“This was a freak accident that happened over here,” said Brad Guin, a session saxophonist for FAME Studios. “This was just the right people being born into the right circumstances.”
“This,” being the historical music and notable talent that came out of Northern Alabama.
Sam Phillips, arguably the Father of Rock and Roll, came from Florence, Alabama, as well as
W.C. Handy, the first person to ever publish the blues, and respected producer Buddy Killen. The list goes on and continues to amaze- Even Heller Keller came from the Shoals.
The Cherokee Indians that lived in the northwestern territory of Alabama called the river that flew through it, “Unashay,” or, “The Singing River.” The river instills inspiration in those who seek it, and many folks think that it has something to do with the magic of the Shoals.
One can blame the river for the essence of the music generated in New Orleans and Memphis because of the various cultural traffic that it brought, but the town of Muscle Shoals was different– It was just a small country town in Alabama with the serene scene of the Tennessee River.
FAME
The South remained wounded by the Great Depression and World War II going into the fifties, where a suffering economy offered minimal work. Most poor southerners took on sharecropping and made just enough to provide food and shelter for their families.
Rick Hall, American songwriter, producer, and founder of FAME Studios, grew up a sharecropper's son who slept on the dirt floor of a country home in Franklin County, Alabama.
“Poverty was crushing for that generation, and difficult, hard times like that produce extra strong people who will do anything to get out of it,” said Guin.
Hall grew up in difficult times, where his mom left him when he was five, and the brutality of life continued to hit him as he aged. In 1957, his first wife died in a car crash, and merely two weeks later, his father died from an overturned tractor that Hall gifted to him.
“He didn’t have the enemy of comfort,” continued Guin. “And comfort is an enemy to greatness. He didn’t have the addiction to comfort– He had a supreme need to get out from under it.”
After a period of grief, Rick Hall took action and opened up Florence Alabama Music Enterprises above the City drugstore alongside Billy Sherrill and Tom Stafford. In 1960, Hall took sole ownership, shortened the name to FAME Studios, and eventually moved the studio to its current location at 603 East Avalon Avenue, Muscle Shoals.
FAME Studios marked the beginning of the famous “Muscle Shoals Sound,” a slogan Hall created.
From FAME Studios, endless hits were born with the help of The Swampers, one of FAME’s original rhythm sections. FAME Studios cut hit after hit, including “When a Man Loves A Woman,” by Percy Sledge and “Steal Away,” by Jimmy Hughes.
The motivation for perfection lived in Rick Hall, where he demanded greatness from the art, and from the artists. Hall felt that if it didn’t hurt, and you didn’t have to pay for it, then it wasn’t worth having.
“You have to be a little bit mad if you’re going to be an artist,” said Guin. “And Rick Hall had him a good dose of it.”
Hall took talented, experienced musicians and ran them into the ground. Some musicians have walked into his sessions and left retired from music altogether, just because their nerves couldn’t take it anymore.
“I was not that guy. I could take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’,” said Guin. “I was just happy to be in the studio working with him. I really was.”
Guin, born in 1974, got his foot in the industry door when Travis Wammack, American guitarist and songwriter who came out of Memphis, called him in to a session at FAME Studios.
Guin had been out on the road before with Bobby Bland and B.B. King, not yet knowing the weight of their presence, but walking into the first session with Hall, that weight presented itself in the way of nervous butterflies.
For six hours straight, Guin played the same four notes from his saxophone until Hall felt satisfied.
The Birth of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
At the time, segregation remained prominent in the South. In the 2013 movie Muscle Shoals, Wilson Pickett, singer of Land of 1000 Dances, said you could see the studio from the cotton patch, where blacks stood picking cotton.
The studios were bi-racial – A place where all the social disagreements disappeared and humans simply came together to make music.
However, disagreement still found its way. In 1967 during a recording session with Aretha Franklin, everything changed for FAME Studios.
Ted White, Franklin’s manager and husband at the time from Detroit, did not like the fact that they came down to Alabama to record in the first place, and when he saw Franklin laughing and getting along with a white trumpet player from Memphis, he became physical and hit her upside the head.
“The trumpet player reared up on [White,] and from there…well that busted the whole thing up,” said Guin.
White grabbed Franklin and left for the Downtowner Hotel in Florence, and Hall, beside himself and under the influence, showed up in an attempt to fix things (something that Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records advised against).
The night turned into a drunken fight, and when Hall returned to the studio, Wexler told Hall with anger, “I’m going to bury you.”
Hall replied with, “No, you won’t. You’re too old.”
Wexler turned around and took FAME’s rhythm section, The Swampers, up to New York to finish Franklin’s record. Soon after, he took them for good, and helped them move into 3614 Jackson Highway– The site of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio went to record many greats: Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, The Staple Singers, Cher, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Bob Segar, Art Garfunkel, Linda Rondstandt, Boz Scaggs, Paul Simon, etc.
