording modern-blues projects with Z.Z. Hill, Little Milton, Johnnie Taylor, Denise LaSalle and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Those artists recorded for Malaco Records, a Jackson, Miss.-based blues and gospel label founded by Tuscumbia native Tommy Couch. "I knew Jimmy Johnson from back home," Couch said. "When I was in pharmacy school at Ole Miss, I used to book the Del-Rays and other Muscle Shoals bands for fraternity gigs. Those guys were a big influence on me." In 1985, Couch and fellow Malaco partners Wolf Stephenson and Stewart Madison purchased Muscle Shoals Sound from the remaining rhythm-section musicians, hired them to run the studio, and then transferred the bulk of their recording activity from Jackson to Sheffield. "We were already doing a lot of work with Malaco," Johnson said, "and I'd been driving down to Jackson to play in their rhythm section. "At the time we just had our publishing for sale," he said, "but the Malaco guys wanted the studio, too. So we took their offer and kept doing the same things we'd been doing — without the headaches of ownership. Best of all, we were back in the R&B business again." For better or worse, Changing trends, label shakeups, economic woes and centralization of the music industry into three key cities -- Los Angeles, Nashville and New York - dealt a devastating blow to the world-famous "Muscle Shoals sound." By the dawn of the '90s, six of the area's nine recording studios had closed. Session musicians and songwriters began relocating, mostly to nearby Nashville, while recording activity at the surviving studios - FAME, Muscle Shoals Sound and Widget - dwindled to a handful of major artists. Through it all, dire reports of the "death" of Muscle Shoals music proved to be premature. "You can't exactly say why the glory days ground to a shuddering halt," said legendary producer Jerry Wexler, who cut dozens of Muscle Shoals hits from the '60s to the '80s and staged one glorious musical reunion in the '90s. "But like Yogi Berra says, 'It ain't over till it's over' -- and it wasn't over," Wexler said. "I certainly wouldn't have come back if I hadn't thought there was still a little magic left in those bones." Throughout the '90s, the area's abundant crop of songwriting talent - from founding fathers Donnie Fritts and Spooner Oldham to second-wave disciples Walt Aldridge and Mac McAnally and imported talents Lenny LeBlanc and Gary Baker - transformed the Muscle Shoals music industry into a world-class publishing powerhouse. "It all starts with a song," said veteran songwriter and talent developer Ava Aldridge, whose Muscle Shoals hits range from Dr. Hook's 1978 pop-rock standard "Sharing the Night Together" to Sawyer Brown's 1996 country chart-topper, "Treat Her Right." "The songwriters have always been here," said Aldridge, who moved to the Shoals from Arizona in the early '70s. "The songs, along with all the great studio musicians, have been a big part of the magic of Muscle Shoals music." Baker, who moved to the area from New York in the mid-'70s, co-wrote the biggest single title of the decade -- a tender, lyrical affirmation of love called "I Swear." The song became a 1994 country hit for John Michael Montgomery (No. 1 for four weeks), then a pop blockbuster for All 4-One (No. 1 for nine weeks). "That song tapped into something universal - a person expressing undying devotion to the person they love," said Baker, who earned a Grammy Award among many other honors for the multi-million-seller. "Twenty-five years from now, that song will still be around -- I really believe that." As songwriting flourished, local recording projects yielded consistent hits. Two groups in particular, Shenandoah and Sawyer Brown, added downhome country to the Muscle Shoals music scene. "You either have to go with the wind or get blown up by the roots," said FAME founder Rick Hall, whose recording and publishing company celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. "I never go in the studio unless I know I can cut a No. 1 record. I have to want it bad." In 1987, producers Hall and Robert Byrne began nurturing the FAME recording act Shenandoah into country superstars. The group -- made up of session musicians who moonlighted at a local nightclub - scored a string of No. 1 hits ("Church on Cumberland Road," "Sunday in the South," "If Bubba Can Dance"). In 1995 they earned a Grammy for "Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart," a haunting duet with Alison Krauss. "We always tried to do positive songs, and we had a great run for about 10 years," said lead singer Marty Raybon, who left Shenandoah in '96 to record with his brother Tim (as the Raybon Brothers) and pursue solo work in country and contemporary Christian. "We were able to stay here in Muscle Shoals and take the music we loved to the rest of the world." Nashville's fun-loving, equally upbeat Sawyer Brown arrived at Muscle Shoals Sound in the early '90s, cutting the No. 1 hits "Some Girls Do" and "Thank God for You." The band later moved to the home studio of its celebrated Sheffield producer, Mac McAnally. "We fell in love with Muscle Shoals," said Mark Miller, the band's lead singer. "We love the people and the atmosphere, and Mac brings out the best in