A Trip to Muscle Shoals (Part 2 - Muscle Shoals Sounds Studio and Alabama Music Hall of Fame)

After our first day's adventures in Muscle Shoals, I wasn't sure if the trip to FAME Studios could be topped for a great musical experience, but our second day's visit to Muscle Shoals Sounds Studios came mighty close.  It's just amazing that so much great music has come from this small area in Northwest Alabama.......music that has shaped not just my listening pleasure, but so many other people's.  It's just astonishing.

For some background as to how this studio came into existence, you need to go back a few blocks down to FAME, where the second rhythm section - Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, and David Hood were gaining a reputation as one of the finest groups around, helping to craft the Muscle Shoals Sound with FAME Studios owner Rick Hall.  They had provided backing for artists like Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and anyone else who passed through the studio.

During the 1967 Aretha Franklin session at FAME, things were going great until some tension developed between Franklin's husband, Ted White, and a trumpet player, who he accused of making a pass at the singer.  It later escalated to Hall having to fire the trumpet player and a sax player who was also accused of making a pass (White had been drinking with the horn session during the recordings).  The session ended and, shortly thereafter, Hall went to the hotel where Franklin and White were staying, in hopes of making peace, but instead a fight erupted between Hall (who was also drinking) and White.

Franklin recorded with Atlantic Records and Atlantic's Jerry Wexler had brought her down to FAME to record, inspired by the success enjoyed by Wilson Pickett (also with Atlantic).  Wexler was angry about the fight (he had told Hall not to go to the hotel) and pulled everyone out of Muscle Shoals, vowing to never work with Rick Hall again.  He summoned the rhythm section to New York to record at Atlantic Studios and they completed the album with Franklin there, which produced "Respect" and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," two of her biggest hits.

The Swampers (L to R) Beckett, Johnson, Hood, Hawkins

In 1969, the rhythm section, later known as The Swampers, had a financial disagreement with Hall and decided to go out on their own, purchasing an old coffin showroom on 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield.  Wexler helped the group out by arranging a loan to buy equipment that was compatable with Atlantic's equipment.  Wexler then sent Cher down to record an album in 1969, also called 3614 Jackson Highway, which inspired the sign that now hangs over the front door (it was added graphically to the album cover).  The album wasn't a big seller. Boz Scagg's self-titled album, also recorded there in 1969, included the extended version of Fenton Robinson's "Somebody Loan Me A Dime," with Duane Allman on guitar....Robinson later had to go to court to regain composer credits. By the end of 1969, the first hit from the studio was released, R.B. Greaves' "Take a Letter Maria."

At the end of 1969, the Rolling Stones secretly flew into Muscle Shoals and recorded for three days.  At that time, overseas bands could either get a performing visa or a recording visa.  The Stones were on tour and had heard about the studio, so they flew in under the radar, mostly unnoticed and cut three tracks for their Sticky Fingers album, "Wild Horses," "Brown Sugar," and Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Got To Move."  Upon initial release of the album, the Muscle Shoals sessions were not listed, but Jimmy Johnson did receive credit for his work behind the sound board although they placed him in their London studio instead of Muscle Shoals on the original release.  

There were many other songs recorded at the studio during that time that received attention, including the Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There," Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" and "Loves Me Like a Rock," Bob Seger's "Night Moves," "Mainstreet," "Katmandu," and "Old Time Rock and Roll," Dr. Hook's "Sharing The Night Together," "When You're In Love With a Beautiful Woman," and "Sexy Eyes."  Rod Stewart recorded his Atlantic Crossing album there in 1974, Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded their first album there in 1971 (which went unreleased until after the band's tragic plane crash), and Seger recorded in Muscle Shoals for over a decade.

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Other artists who recorded at the studio included Pickett and Franklin, Traffic (the rhythm section actually backed Traffic on their subsequent tour), Big Joe Williams, Linda Ronstadt, Percy Sledge, Willie Nelson, Etta James, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Cliff, Leon Russell, and Levon Helm.  

In 1979, the studio at 3614 Jackson Highway closed and operations were moved to a larger facility, also in Sheffield, which operated until 1985, when it was sold to Malaco Records.  Malaco continued to record there, with albums from Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton, and Bobby "Blue" Bland among the highlights, with most of The Swampers still providing support.  That location is now known as Cypress Moon Studio, and although they do offer tours, we weren't able to work it into our schedule this time around.

