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“It is a name inextricably tied to this idea of the best, the
elite, the connoisseur’s brand of Southern soul.”
Noel Webster blows a billow of cigarette smoke as he sits on the couch that was In the original Muscle Shoals Sound Studio on Jackson Highway In Sheffield- Webster is trying to return the studio to its original state.
Muscle Shoals Sound is seen as the
embodiment of ‘treasure and terrible beauty’
By Robert Palmer
STAFF WRITER
Knock at the front door of 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield sends owner Noel Webster out of the darkened recording studio
and through the clutter of offices under
renovation.
The door opens and the bright sun of a cool after-
noon back lights a man with a look of uncertainty on
his face.
Y’all still have washers and dryers here?” the man
Webster grins and shakes his head.
“No, man. Not anymore.”
The unassuming block building at the top of the
hill on busy Jackson Highway rarely gets a second
look from most Shoals residents. Its gray paint is peel-
ing, and, until recently, tall weeds and stunted trees
obscured it. In recent years, it housed a used washer
and dryer business and slowly fell
into disrepair.
The narrow building once was
the home of one of the most famous
Recording studios in the world. Muscle Shoals Sound
Studio, which
in 1969, produced a stellar
array of hit singles. Artists as diverse
as the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon,
the Staple Singers, Bob Seger, Rod
Stewart and Willie Nelson traveled
to northwest Alabama for a little of
the magic the studio – and more
importantly, the musicians — could
deliver.
Webster Beet the old studio
last year and has begun restoring it
to it past appearance. The actual studio
and control room look much as
they did and are ready for recording.
“That says a lot,” Webster says
after the man looking for washing
machines leaves. “People just don’t
know.” Indeed, the presence of recording
studios in the Muscle Shoals
area is as much a part of the business
landscape as gas stations and
banks. The music business here is
taken for granted — too much so for
pioneering record producer and studio
owner Rick Hall.
For years, Hall has said that he
and others succeeded despite Muscle Shoals,
not because of it. Local
officials, he says, have never recognized
that recording studios are
industries that create jobs and
wealth in the community. More
importantly, the musicians, studios
and producers gave Muscle Shoals
an international reputation on a par
with Memphis and Nashville.
As founder of FAME Recording
Studios and Publishing, Hall /
launched Muscle Shoals as an inter-
national recording center, first gaining attention
with Arthur Alexander’s
“You Better Move On” in 1962.
For the next 10 years, Hall and
his stable of session musicians
helped create a brand of Southern
soul that has left a permanent mark
on popular music.
Among the FAME hits from that
era are Aretha Franklin’s “I Never
Loved A Man (the Way I Love
You),” Jimmy Hughes’ “Steal Away,”
James and Bobby Purify’s “’m Your
Puppet,” Wilson Pickett’s “Land of
1000 Dances,” “Funky Broadway” :
and “Mustang Sally,” Etta James’
“Tell Mama” and Clarence Carter’s
“Patches.”
Muscle Shoals legend grows
Hall’s assertion that music made
in Muscle Shoals truly is international
in its influence readily is
proved by writers and fans around
the world.
“As the years go by, the legend
of the place seems to grow and
grow, and more and more people’
the great records that were
made there — by Aretha Franklin or
Travis Wammack or even the
Osmonds — the poppier stuff,” said
writer Barney Hoskyns of London
in a telephone interview with the
TimesDaily last week.
“Tt is a name inextricably tied to
this idea of the best, the elite, the
connoisseur’s brand of Southern
soul,” Hoskyns said.
Hoskyns has written a number
of books on popular music, including
one of the definitive works on
soul, “Say It One Time For the Broken
Hearted: Country Soul In the
American South.” He is editorial
director of rocksbackpages.com, a
new Web magazine.
Even the name Muscle Shoals
carries instant recognition among
serious fans of the music, he side
“The name is extraordinary – i
works in its favor,” Hoskyns said. “It
kind of hooked me in, this particular
brand of soul being made in a
place called Muscle Shoals. I wanted
to go there when I was 14 or 15. It
became very seductive to me. I
wanted to see the place that gave
birth to this particular sound.
“There is immense poetry in the
way those records were made and
the depth of those records,” he said.
“The sound of David Hood’s bass
Noel Webster wants to return
Muscle Shoals Sound studio to
its original glory.
playing — it seems to go with the
name of Muscle Shoals. Yet there is
sparseness and economy of playing,
which is a hallmark of soul.”
_Hoskyns said he later made a pilgrimage
to Muscle Shoals and the
FAME studios.
“I went to FAME and stood there
in the room where ‘I Never Loved
A Man’ was made – and Spooner’s
(Oldham) Wurlitzer electric piano
was still in that room — it was amazing
to me,” he said.
Muscle Shoals’ deep soul music
has made a lasting impression on
fans in western Europe.
John R. Smith, a cel engineer in
Oxford, England, began reading
record labels on his favorite recordings
in the late 1960s and saw that
Rick Hall and FAME were bywords
for “classy hard soul.”