us. We wouldn't feel right recording anywhere else." In 1996, Sawyer Brown hit No. 1 with "Treat Her Right," a love song penned by Muscle Shoals mainstays LeBlanc (who co-wrote and recorded the Top 10 hit "Falling" in 1978) and Ava Aldridge. "Lenny laughs at me, because I usually get chills when we write," Aldridge said. "If it doesn't bring chills, we keep working. I got chills that day." A year later, Sawyer Brown released a Top 10 cover of the country classic "Six Days on the Road." The truck-driving standard, penned by local songwriters Earl Green and Carl Montgomery, had been recorded by artists ranging from Dave Dudley and George Jones to Steve Earle and Taj Mahal. "No matter who records it, it's always got that drive to it," said Tune Records founder James Joiner, who published the song in 1960. "It'll be around as long as truck drivers are on the roads and people love listening to music." A number of other Muscle Shoals songwriters scored country hits in the '90s, even though most were cut in Nashville. Steven Dale Jones hit the Top 10 with Mindy McCready's "Ten Thousand Angels," and Billy Lawson charted back-to-back No. 1 hits with Rick Trevino's "Learning As You Go" and Trace Adkins' "I Left Something Turned On at Home." Mark Hall co-wrote Tim McGraw's No. 1 smash "I Like It, I Love It," and Kim Tribble scored his first No. 1 co-writing McCready's "Guys Do It (All the Time)." "Whenever a No. 1 song comes out of this area, it keeps our name visible in the music community," said Walt Aldridge, a local songwriter whose No. 1 hits include Ronnie Milsap's "No Gettin' Over," Ricky Van Shelton's "A Simple Man" and Reba McEntire's "The Fear of Being Alone." "In Nashville, they see 35 years of hits coming out of here," said Aldridge, who runs his own Waltz Time music company in downtown Florence. "They still believe there's something a little special about Muscle Shoals - something just a little different or out of the ordinary." The '90s also brought familiar faces back to the local studios. After an eight-year absence, Wexler returned to Muscle Shoals Sound to produce "The Right Time," a 1992 album by blues diva Etta James (who recorded her 1968 "Tell Mama" hit at FAME). The project featured guest work by British rockers Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, who first recorded at Sound during their Traffic days. "This was just something I really couldn't resist," said Winwood, who recorded a soul-stirring duet with James. "I love Muscle Shoals music, and to watch Jerry produce Etta was just riveting." Singer-songwriter Dan Penn ("I'm Your Puppet," "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man") returned in 1993 to record a highly acclaimed solo album, "Do Right Man." The sessions blended veteran Muscle Shoals, Memphis and Nashville sidemen. "There was some real hanging out on that session," Penn said. "There for a minute it felt like a long time ago. We had that warm, funky feeling back in our souls." That same year, Muscle Shoals' first national recording artist, Arthur Alexander, died of a heart attack at the age of 53. The singer had just released a comeback album, "Lonely Just Like Me." "He was at one of those creative peaks," said Fritts, who was Alexander's longtime friend and collaborator. "He was overjoyed by all the attention he was getting." Alexander's first Muscle Shoals hit, 1962's "You Better Move On," was the first cut on an 18-song 1994 Rhino Records compilation, "The Muscle Shoals Sound." Compiled by Leiber & Stoller publishing executive Randy Poe, a graduate of the University of North Alabama's commercial-music program, the disc covered the classic soul era. "I think these songs show how important that area was in that niche of music," Poe said. "You hear the evolution of the Muscle Shoals sound, which is the essence of soul music." Muscle Shoals' first hit recording artist, Bobby Denton, also returned to the studio for the first time in almost 30 years. The singer of the 1957 hit "A Fallen Star" cut a well-received gospel album, "My God and I," at FAME in 1997. "Bobby had such a strong voice that he nearly wore us out that first day," recalled Jimmy Johnson, who co-produced the album with Ava Aldridge. "We had 13 songs to do -- he did seven that first day." In addition to a steady stream of country and Malaco blues artists, a variety of acts recorded in Muscle Shoals in the '90s - from progressive rockers Melissa Etheridge, Widespread Panic and Cry of Love to veteran artists Tony Joe White, Duane Eddy and John Hiatt and Muscle Shoals soul stalwart Clarence Carter. "It's not like it was in the '70s, with 15 artists coming to town every week to record, but Muscle Shoals has turned into quite a writers' town," said songwriter-keyboardist James Hooker, who tours and records with both the Amazing Rhythm Aces and Nanci Griffith's Blue Moon Orchestra. "And there's just enough studio activity to keep us in trouble." In 1997, a reorganized Lynyrd Skynyrd returned to Muscle Shoals Sound to record "Twenty," an album commemorating the 20th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and two other band members. "Muscle Shoals was the first place we came when we left Florida," said Skynyrd guitarist and charter member Gary Rossington. "So we