Several artists have used the 3614 Jackson Highway studio in recent years, such as the Black Keys and Chris Stapleton.  Each won Grammys for their recordings from the studio, so there's still musical magic present within those walls.

The Muscle Shoals Sounds tour was not as long as the FAME tour because there was only one recording studio, but it was a very informative tour and we learned a lot of things that we didn't previously know, especially about the Stones' three-day visit (Richards finished writing "Wild Horses" in the bathroom attached to the studio) and also Linda Ronstadt's session....her backing band, later known as the Eagles, got rowdy during the session since they were not recording and were booted from the premises.

One of the coolest things I got to hear was the original demo version of "Old Time Rock & Roll."  It was initially recorded as a demo by George Jackson, who also wrote at FAME and later Malaco Records, but wasn't released.  While I still prefer the more popular Bob Seger version (Seger altered some of the lyrics, but kept the music track from the Jackson demo for his version and left composer credits to Jackson and Thomas E. Jones III...he and the band really didn't care much for the track, so he didn't even consider adding his own composer credit, a move I'm sure he regrets now), Jackson's own take has its funky charms, too.

Here are a few pictures that I took during the tour.

The white board has autographs and other writings

Keith Richards sat here to listen to the "Wild Horses" playback

We also toured the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, which is also in the Muscle Shoals area, in Tuscumbia (right across from the hotel where we stayed).  It's still sort of a work in progress but there were some pretty cool items from many of the blues and soul artists from Alabama, such as Johnny Shines, Clarence Carter, W.C. Handy, Percy Sledge, Jerry McCain, Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd, and Microwave Dave.  There's also a nice section devoted to the Muscle Shoals area musicians and composers.  If you're in the neighborhood and a music fan, whether blues, soul, country, rock, or jazz, it's well worth a visit.

Displays for Clarence Carter and Johnny Shines

That's Jerry "Boogie" McCain's harmonica case at bottom right

Displays for Eddie Floyd and Wilson Pickett

W.C. Handy's trumpet

Spooner Oldham's keyboards

It was a great couple of days spent in the Muscle Shoals area.  If you're a music fan, it needs to be a future destination.  As stated above, it's just amazing to consider the amount of great music that has come from this area since the late 1950's. 

Five Discs You Might Have Missed (Volume 18)

Here's another long-running FBF topic that we haven't visited in a while.  Most of these releases came out during a time when I really didn't have the budget to buy everything I wanted to buy, or they might have slipped through the cracks for me the first time around.  I still love to be able to plug a new disc into a CD player and one of my vehicles has a CD player in it, plus I also have a portable player that I can connect in my new (to me) car.  That said, here are a few "new" finds that I've been playing quite a bit that are well worth your listening time and pleasure if you missed them.  

Some of these may not be available for streaming (darn), but can be found at Amazon or Discogs pretty easily.

I have been a fan of the Tail Gators since the late 80's.  If you're not familiar with one of the coolest bands of the 80's and 90's, I plan to correct that issue in a future post, but before we had the Tail Gators, there were The LeRoi Brothers, who have been around in various incarnations since 1981.  They were founded by Mike Buck (original drummer for The Fabulous Thunderbirds), guitarist/singer Steve Doerr, bassists Alex Napier and, later, former T-Birds bassist Keith Ferguson, and Don Leady, who left the band with Ferguson in the mid 80's to start The Tail Gators.  

Several years ago, I found a copy of The LeRoi Brothers' debut full-length album, Check This Action, on Rounder Records, which was a great enough listen, but a few years back, Jungle Records re-released Check This Action as a "Deluxe Reissue," which includes the 4 tracks from their intial release, the EP Moon Twist, plus two other tracks, one previously heard on the Rounder releases and one previously unheard.  These releases are still pretty impressive for their raw, rocking energy and power.  Both the Rounder release and the Jungle release are worth having, but I give the nod to the Jungle edition because there's definitely more bang for your buck.