“It’s the emotional vocal content
coupled with a unique organic
instrumental feel” that makes
FAME’’s classic soul records special,
Smith said in an e-mail interview
with the TimesDaily.
The Muscle Shoals sound also
found its way to Africa in the late
1960s and changed the perception
many there had of the American
South.
“I was then a very young man, a
radical young man back at Radio
Senegal, the country’s only radio net
work,” said Idrissa Dia in an e-mail to
the TimesDaily. He is a senior editor at
Voice of America in Washington, DC.
“I noticed a very interesting phenomenon
with the listeners and my
fellow students at the University of
Senegal: People would make bitter
comments about the perceived evil
of America in the South, in Vietnam,
in Chile, etc. But when the music
Muscle Shoals was on, all that
would disappear,” Dia said. “And
we would marvel at the fact that
the musicians backing our idols
were all white Alabama boys.
“That made us think, and realize
that American society was more
‘to, and author of “Soulsville U.S.A;
complex than we were led fo 4
believe,” he said. gf
Dia said he passed up an offer to
go to work for Radio Moscow —
because he wanted to come to Muscle Shoals
and meet Rick Hall and
the musicians who made the
records. He got to meet the music _
makers and is a close friend of Muscle Shoals
Rhythm Section Guitarist
Jimmy Johnson. i
“I don’t want to go on and on, but 4
it’s astonishing to us that Muscle
Shoals itself does not see the treasure it
has in its midst, just like mo:
people don’t realize the ‘terrible —
beauty’ that FAME and Muscle a
Shoals Sound Studio embodied in _
the difficult years of the 60s and |
early ’70s,” Dia said.
Internet galvanizes fans *
Fans of Muscle Shoals music _
were galvanized more than a week
ago when word spread via the Inter- if
net that Hall was fighting the construction
of a billboard next door to _
his studio. Hall said the billboard violates
city sign ordinances. He also
said it is emblematic of the lack of
respect shown to the music industry.
Muscle Shoals Mayor David —
Bradford received e-mails from
around the world opposing the city’s
permit for the sign, and the Times- ~
Daily’s Web site became a battle- _
ground for those opposed to the _
billboard and those who saw no
harm in it. a
The vehicle for the fans’ rally tp
FAME has been the e-mail news ‘
group SouthernSoul, moderated by *
Houston, Texas, computer technician
Terry Westbrook.
“This has definitely been one of —
the high points for the list as far as a
people coming together and rally-
ing around a situation,” said West-
brook, who started the email group 4
three years ago asa common meet-
ing point for fans of Southern soul.
He said the history of the Muscle Shoals
music industry is well-
known to soul fans, from its genesis
above the City Drug Store in down- |
town Florence to its expansion in
the 1970s and ’80s into pop, rock and
country.
The heart of the whole thing is 4
Rick Hall,” Westbrook said. “Of —
course, it goes back to the drug _
store in Florence. Rick took that |
nucleus and made an industry out.
of it. So many people know about it
because of (writers) Peter Guralnick, —
Barney Hoskyns and Rob Bowman.
Recording capital of the world because of
number of hit records recorded per
capita, Muscle Shoals has earned its
place in pop music history, said Rob
Bowman, a music historian and professor
at York University in Toronto
The Story of Stax Records.”
“Tn some ways, (Muscle Shoals)
is a microcosm of what is happened
in Memphis but it is just as important,”
he said.
FAME (Florence Alabama
Music Enterprises) and Stax in
Memphis parallel each other i in
many ways, he said.
“Both started with little labels
from studios that were production
companies, as well,” Bowman said.
“Stax, American Studios, FAME,
Muscle Shoals Sound — they were
all started by white people, but they
were involved in the making of black
culture with both
involved.
“Tt was sort of a rainbow coalition
before it was fashionable,” he said
Both Stax and FAME gained
wider national exposure in the mid:
1960s when Atlantic Records producer
Jerry Wexler began using the
studios, Bowman said, but both survived
after his departure.
Stax fell on hard financial times
in the 1970s and was forced out of
business. The Stax studios and
offices later were bulldozed.
Muscle Shoals once had a dozen
studios, but only three still are operating.
Some fear those rem:
could find themselves under the
dozer’s blade like Stax.
“I remember the disappointment
I felt when I visited Liverpool for the
first time and found the remnants of
the Cavern Club and the whole
Mersey Beat scene,” said Karl
Tsigdinos, a radio and TV journalist
in Dublin, Ireland, of the Beatles’
original venues.
“It was inconceivable to me that
a city could let such a heritage be
destroyed. Similar destruction has
happened in Dublin to its musical
heritage,” he said. “Yet both cities
now promote musical tourism as a
major source of revenue, and expect
visitors to accept awful facsimiles of
the real thing.
“For very little effort, the Muscle Shoals
area could preserve the
likes of the FAME studio and
though it may never again be the
center of the musical universe (as it
once was), it could at least act as a
lightning rod for music fans all over
the world,” Tsigdinos said.
Robert Palmer can be reached at
robert.palmer@timesdaily.com or 740-
5734,
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