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The sleepy city of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, would turn out to be the unlikely vacation spot for America’s biggest recording artists, churning out basic hits like Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves a Woman”; “I Never Loved A Man” by Aretha Franklin; “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones; and “I’ll Take You There” by The Staple Singers.
On the financial institution of the Tennessee River, about midway between Memphis and Atlanta, lies the city of Muscle Shoals. To the informal observer, Muscle Shoals is only a quiet Alabama city, surrounded by verdant countryside and bordered by the huge Tennessee River. Males and birds alike fish within the river, because the solar beats down on the swampland the place alligators wait. The Yuchi Indians referred to as the Tennessee “the river that sings.” Legend instructed of a lady who lived within the river and sang songs that protected her individuals.
Dwelling to among the biggest data in historical past
In 1924, Wilson Dam was accomplished, destroying the hazardous shoals that gave the brand new city and its neighborhood its title. Life in Muscle Shoals is gradual – it may well really feel as if time has stood nonetheless there. It’s not a giant city – inhabitants some 13,000 – and but it’s house to among the biggest data within the historical past of common music.
Blues pioneer WC Helpful and Sam Phillips, who would famously uncover Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Money, got here from shut by. Muscle Shoals was in some ways the house of the blues, the house of rock’n’roll, and the house of soul music, even when the Alabama pioneers needed to journey to the comparatively extra pluralistic metropolis of Memphis, Tennessee, with a view to carry the music they liked to a wider viewers.
Helen Keller was one other native. Because the blind singer Clarence Carter commented, “Helen Keller was from Muscle Shoals and it was always amazing to me the things she was able to accomplish being blind and deaf.” Famously, the primary phrase that Keller discovered was “water” – the effectively the place she discovered the phrase is a well-known landmark. All the things from Muscle Shoals comes again to the water that sang.
Rick Corridor and the start of FAME Music
Rick Corridor grew up in a home with a mud flooring within the close by Freedom Hills. “We just kind of grew up like animals,” he recalled. When he was nonetheless a boy, his three-year-old brother died in a tragic accident after falling into a bath of scalding water as their mom was doing the washing within the yard. His mother and father’ marriage collapsed within the aftermath, every blaming the opposite. Earlier than lengthy, his mom left the household, taking on work in a home of sick reputation. She by no means noticed her son once more. Unsurprisingly, this chain of occasions had a profound affect on Corridor, who turned decided to make one thing nice of his life.
The dying of his first spouse in a automobile accident hit Corridor exhausting, and he turned to the bottle. He misplaced himself in drink and in music, becoming a member of an area band and writing songs within the automobile he now referred to as house.
Corridor struck up a songwriting partnership with one other native musician named Billy Sherrill when the pair performed collectively in a band, they usually started promoting their songs to the likes of Brenda Lee and Roy Orbison. Along with an area hunchbacked younger businessman, they fashioned a publishing firm. The three younger males arrange an improvised recording facility above a drugstore in close by Florence, Alabama, with a view to demo their songs. This was the start of FAME Music (FAME standing for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises).
After lower than a 12 months, nonetheless, Corridor had fallen out along with his companions, and he was let go. In accordance with Corridor, the issue sprung from him being an excessive amount of of a workaholic, when his companions needed to have enjoyable: “I was so very aggressive and fired up,” he instructed Peter Guralnick, writer of the definitive account of soul music within the south: Candy Soul Music.
The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part
When Corridor returned to Muscle Shoals, it was with a willpower to immerse himself within the enterprise of creating data. Backed by his new father-in-law, Corridor constructed a studio in an outdated warehouse. An opportunity encounter with a younger singer-songwriter referred to as Arthur Alexander led to Corridor’s first hit, “You Better Move On,” which made it to No.24 on Billboard’s Scorching 100 in early 1962.
Quickly FAME studios started to draw musicians and songwriters seeking to make a reputation for themselves, Dan Penn, Donnie Fritts, and Percy Sledge amongst them. However as Corridor started to determine a popularity and scored extra hits, the common musicians he had been utilizing grew uninterested in their poor wages and left. Corridor’s second home band would, nonetheless, show to be value their weight in gold. With Jimmy Johnson on guitar, David Hood enjoying bass, Roger Hawkins on the drums, and Spooner Oldham enjoying keyboards, the group got here to be generally known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part, or The Swampers.