The LeRoi Brothers continued to release albums sporadically over the next few years, but they really earned their reputation as a live band, one of Austin''s finest.  Doerr and Buck have remained through most of the band's lifetime, but other "LeRoi's" over the years have included Jackie Newhouse, Sarah Brown, Evan Johns, Rick "Caspar" Rawls, "Speedy" Sparks, Joe Doerr (Steve's brother), and Eva Monsees. The band was eventually inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame.  If you love raucous blues, soul, zydeco, rockabilly, soul, and R&B, this disc fill fill the bill.

One of my favorite harp players was Carey Bell.  Born Carey Bell Harrington in Macon, MS, he learned to play harmonica at a young age and traveled with his godfather, piano man Lovie Lee, to Chicago in his late teens.  He learned to play bass to offset the decrease of harmonica players used in band during the late 50's, playing with Earl Hooker, Robert Nighthawk, Lowell Fulson, Eddie Taylor, Louisiana Red, Jimme Dawkins, and others.  His harmonica influences were Little Walter, Big Walter (his mentor), DeFord Bailey, and the two Sonny Boy Williamsons.

Bell embarked on a solo career in 1969, but continued to play with Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon's Chicago Blues All-Stars.  All of his solo recordings, at least the ones I've heard, are great, but I think Deep Down, released in 1995 by Alligator Records, might be his very best.  It's got some of his best original songs with some lesser-known covers songs that are well chosen.  I think his backing band (Bell's son Lurrie and Carl Weathersby on guitar, Lucky Peterson on keys, Johnny B. Gayden on bass, and Ray "Killer" Allison on drums) is possibly one of the finest ensembles gathered during that time.

Bell recorded a few more albums after this one, including a couple with Lurrie and even a Superharps effort with Raful Neal, Lazy Lester, and Snooky Pryor.  He passed away at 70 in 2007 from heart failure, around the time Delmark Records released a live CD/DVD set by Bell with Lurrie.  You can't go wrong with any of Carey Bell's releases, but Deep Down definitely checks all the boxes for blues fans.

You may not know who Cornell Dupree is, but chances are better than average that you've heard an album or song that the legendary guitarist has played on.  He played on over 2,500 recording sessions, mostly R&B and blues, but he also played jazz.....fusion or soul-jazz.  At 20, he was playing in King Curtis' band and later played on Brook Benton's "Rainy Night In Georgia."  He also played on recordings by Lou Rawls, Paul Simon, Miles Davis, Bill Withers, Lena Horne, Roberta Flack, Joe Cocker, and so many others.  He toured with Aretha Franklin and was part of the outstanding studio-band supergroup Stuff during the 70's, who recorded several albums during that time and appeared on SNL.

Dupree also released several albums over a nearly-forty year period.  One of his best was released in 1991 on the Austin, TX label Amazing Records.  Can't Get Through was mostly instrumental, with 9 tracks that touch on blues, soul, jazz, and funk.  There is one vocal track from Windell Capel, who has a lot of Al Green in his vocal style and certainly should have had more opportunities to record (I only found a self-released cassette from him listed on Discogs).

However, you don't buy a Cornell Dupree album for the vocals.  He is a fantastic, endlessly inventive guitarist and he recorded this set with his working band at the time.  This is one of those albums that I searched for a long time before finally tracking it down this summer (along with one of his later release, the more jazz-oriented Bop 'n' Blues from 1994).  Dupree stayed pretty active until shortly before he passed away from emphysema in 2011.  Can't Get Through is a great set that any blues guitar fan would want to own.

Another album that I spent a long time trying to track down was Rediscovered (Private Music) from the legendary soul singer Howard Tate.  Tate charted three times in the late 60's with "Ain't Nobody Home" (covered by B.B. King), "Stop" (covered by Jimi Hendrix) and "Look at Granny Run Run" (covered in the late 70's by Ry Cooder), but many rock fans will remember one of his songs made famous by Janis Joplin, "Get It While You Can."  Tate's own recordings didn't gain him a lot of commercial success and he dropped off the scene in the early 80's.  He battled and beat a drug habit, was reportedly homeless for a spell, and eventually became a drug counselor and later a preacher.