The studio’s business slowed, and eventually closed down in 2015 for restoration work. In 2017, the doors opened again as a finished tourist attraction run by the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation.
Publishing and writing kept the Shoals music scene alive in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. A handful of full time songwriters developed close ties with publishing companies out in Nashville during that time, and many still reside there today.
Wishbone
American Songwriter and Producer Billy Lawson always had a love for the Wishbone Recording Studio building. On cold nights working in his B-room studio next door, Lawson walked over and turned on the water line.
“I didn’t want the new owner to have busted pipes,” Lawson said. “I had no idea the new owner was going to be me.”
Lawson took over ownership in 2017 when the previous owner, Bud Mcguire, put the studio up for sale.
Lawson grew up in the Shoals area with Earl Montgomery and Junior Lowe as his musical mentors. Montgomery gave him a two track tape machine to start out with, which later turned into four, which turned into twelve. Today, blessed (and cursed) with modern day technology, he uses Pro Tools.
Surrounded by talented musicians his whole life, Lawson inevitably went on to write hit songs for various big-named artists such as George Strait, Trace Adkins and Tim McGraw.
The songwriting process comes about in many different ways depending on the artist. Some find revelation in the studio itself with a guitar in hand. For Lawson, inspiration often strikes while traveling on the open road.
The first verse and chorus for Tim McGraw’s “You Turn Me On” came to Lawson while driving home one night.
“That was before cell phones when you had to do something to keep yourself entertained,” Lawson said. “My writing has suffered since I got one.”
A year after the tune popped in his head, Lawson wrote the song’s second verse on the way to a session with McGraw. When he arrived, they immediately cut and recorded the song. It went on to sell more than five million copies.
“You Turn Me On” tells a story of a man’s hard heart turning to mush when introduced to a woman he loves; a light-hearted country tune that gets boots tapping. Not every country song Lawson writes, though, is uplifting.
Lawson wrote Sammy Kershaw’s “My Friend Fred” about a meth addict; a hard topic that many can relate to.
“Everybody knows somebody that’s got a friend that’s addicted and can’t seem to break it,” Lawson continued.
He draws from personal experience when writing. In the song, “[Fred’s] shaking and baking out on Chisholm Road,” which runs through Zip, City, Alabama, the city Lawson’s from.
Northern Alabama roads show up in other similar country songs, such as Jason Isbell’s “Only Children,” where the song’s characters would meet “at the bottom of Mobile Street.”
The NuttHouse
Everything James Nutt, owner of The Nutthouse Recording Studio, knows about producing comes from working at FAME.
Living in Austin, Texas at the time, Nutt took the risk to pursue his dreams and uprooted him and his family to Muscle Shoals.
After three months of constant dedication during his unpaid internship at FAME, they hired him part time. When Don Shrigley left his position, Nutt became the recording engineer for their publishing company.
Nutt’s job revolved around recording the staff songwriter’s demos in order to pitch them to other artists.
“Fortunately, Jason Isbell was a songwriter at the time for FAME,” Nutt said.
Nutt recorded Isbell’s first three records, and has worked with The SteelDrivers, John Paul White, Alabama Shakes, Percy Sledge, and more.
In 2016, Nutt attended the Grammys for The SteelDrivers’ “Bluegrass Album of the Year” nomination for the album Nutt recorded and produced, “The Muscle Shoals Recordings.”
Inside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Nutt spotted Isbell as he looked for a seat with The SteelDrivers.
“Rodney Hall was there too, so we had all of the Shoals people sitting together on a couple different rows,” Nutt continued.
Isbell’s category rang over the speakers, and the next sentence revealed his win. The rows of the Shoals members erupted into cheer, celebrating the work and win of their close friend.
The crowd fell silent as the next category came up: Best Bluegrass Album of the Year. The competition looked steep with Ralph Stadley, practically the Robert Plant of the bluegrass world, in the running.
“I mean he’s like a God, you know” Nutt continued. “So I was really nervous he’d win.”
The announcer continued, “And the grammy goes to…. The SteelDrivers!” Tears, claps and hollers filled the Shoals rows.
“It was a big moment for me, Gary, Jason and Rodney to all be sitting there together, winning Grammys,” Nutt continued. “We got our start together in the early 2000s at FAME, so it was a sense of accomplishment.”
Nutt is currently working on a Bob Seger tribute album project that he started in 2014 named “Silver Bullet Bluegrass.” He continues to work with artists new and old, including country artist from New Jersey, Megan Knight.
Although not in the booming era of southern rock and roll, the sound of the Shoals continues to live on around the river that sings, where surrounding studios cut tracks daily: Wishbone Studios, The Nutthouse Recording Studio, and still, FAME Studios.
“The fact is, I feel like something is happening here,” Lawson said. “I sense that this could burst wide open again.”