Percy Sledge: When A Man Loves A Lady
Percy Sledge recorded “When A Man Loves A Woman” in close by Sheffield, Alabama, in a studio owned by Corridor’s buddy, native DJ Quin Ivy, backed by a variety of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part. When he heard it, Rick Corridor acknowledged that it seemed like a No.1 hit. Corridor referred to as Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Data in New York and struck a deal (taking a share of the royalties as a finder’s price).
Percy Sledge labored within the native hospital, singing to his sufferers to assist them sleep. “When I came into the studio I was shaking like a leaf, I was scared,” he later stated of recording “When A Man Loves A Woman.” He was unskilled within the artwork of creating data, “All I had was a voice, I didn’t know about no singing.” However Corridor had been proper, and the track went to the highest of Billboard’s Scorching 100 in 1966. It took Southern soul to the mainstream, and blew the sport vast open, placing the Muscle Shoals sound very firmly on the map.
“When A Man Loves A Woman” cast a partnership between Corridor and Wexler, with the may of the latter’s Atlantic Data label put behind Corridor’s productions. Having fallen out with Jim Stewart at Wexler’s southern recording spot of alternative, Stax Data, he turned to Corridor to chop his data within the south.
The Muscle Shoals sound
The Muscle Shoals type fused hillbilly, blues, rock’n’roll, soul, nation, and gospel, to create a sound that cherry-picked the very best options of every to forge one thing new. They close-mic’d the kick drum, and the FAME recordings pumped with heavy bass and drums. However the enjoying was mild and unfastened, the songs melodic and stuffed with tales. And, by all of it, was deep ardour and grit.
One of many first acts Wexler despatched to Muscle Shoals was Wilson Pickett. “I couldn’t believe it,” Pickett instructed journalist Mark Jacobson. “I looked out the plane window, and there’s these people picking cotton. I said to myself, ‘I ain’t getting off this plane, take me back north.’ This big southern guy was at the airport [Rick Hall]… I said, ‘I don’t want to get off here, they still got black people picking cotton.’ The man looked at me and said, ‘F__k that. Come on Pickett, let’s go make some f__king hit records.’ I didn’t know Rick Hall was white.”
When Wexler got here to FAME, he was shocked by the laidback nature of the classes. He was used to working with the nation’s most interesting session gamers, who would sight-read from charts, knocking out hits in a extremely skilled method. However issues have been totally different in Muscle Shoals. Right here the musicians have been native guys who appeared like they labored in a warehouse or grocery store. And but, as he rapidly realized, these have been clean and funky gamers, musicians who lower a groove to rival any within the land. Pickett and Wexler have been shocked and bought on the sound that they had occurring.
It’s value remembering that this all passed off towards a backdrop of the civil-rights wrestle, and blatant racial aggression. In 1963, the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, had stood in entrance of the Foster Auditorium on the College Of Alabama in a useless try to dam the enrollment of black college students. Within the recording studio, nonetheless, blacks and whites labored collectively blind to the colour of one another’s pores and skin. However after they took a break and stepped out of the studio, racism held on each nook.
Classes with Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin had didn’t make an affect in 5 years recording for CBS, so after the label dropped her, Wexler snapped her up and took her to Muscle Shoals in 1967. She and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part struggled at first to discover a mutual groove, however as soon as they hit it, all the things modified. The primary track they recorded at FAME collectively was “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You),” and it could turn out to be Franklin’s first hit document.
Musician and songwriter Dan Penn recalled, “Less than two hours and it was in the can and it was a killer, no doubt about it. That morning, we knew that a star had been born.” Keyboardist Spooner Oldham, whose keyboard introduction set the scene for the track, backs this up: “Of the hundreds of sessions I have participated in, I can honestly say those first few sessions with Aretha Franklin were simply and magically unforgettable.”
However simply because the magic was working, so did tempers flare. Ted White, Franklin’s husband and supervisor, acquired right into a drunken alternate with a trumpet participant, after which fought with Corridor, earlier than leaving city. Wexler blamed Corridor for the session breaking apart, and swore to by no means set foot in Muscle Shoals once more.
Nevertheless, Wexler had the Muscle Shoals musicians flown to New York, the place the album I By no means Beloved A Man the Method I Love You was accomplished. It was a partnership that created an outstanding run of hits. The album they created stays one of many biggest in soul music historical past.
Corridor, within the meantime, connected with the Chess brothers in Chicago, with Leonard Chess arranging to carry Etta James to FAME. Corridor produced her hit 1968 album Inform Mama at Fame. James was struck by Corridor’s really feel for the music: “Rick Hall was actually the first white man that I had seen that had that kind of soul, that was an engineer and was soulful, you know?”
Enter the Allman Brothers
A mix of loyalty to Corridor and superstitious perception in his studio introduced Pickett again to Muscle Shoals in late 1968, regardless of Wexler’s refusal to work with Corridor once more. And the classes would introduce the abilities of a younger guitar participant referred to as Duane Allman. After injuring his elbow in a horse-riding accident, Allman had turned to bottle-neck guitar enjoying in his diminished mobility. He took to the type immediately (Corridor later remarked that he’d by no means heard anyone play slide guitar like Duane). However whereas the remainder of the white musicians have been clean-cut, Allman had hair previous his shoulders, big sideburns, and a Mexican-style moustache, and was wearing tie-dye, flower patterns, and scruffy jeans.
Jimmy Johnson recalled, “There was always a slight problem when we would go out, all of us white boys with a black artist, that we’d get looks. But there was nothing as bad as going out with a long-haired hippy with us white boys. They couldn’t stand that! And so both of them [Allman and Picket] stayed back.”
It was whereas the others have been out to lunch that Allman prompt to Pickett that he lower a canopy of “Hey Jude.” Each Pickett and Corridor thought Allman was loopy to need to cowl The Beatles, however the completed document could be one of many biggest covers of any Beatles track, in addition to one in every of Wilson Picket’s strongest recordings (to not point out an enormous hit). On listening to Allman’s enjoying on the document, Eric Clapton was knocked out: “I remember hearing Wilson Pickett’s ‘Hey Jude’ and just being astounded by the lead break at the end. I had to know who that was immediately – right now.”
Varied musicians that hung round at FAME started to jam along with Allman, and that was the genesis of The Allman Brothers Band. However Corridor couldn’t see a future within the sound that they had developed, which might be the bedrock of all Southern rock, and determined towards recording them. As he instructed author Peter Guralnick: “I didn’t know what to do with him and finally Phil [Walden, booking agent] said, ‘Look, you’re not doing anything with him. Why don’t you sell him to Wexler, maybe get your bucks back?’ Wexler says, ‘What will you take for the masters and the contract? I’ll only give you $10,000.’ I said, ‘Write me the check.’ I still laugh about it with Phil. Of course, I lost five to ten million on that venture.”
Constructing Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
The occasions have been very a lot a-changing by now, nonetheless, and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part determined that this was the best second to inform Corridor that they have been going into enterprise in direct competitors with FAME. Corridor had referred to as them into his workplace to signal them as much as an unique contract on the phrases of his new take care of Capitol Data. He remembered, “One of the guys stopped me and said, ‘We’ve already made a deal with Jerry Wexler and he is going to build us a studio across town. We’ll be leaving here, going with him.’ I felt like the whole bottom of my life had fell out… it was war. Total war.”
From their perspective, the musicians had reached the top of their persistence with the way in which Corridor operated. The brand new Capitol deal was value a reported $1 million, however Johnson claimed that Corridor was providing the musicians simply $10,000 every per 12 months – regardless of every having earned nearly double that quantity the 12 months earlier than. Corridor himself admitted that he could have shot himself within the foot: “I should have gone partners with them or cut them in for a piece of the action, but I think I had really come to believe that I could take any group of musicians and cut hit records. I just wasn’t smart enough, or I was too engrossed in what I was doing, to realize differently.”
And so it was that the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was based at 3614 Jackson Freeway, Sheffield, Alabama, in 1969, by Barry Beckett (who had changed Spooner Oldham on keyboards in 1967), Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, and David Hood. The musicians had taken a chance, as Hood recalled: “When we bought the studio we were very nervous about whether or not we’d have any hits. And you have to have hits to keep recording.” However Wexler noticed to it that their new enterprise had a gentle movement of expertise by the door. As Johnson defined to Guralnick, “We just built the business from clients Rick threw out the door. Atlantic loaned us $19,000 to make the transition to eight-track, modify the console, and we owed $40,000 on the loans that Fred [Bevis, landlord] had gotten on the buildings and the improvements. That was $60,000, and we were scared to death, but for some reason we just went forward.”
Jerry Wexler’s Atlantic assured them work for 18 months, however when he determined he needed to maneuver his soul music operation to Miami, and the Muscle Shoals gamers weren’t ready to comply with, that was the top of their relationship with Wexler. “That was a scary time,” Johnson recalled with not slightly understatement. The studio remained afloat, thanks partially to session work for Stax Data.