In the early 2000's, he was persuaded to give music another try and he was able to reconnect with his longtime producer Jerry Ragavoy, who also wrote most of his material in the 60's.  He wrote or co-wrote 11 of 12 tracks on Rediscovered and played piano.  Tate sounds just like he did on those earlier recordings, down to those falsetto fills and he has a warm, understated delivery that made the best soul records back in the day.  

The album's only cover tune is Prince's "Kiss," which works quite well, and Tate revisits the Joplin tune to close out the album.  Rediscovered led to a nice comeback for Tate, who recorded three more well-received albums before passing away at 72 in December of 2011.  If you've never heard Howard Tate, you're in for a nice surprise with Rediscovered.

Several years ago, FBF did a post about a three-volume set of recordings from 1967 by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, featuring three future members of Fleetwood Mac - guitarist Peter Green, bassist John McVie, and drummer Mick Fleetwood.  Unfortunately, that crew never made a studio recording during their short time together, but 2/3 of the group (Green and McVie) did join Mayall (plus drummer Aynsley Dunbar) for the 1967 studio album, A Hard Road (London/Polygram Records), a session recorded in late 1966 before Fleetwood briefly replaced Dunbar.  

The supporting cast of the Bluesbreakers was pretty much been a revolving door from the band's inception.  Green had replaced Eric Clapton as guitarist for a brief tenure after Clapton disappeared for a bit, but when Clapton left the band for real in 1966, he became a full-time member.  The band recorded a 45 before A Hard Road, but this album represents Green's only studio effort with the band.  Back in the late 80's, I was a fan of Clapton and Jeff Beck and one of my friends told me that I really needed to listen to Peter Green, but I had no idea where to listen to him at the time.  If I had heard this album back then, I definitely would have tried to find more of his music, including his early Fleetwood Mac.

As it is, A Hard Road mostly consists of original tunes from Mayall with a couple of tracks written, one sung, by Green which includes a haunting instrumental, "The Super-Natural," that was definitely a precursor to his later tunes like "Black Magic Woman" and "Albatross."  Mayall is great as always, playing piano, harmonica and five and nine-string guitar on selected tracks, while McVie and Dunbar are rock-solid in support.  There's a three-piece horn section on several tracks as well.  There are some fine covers of songs from Willie Cobbs, Elmore James, and Freddie King as well.  Following Bluesbreakers tradition, this band only stayed together until the middle of 1967, releasing one other 45 after the album.  There have been several reissues of this album, one including the two 45's, and one that included several taken from radio sessions. 

Friday Blues Picks & More!! (10/16/26)

This is a short week since I'm wrapping up reviews for the October issue of Blues Bytes at the end of the week.  It should be live in a few days, so in the meantime, here are a couple of new releases that are definitely worth keeping on your radar.  As always, expanded reviews will appear of these albums, and most of the others covered here at Blues Bytes....THE site for blues album reviews.  You can also check out Blues Bytes' weekly radio show at the stations listed on the website.

My favorite album so far this year is probably Loving You (Ruf Records) from Bernard Allison.  Allison has been a favorite of mine since I first heard his Cannonball Records release Keepin' the Blues Alive in 1997.  I was a huge fan of his father, the late Luther Allison, and that release, which came out about a month before Luther passed away made me feel a lot better about what was to come in the music.  Bernard's brand of blues incorporated rock, funk, and R&B and it really hit me where I lived.  I had the feeling that we both grew up listening to the same music in high school.  I've been able to follow his career pretty closely and I feel like he has really hit his stride in the past ten years.

A couple of years ago, Allison and soul-blues master Stephen Johnson (a.k.a. Stevie J Blues) on a blues cruise and they discussed writing some songs together and it eventually led to SJB joining the band for this album, providing rhythm guitar and backing vocals.  The pair wrote five of the ten songs and they have SJB's soul-blues touch and would be a snug fit in either artist's individual catalog.  Allison decided to make this album a family affair, so he invited his niece and nephew to sing background vocals on a couple of songs and he also welcomed guitarists Larry McCray, Devon Allman, Matthew Curry, and Matthew Mwangi, keyboardist Victor Wainwright, and violinist Heather Hardy to play on seleccted tracks.

If you didn't know, I'm a big Bernard Allison fan and a big Stevie J Blues fan (SJB's regular release of singles and albums during the pandemic made things a lot better) and both Allison and SJB very graciously sat down for Ten Questions with us many years ago (We ALL grew up listening to the same music!!).  I think their collaboration on Loving You is a wonderful thing and I hope they do it again soon.  Their songs are marvelous and so are the rest of the tracks, including Allison's cover of one of his father's tunes, a regular occurance on his albums.  I think this is a release that every blues fan should hear.

Mark Hummel has played with so many blues legends that it's easier to list who he hasn't played with.  He's appeared on numerous recordings since the mid-'80s and in 1991, started Mark Hummel's Blues Harmonica Blowout, which has featured virtually every harmonica legend still playing and many up-and-comers.  His own albums always feature a host of blues allstars and, in fact, his latest album, Road Dog (Rocinitis Records), is credited to the Mark Hummel Allstars and features tracks recorded between 2008 and 2025.

On these 14 tracks, six originals by Hummel and eight covers, the singer/harmonica player is backed by guitarists Junior Watson, Anson Funderburgh, Rusty Zinn, Randy Rattay, and the late Little Charlie Baty, along with drummers Wes Starr and Willie Parker, bassists Kedar Roy and RW Grigsby, keyboardists Bob Welsh and Brett Brandstaff, and Eric Sapulding on sax.  Most of the album was recorded at Kid Andersen's Greaseland Studios, so you know it's going to be a great listen.

The songs are a great mix of modern and old school blues and it's certainly a nice thing to hear Little Charlie on guitar once again, especially teamed up with Funderburgh (see below).  Hummel is a fine frontman and his harmonica chops are always a pleasure to hearl.  Any blues fan who digs harmonica needs to have some Mark Hummel recordings in their collection and Road Dog is an excellent place to start if you're a newcomer.

No Blast From The Past this week..... my brother and I attended the North Mississippi Allstars show at the Ellis Theatre in Philadelphia, MS on September 24th.  The Ellis has developed into a great place to hear all kinds of music in our area.  We saw Kingfish and Matthias Lattin there during the spring and I've seen Dorothy Moore, Webb Wilder, Paul Thorn, and Marty Stuart, and my daughter and I saw Mavis Staples perform last night (10/15/26).  

NMAS had performed here previously and they were outstanding on this night.  Currently they are a three-man ensemble with Luther Dickinson and Joey Williams playing guitars and bass and Cody Dickinson playing drums, percussion, and keyboards.  They all took vocals and the set list ranged from some of their reimagined takes on Mississippi blues as well as a few gospel tunes.  There were also elements of hip-hop with some of Cody's electric washboard playing and plenty of Luther's wonderful slide guitar.  I was really impressed with Joey Williams' contributions as well.....he sang several inspirational tunes and also displayed his instrumental talents on guitar, bass, and drums.  It was a really good show and I'm looking forward to seeing them again soon.  If you haven't already, you need to check out their latest album, Still Shakin', which celebrated the 25th anniversary of their first album release, Shake Hands With Shorty. 

The Mavis Staples performance was also a great show.  She moved about a bit gingerly, after all she's 87 years old, but that voice is still magnificent as she performed with a tight band and two backing vocalists.  Ms. Staples is quite amazing.....she enjoyed carrying on with the audience (who loved her performance) and sang a mix of soul, blues, and gospel that spanned her seven decades of performing.  Her vocals were just so powerful and potent, as much as they've always been.  It was really cool to see Dorothy Moore in attendance as well.  Again, the Ellis Theatre is a fantastic small venue.

In between those shows, we also caught The Doobie Brothers in a performance at the Brandon Amplitheater in Brandon, MS.  I always liked the Doobies in high school in both their boogie/blues rock early incarnation with Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons and in their later soul/blues/jazz setting with Simmons and Michael McDonald.  We actually saw them in the early 90's as part of a tribute to the Memphis Horns 25th anniversary, so it was really cool to see them again.  Simmons, Johnston, and McDonald were all in attendance that night and they sounded as good as they did back in the 70's and early 80's.  They performed just about all of their hits and included a couple of songs from their recent album, Walk This Road, that were pretty good as well.  This was my first trip to the Brandon Amplitheater and it was a nice experience and I hope to be back sometime, but I'll probably skip the ones scheduled during our hellish Mississippi summers.

Yesterday afternoon (10/16/26), I found out that the legendary publicist and blues advocate Mark Pucci passed away.  He founded Mark Pucci Media and his career spanned over half a century.  He worked at Capricorn Records two different times and did publicity for an amazing array of artist there, including The Allman Brothers Band, The Marshall Tucker Band, Lynryd Skynyrd, Delbert McClinton, Elvin Bishop, Wet Willie, Sea Level, Dixie Dregs, Widespread Panic and many others.  With Mark Pucci Media, he served a host of artists, including Johnny Cash, Taj Mahal, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, John Mayall, Duke Robillard, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Derek Trucks, Charlie Musselwhite, Maria Muldaur, The Nighthawks, Jimmie Vaughan, Ronnie Earl, Sue Foley, Tinsley Ellis, and so many more.

The main thing I remember about Mark was how nice he was.  When I started writing reviews for Blues Bytes around 2000, I always made a point to send draft copies of the reviews to the publicists that send me CDs to review.  He was always so nice, so professional, and just so classy in his responses to me.  I was pretty much a nobody starting out, and have carefully managed to retain that status some 26-27 years later, but he was always willing to take up time with me and answer any questions that I had about his artists (even going back to the Capricorn days) and he even helped me set up a couple of interviews for this blog.  He treated me like somebody and I always appreciated him, but I know he did that for everyone he encountered during his career.  He will certainly be missed in the blues community because he was one of the genre's strongest advocates.

Come back next week for more blues news and reviews that you can use!!

A Trip to Muscle Shoals (Part 1 - FAME Studios)

In late September, the missus and I traveled a few hours north to Muscle Shoals, AL.  We had made the trip about five years ago, after the shutdown had eased a little bit.  My wife had been battling some health issues, so we decided to take a much-needed trip and we spent several days in North Alabama seeing some interesting sites.  Unfortunately, none of the sites we saw were in Muscle Shoals because everything was closed up tight....I'm assuming still in response to the shutdown, so we spent the night in Florence and headed toward the mountains to the east for the rest of our trip.

This trip was similar, we were in need of a few days away, but I tried to plan things a little better.  We decided to visit FAME Studios, Muscle Shoals Sounds Studio, and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, which is also in the Muscle Shoals area in Tuscumbia.  This time, I made sure everything was up and open and booked tickets, which I highly recommend if you decide to visit.  This week, we will be looking at the FAME Studios, and we'll focus on Muscle Shoals Sounds in a later post.

Ever since I read Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music, I've been fascinated with FAME Records.  There was so much great music coming out of that studio that I'd heard, but there was also a ton of classic tunes that I'd never heard that have become favorites over the years, some of which were recorded at FAME, but ended up on other labels.  At the time I read the book, I was familiar with Stax Records, but I never imagined that there were other labels responsible for producing this outstanding music and FAME was one of the strongest.

Rick Hall

FAME started in 1959, when Tom Stafford, who owned a recording studio in Florence, approached Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill the opportunity to set up a music publishing company, which was known as Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, or FAME.  The studio was located above Florence's City Drug Store, owned by Stafford's father, and was adjacent to a pawn shop where musicians would buy or sell their instruments.  By 1960, Hall split from Sherrill and Stafford and retained the rights to the studio name, moving to an abandoned tobacco warehouse in Muscle Shoals.

In 1961, Hall had recorded the first hit record from the area, Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On."  Alexander was a fine singer and songwriter whose style blended country music and soul music.  Several of his songs were recorded by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, Rick Nelson, Tina Turner, and Pearl Jam, and Al Bundy spent an entire episode of Married...With Children trying to track down one of his songs ("Anna (Go With Him)").  "You Better Move On" was released on Dot Records out of Nashville and became a hit on the soul/R&B charts, paving the way for the future FAME Studios.

Hall took the proceeds from "You Better Move On" and built a new facility on the present location of Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals.  There, Hall recorded the first track, and the first hit, at the new studio, 1963's "Steal Away," by Jimmy Hughes.  Hall had originally recorded a demo with Hughes at the tobacco warehouse in 1961, but he waited a couple of years to do a full recording with Hughes, who cut the song in one take. 

The rest, as they say, is history.  FAME Studios quickly became a huge draw for recording artists and other labels.....Atlantic and Chess to name a couple.  They recorded hits for Joe Tex ("Hold What You Got"), James & Bobby Purify ("I'm Your Puppet"), Aretha Franklin ("I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You))," Etta James ("Tell Mama"), Wilson Pickett ("Land of 1000 Dances," "Mustang Sally," "Hey Jude"), Arthur Conley ("Sweet Soul Music"), and Clarence Carter ("Slip Away," "Patches," "Snatching It Back"). 

 

FAME has recorded soul (Lou Rawls, Candi Staton, Little Richard, Spencer Wiggins), blues (Bobby "Blue" Bland, Lowell Fulson, Little Milton, Elvin Bishop), country (Mac Davis, Jerry Reed, the Gatlin Brothers, Shenandoah, the Oak Ridge Boys, T.G. Sheppard), and pop artists - Bobbie Gentry recorded "Fancy" here, Paul Anka recorded "Having My Baby," and the Osmonds recorded "One Bad Apple." 

Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham

FAME boasted an impressive group of songwriters as well, including Hall, Sherrill, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Donnie Fritts, Terry Thompson, and George Jackson, along with many others.  They had not one, not two, but THREE outstanding rhythm sections that played on most of the recordings without missing a beat (no pun intended).  The first group departed after a couple of years for work in Memphis and Nashville.  The second of the three rhythm sections (later better known as The Swampers) left FAME to form Muscle Shoals Sounds Studio, which produced an equally impressive number of recordings, beginning in the early 70's.  The third group was known as The FAME Gang and recorded several cool instrumentals, also collected by Ace a few years ago.  

Guitar legend Duane Allman played on a number of tracks in the mid/late 60's and he recommended recording "Hey Jude" to Pickett and Hall and played the sizzling guitar solo that paved the way for southern rock.

FAME Studios was the first stop on our road trip.  Over the past few years, I've attended several shows by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham and have dug deep into their songbooks, thanks to Penn's self-released demo recordings and the UK label Ace's release of his FAME demos as well as compilations of tunes written by the pair, along with other composers.  I've also picked up a couple of other releases by some of the artists listed above (the James Govan set on Ace is a wonderful set by an artist who certainly deserved more than he got) and, probably the coolest collection of them all, I found a copy of The FAME Studios Story 1961-1973, which collects 75 of the best tracks recorded there, including most  of the songs previously mentioned above.  It was released on Ace's subsidiary Kent Records in 2011 and would be a fine addition to any music fan's collection.

Wilson Pickett with the 2nd FAME rhythm section

There are two tours available at the studio - the $20 tour includes both studios used and the $40 tour includes an upstairs visit to Rick Hall's office and a look at a lot of cool memorabilia that you probably won't see anywhere else.  Hall passed away in 2018, but his wife Linda still runs the studio, along with their son Rodney.  The studio continues to record artists, including Drive-By Truckers, Gregg Allman, Jason Isbell, Demi Lovato, Bettye Lavette, Alan Jackson, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, and Mike Farris, with many of the albums and singles continuing to chart.

If you're in north Alabama, I highly recommend this tour.  The tour guides were very good and very informative, and we got to meet Mr. Hall's wife Linda as she was leaving for the day.  She noticed the Dan Penn t-shirt I was wearing and told us some nice things about him.  We also met Johnny Belew of Rhythm and Belews Tours, leading one of those tours, during our visit.  

It was just a great experience all the way around and it was only the beginning of our music-packed weekend.  Below are a few pictures taken during the tour. 

A list of a few of the great tracks recorded at FAME

Rick Hall's desk

These are a few pictures from Studio 2, which we toured first.  Jordan, our guide, is pictured behind the drum set.  He did a fantastic job.

A few photos from Studio 1

A Leslie speaker...I'd never seen one before.

The studio was being used and the band took a break while we toured.

If you are a music fan and happen to be in the area, I highly recommend visiting FAME Studios.  We will be back in a couple of weeks to check out Muscle Shoals Sounds Studios.  Stay tuned.