decided to come back to those roots." Recent recording projects include albums by promising young Muscle Shoals discoveries Alecia Elliott, Brad Austin and Krystye Wilson and a new album by the Southern Rock All-Stars (made up of members of Molly Hatchet, Blackfoot and The Rossington Band). "Muscle Shoals is one of the last stands of small, traditional historic studios," said All-Stars bassist Pete Geddes. "Sun is history. Motown is history. Stax is history. Capricorn is history. We knew we needed to be here if we wanted to rekindle that old magic." In recent years, advances in recording technology have allowed Muscle Shoals to experience a resurgence in recording activity - but not in commercial studios. Songwriters and performers such as Ava Aldridge, Baker, Walt Aldridge, LeBlanc and former Grateful Dead vocalist Donna Godchaux MacKay have installed state-of-the-art studio facilities in their homes. "Now it's possible for the everyday person to put a studio in their homes and do quality work," said Ava Aldridge, who lives in Sheffield. "That helps songwriters, but it's been a significant loss of income for the big studios. Demo money was their bread-and-butter." Three years ago, Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section guitarist Jimmy Johnson left Muscle Shoals Sound and established his own Jimmy Johnson Productions in Sheffield. "I will still go to the big rooms to lay my tracks - I'm not about to buy a grand piano or a B-3 organ," said Johnson, whose recent projects include Wilson's blues-rock album and Austin's country-pop project. "I'll go in with my hard drives, download them, bring them back here, then overdub and mix." Baker's home studio, on the Sheffield bluffs overlooking the Tennessee River, has hosted songwriting sessions with such heavyweight collaborators as Lonestar's Richie McDonald and pop's hot-selling Backstreet Boys. Baker has two cuts on the Boys' record-breaking "Millennium" album and four cuts on an expanded European release. "This has been a dream of mine," said Baker, who also co-wrote Reba McEntire's "One Honest Heart," a current Top 10 hit. "I wanted to be able to build a house, have my own studio and stay in this area. Some cool things are happening here." La La Land, McAnally's home studio in Sheffield, recently hosted three high-profile projects - a new Sawyer Brown album, McAnally's own "Word of Mouth" solo disc and six cuts on "Beach House on the Moon," an album that marked Jimmy Buffett's return to Muscle Shoals. "It's a funky place, and I loved every minute of it," Buffett said. "There's great music there, plus there's great barbecue. When you eat that much barbecue, it's bound to be reflected in your music." Veteran songwriters are working harder than ever to ensure the future of Muscle Shoals music. Ava Aldridge teaches a songwriting workshop the first Tuesday of each month at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, and local musicians Mickey Buckins and Jerry McGee highlight aspiring and established artists every Thursday through the Muscle Shoals Songwriters Showcase at the Holiday Inn in Sheffield. "As long as we've great songwriters, Muscle Shoals will never die," said Buckins, a veteran percussionist and songwriter who penned "Tell Me a Lie" and other hit compositions. "That's what we're trying to do -- pass on this legacy to a whole new generation of songwriters and musicians." As the '90s draw to a close, the area's commercial studios are alive and well. The old Muscle Shoals Sound studio at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield is open under new ownership and attracting young rock 'n' roll bands. Also on Jackson Highway, Widget founder Ron Ballew - who helped launch the careers of Ava Aldridge and Sailcat's Johnny Wyker ("Motorcycle Mama") - is upgrading his studio's audio/video capabilities. "With too little personnel and the finest equipment we can buy," Ballew said, "we expect to have an open house as soon as repairs and new designs are installed." Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Muscle Shoals Sound recently hosted all-star sessions for Malaco artist Little Milton. The blues artist cut a much-anticipated duets album with modern musical descendants Keb' Mo, Lucinda Williams, Delbert McClinton, Dave Alvin, Gov't Mule, Susan Tedeschi, G. Love and Special Sauce and Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band. "The last record I made, 'Fool's Parade,' was cut in New York," Wolf said. "People kept asking me, 'What kind of record are you making?' I said, 'It's a Muscle Shoals record.' I meant there's a certain warmth, a certain kind of groove. It's hard to describe, but it's kind of like spice. When you taste it, you just know it's right." Meanwhile, back at FAME, Rick Hall is producing Raybon's new country album - and pondering the future. "I'll go wherever the music leads me," Hall said. "I want to discover a new approach to music and turn the industry upside down. I want to find a new Elvis, a new Aretha - a singer that doesn't sound like anybody else. It's not enough for me to cut a hit. I want to change the whole complexion of music. That may not happen in my lifetime, but without those aspirations I know it won't happen."
|
|||||||
MUSCLE SHOALS MUSIC: