![]() ![]() Her album didn’t do well on the Billboard charts, but it wasn’t long before the studio got its first hit record with R.B. Cher recorded her first album here and named it “3614 Jackson Highway,” after the building’s address. The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield is a cinder-block building that was once a coffin showroom. Studio tours are available, and fans can see the Wurlitzer electric gray piano featured in many hit songs. Hall created FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals in 1961, and it’s where a struggling Aretha Franklin turned her career around with her hit song “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You).” Hall worked with a who’s who of musical talent, including Pickett, Etta James, the Allman Brothers, Mac Davis, The Osmonds and Jason Isbell. Listeners can trace the region’s 20th century musical genius to record producer Rick Hall and The Swampers, a talented group of session musicians who were known for their soulful Southern sound and who later started Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Singers still record in the Shoals, and fans can tour the studios where they can see the iconic instruments used on famous recordings, and the mixing boards where the memorable tracks were laid down. Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis Presley and was a driving force in the early years of rock ‘n’ roll, was born on a farm near Florence in 1923. ![]() Handy, the father of the Blues, was born in a log cabin in Florence in 1873. Music has been an important part of the fabric of the Shoals - which includes the towns of Tuscumbia, Sheffield, Florence and Muscle Shoals - since the Native Americans claimed they heard a woman’s song emanating from the Tennessee River, which they named “The Singing River.” “And it’s incredible how much music is still pumping through this area, today.” “We are the wellspring of so much American music,” said Spencer Coats, FAME Studios manager. The music that became known as the Muscle Shoals Sound fused blues, R&B, country and gospel, and blended the powerful sounds of the organ, bass guitar and brass horns. They moved their operation to 1000 Alabama Avenue in 1979.Īrtists who recorded there in the 1970s include The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Cocker, Bob Seger, Glenn Frey, Canned Heat and Bob Dylan.You may never have heard of the Shoals, a clutch of towns along the banks of the Tennessee River in northwestern Alabama, but you know their sound.įrom the soul of Wilson Pickett to the Southern rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd to the country of Carrie Underwood, musicians have flocked to the Shoals to make some of America’s most soul-stirring music. Previously a coffin showroom, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio building was converted into a studio in 1969 when Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section decided to form their own operation to compete with FAME Studios. By the time it comes out I’m ready to make a new record! I’m done! I’m sick of that song already!” ![]() Come up with all the artwork, send the record out, we’ve lived with that record for six months to a year already. By the time you get the record we’ve already written the record, recorded, mixed, mastered it. “But the real tip is when you become a writer and a touring musician, that’s not how it feels. And I’m thinking on the one hand well great you can just make that one record and let it ride, make a bunch of money and you don’t have to do s*** but tour it. ![]() “I’ve been watching bands my entire life sit on album cycles for two years at a time. It’s not just business believe it or not, it’s actually art too. He said: “We’ve already sat too long on this record (‘Hollow Bones’) in my opinion because we’re creative, we have ideas, we have new things, we’re already to the next place, we’re already writing. ![]()
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