Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music

INTRODUCTION

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers

And they’ve been known to pick a song or two

Lord they get me off so much

They pick me up when I’m feeling blue

Now how about you?

—Sweet Home Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd

It isn’t much to look at. In fact, passersby could be excused for overlooking the concrete block building on Jackson Highway. Who would look at that façade and guess that some of the world’s most memorable music was recorded within its walls?

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was founded in a former Gibson Blind Factory in Sheffield, Alabama, in 1969. The town itself is as unassuming as the studio’s building; it’s populated by fewer than ten thousand people and tucked into a far-flung corner of the state. Along with Florence, Tuscumbia and the town of Muscle Shoals—cities tucked into corners of Colbert and Lauderdale Counties—Sheffield is the heart of the Muscle Shoals Sound.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the Muscle Shoals city limit sign claimed that it was the hit recording capital of the world. That’s a self-declaration no one could prove nor deny, although the number of gold and platinum records produced in these four riverside towns certainly offers strength to the claim. Muscle Shoals Sound Studio helped make the case for its truth.

WC. Handy, widely considered the Father of the Blues, is a Florence, Alabama native. A number of his albums appear in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Author’s collection.

But in order to fully understand that building’s surprising place in musical history, you’ve got to look at the region itself.

You go to New York, and it’s Alabama, and all of these people are influenced by that river culture, or that part of the country.

—The Staple Singers’ producer Al Bell to the Arkansas Journal, 2001

In the 1950s, a number of black musicians were playing throughout Muscle Shoals in places such as the Elk’s Club, while country and rockabilly musicians were also trying to gain traction.

But then, as now, Muscle Shoals didn’t have much to offer in the way of music venues. The big difference, though, was that, at that time, no one thought you could find success recording music in Alabama.

Why? Well, partly because it hadn’t been done. The state lacked music publishing companies and recording studios; Alabama musicians left the state to find success.

The legend of the now famous Muscle Shoals sound goes far beyond the region’s limits. For example, the National Blues Museum is based in St. Louis, Missouri. But the Father of the Blues and author of the song St. Louis Blues is W.C. Handy, a Florence native.

That song is now an American standard and has been covered by a number of artists, including Stevie Wonder and fellow Alabamian Nat King Cole. In 2010, the Huntsville (AL) Times dubbed it the twelfth-best song by an Alabama artist. If such a renowned song is only ranked number twelve, it’s easy to deduce that this state has produced some talent.

Rick Hall, founder of Florence, Alabama Music Enterprises Recording Studios. George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Gift, George F. Landegger, 2010 (DLC/PP-2010:090).

Fans of classic music, especially rock and rhythm and blues, will recognize a number of the songs that placed higher; Wilson Pickett’s Land of 1,000 Dances was eleventh on that list, and Clarence Carter’s Patches was tenth. Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman came in fifth. Every time someone went to Muscle Shoals, they came out of there with a hit. You had to know there was something special in Muscle Shoals, Carter said in the 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals.

These songs have more in common than Alabama musicians; they were all recorded in the Shoals. Pickett and Carter both recorded at FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Recording Studios, and Carter’s Patches is a biographical tale written by the studio’s founder Rick Hall. According to the same story in the Huntsville Times, the five best songs associated with Muscle Shoals Sound and its rhythm section are Respect by Aretha Franklin, Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones, Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Seger, Kodachrome by Paul Simon and Sweet Soul Music by Arthur Conley.

Back in the ’60s and ’70s, it was a handful of people deciding that they could do it here, that they didn’t have to go to Nashville or L.A. or New York. They could do it here and still have those records heard.

—Ben Tanner, Alabama Shakes keyboardist, Single Lock Records co-owner and Muscle Shoals native, in an interview with the (University of Alabama) Crimson White, November 4, 2013

Although a festival now annually celebrates Handy’s contributions, for decades, Alabamians had to leave the state if they wanted to record music that would get noticed. Handy (1873–1958) traveled from Birmingham to St. Louis to Memphis to New York. In the 1940s, Montgomery native Hank Williams saw some success in his home state but didn’t make noise on a national scale until he performed in Nashville and found a record deal there.

The list of musicians and music industry folks who followed in their footsteps is extensive: Sam Phillips is from Florence but made music history in Memphis after he created Sun Records and recorded Elvis Presley; R&B’s Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole and Lionel Richie; country music’s the Louvin Brothers, Tammy Wynette and Emmylou Harris; the incomparable Sun Ra; coastal king Jimmy Buffett; members of Motown’s the Temptations. They traveled to New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and as far afield as Los Angeles to find musical success.