The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers
It took the very best a part of 12 months for issues to take off, however in early December 1969, The Rolling Stones booked into the studio to kick off what would turn out to be their Sticky Fingers album. Keith Richards defined that it was match made in heaven: “The sound was in my head before I even got there. And then, of course, when it actually lives up to it and beyond, then you’re in rock’n’roll heaven, man.”
The band took benefit of being in blues territory to chop Fred McDowell’s “You Gotta Move,” earlier than tackling their very own “Wild Horses.” Richards testified to how effortlessly effectively the classes went: “I thought it was one of the easiest and rockin’-est sessions that we’d ever done. I don’t think we’ve been quite so prolific ever. I mean, we cut three or four tracks in two days, and that for the Stones is going some.” “Brown Sugar” rounded off their keep at Jackson Freeway, and Richards says that had it not been for authorized points stopping him from re-entering the nation, they’d have recorded Exile On Important St there as effectively.
The boon the studio acquired from the Stones’ classes can’t be underestimated. Muscle Shoals turned the 70’ Funk Manufacturing unit, whereas on the similar time attracting the largest names in pop and rock, from Paul Simon and Artwork Garfunkel to Rod Stewart to Elton John.
Feuds, Freebird, and The Fame Gang
The feud between Corridor and Wexler meant that each studios needed to up their recreation. Over at FAME, Corridor put collectively a brand new band, dubbed The Fame Gang, and recorded hit data with Joe Tex, Tom Jones, The Osmonds, Candi Staton, Bobbie Gentry, King Curtis, Little Richard, Paul Anka, Bobby Womack, and Clarence Carter. In 1973, Rick Corridor was named producer of the 12 months after data he’d made topped the Billboard pop charts for a unprecedented 17 weeks.
On the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, they picked up Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose epic “Freebird” would turn out to be generally known as a modern-day Southern Rock anthem. However they have been unable to safe a label for the document, and it could be the supply of nice remorse for the studio that they needed to let the band go, shortly earlier than they turn out to be big. Nevertheless, following the tragic airplane crash that killed three of the band, the survivors had the Muscle Shoals classes put out as an album titled Skynyrd’s First And… Final. The Muscle Shoals guys have been immortalized in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s legendary single “Sweet Home Alabama”:
Now Muscle Shoals has acquired The Swampers
And so they’ve been recognized to choose a track or two (sure they do)
Lord they get me off a lot
They choose me up once I’m feeling blue, now how ’bout you?
The go-to studio for the largest names
The Muscle Shoals sound could have been born out of R&B, however by the 70s, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part have been displaying their adaptability throughout a variety of genres. Performing as the home band at their studio, they gave Jimmy Cliff’s reggae a southern twist. They labored with Visitors on the album Shoot Out At The Fantasy Manufacturing unit earlier than heading out on tour with them – the primary time members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part had gone on the highway. But it surely was in leaving Muscle Shoals for the brilliant lights of the reside circuit that they found fairly how a lot they valued their candy life at house in Alabama.
The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio turned the go-to studio for the largest names in music. Bob Dylan’s Gradual Practice Coming, Paul Simon’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Boz Scaggs, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, The Staple Singers, Leon Russell, Millie Jackson, Dire Straits, Dr. Hook, Cat Stevens, Bob Seeger, Elton John, Willie Nelson, and Julian Lennon all recorded there over the following decade.
In 1979, the studio moved to bigger premises at 1000 Alabama Avenue, the place it remained till it was bought, together with the Muscle Shoals Sound publishing rights, to their buddy, Tommy Crouch of Malaco Data in 1985. Beckett headed to Nashville to work as a producer, whereas the remaining three members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part continued to document at their outdated studio, in addition to proving to be among the many nation’s most in-demand session gamers.
In the present day, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and the FAME Studio each proceed to function as working studios, in addition to being common vacationer sights, providing day by day excursions of the restored services. Among the many newer artists to document in Muscle Shoals are Drive-By Truckers, Band Of Horses, Bettye LaVette, Phish, Greg Allman, and Cyril Neville.
Although the break up between Corridor and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part angered Corridor like nothing else in his life, by the passing of time, they turned shut once more. The musicians would credit score Corridor with having began the Muscle Shoals sound. For his half, Rick Corridor later stated of them merely that, “These are guys that I love with all my heart.”
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