The cabin in which W.C. Handy was raised is now a museum and library in Florence. Handy was born in the home in 1873. He advised the city on its restoration but died before the museum opened. Author’s collection.

Rusted metal sculptures of musicians stand outside the W.C. Handy Home, Museum and Library in Florence. The home has been designated a landmark of American music. Author’s collection.

For these and other musicians, gigs and radio shows were one thing. Real success in the music business was quite another. And real success on their own turf seemed inconceivable, biographer Richard Younger wrote in Get a Shot of Rhythm & Blues: The Arthur Alexander Story.

In a state without a [music] publishing company, songs could not be published, he added. If there was no professional recording studio, you couldn’t make a record. And in the latter half of the twentieth century, no record meant no real shot at stardom.

So it was in Alabama. But beginning in the late 1950s, everything changed.

1

THE SOUND OF MUSCLE SHOALS

You ask me to give up the hand of the girl I love

You tell me I’m not the man she’s worthy of

But who are you to tell her who to love?

That’s up to her, yes, and the Lord above

You better move on.

—You Better Move On, Arthur Alexander (later covered by the Rolling Stones)

Pore over books and historical records focusing on northwest Alabama, and the bulk of what you’ll find will cover the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government-owned utility launched in Muscle Shoals in the 1930s. A 1950s Muscle Shoals Chamber of Commerce brochure indicated that the area had two radio stations, fewer than twenty-seven thousand residents and little to do (most of the listed activities—a football stadium, lighted baseball parks, playgrounds and so on—could have been based at area schools). It isn’t until that decade that music started showing up in a significant way.

A man named Dexter Johnson can claim credit for the area’s first recording studio, which he set up in his home in 1951. Johnson established a legacy not only for the region but also for his family; his nephew Jimmy Johnson grew up to become the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section’s guitarist. The younger Johnson’s studio now sits cater-corner from his uncle’s garage studio.

Although Dexter Johnson’s initial forays into recording began in the earlier part of the decade, Shoals music didn’t hit the professional level until 1956. Tune Records was a partnership formed by James Joiner, Kelson Herston, songwriter Walter Stovall and attorney Marvin Wilson. The studio focused on pop and country music, including songs written by Phil Campbell’s Billy Sherrill and Franklin County’s Rick Hall.

Muscle Shoals, circa 1933. Library of Congress.

This photograph of the Muscle Shoals Bridge appeared on a 1950s-era postcard published by Dexter Press. Auburn University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Department.

A 1940s postcard of the Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Author’s collection, Aero-Graphic Corp.

A postcard of Wheeler Dam in the Shoals area of Alabama. Author’s collection, Anderson News Company, Florence, Alabama.

The first-known recording studio in the Shoals (shown here in the picture hanging on the wall at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame) was at the home of Dexter Johnson, who is remembered at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Johnson was the uncle of Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section member Jimmy Johnson. Author’s collection.

It may not have been Nashville or Memphis, but the music scene in Florence was suddenly a reality, and everybody was hungry for a hit, Younger wrote.

When Percy Sledge, a hospital orderly at the time, came calling in 1966, though, Joiner sent him elsewhere. Sledge’s sound, which he developed by humming while working in cotton fields, didn’t jive with the more pop-sounding music of Tune Records, and so he turned to Norala Sound Studio. Rick Hall, who by then owned FAME Studios, let his friend Quin Ivy borrow his rhythm section for the recording of When a Man Loves a Woman. The song went to number twenty-two on Billboard’s Top 100 for the year and attracted other talent to the Shoals area. It was later covered by artists such as Michael Bolton, Rod Stewart and Bette Midler.

But the region’s music business had a long way to go before it attracted such big-name talent. First, the local folks needed to find a bit of success. Perhaps because of the region’s proximity to Nashville, Tennessee, area musicians would often make the pilgrimage to the country music capital. But the demos they would tote were sometimes cut back at home. A local radio station helped musicians recording those demos as they sought songwriting careers. The quality was iffy, but the tapes sometimes brought the songs to the attention of bigger recording artists. In 1957, teenager Bobby Denton recorded the Joiner-penned A Fallen Star at Tune Records and began to see some success.

It became a regional hit, almost a big hit, then Alabama Music Hall of Fame executive director David Johnson recalled in an interview with the (Mobile, AL) Press-Register. Denton, who later became a state senator, has noted that it is believed to be the first song recorded commercially in Alabama.

That inspiration was all it took for other aspiring musicians to jump in. Others saw Tune and Norala’s success and decided to pursue their own music industry dreams. In 1958,