NYPRESS 1

The Shoals,
or Quad Cities, are comprised of Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals and Tuscumbia. Nestled along the banks of the Tennessee river in the northwestern corner of Alabama, this sleepy, picturesque region was known as the “hit recording
capital of the world” from the mid-1960s to early 70s. Along with Macon
and Memphis, Muscle Shoals formed the third point in a Golden Triangle of soul music, and for nearly a decade produced some of the most original and unforgettable music this country has ever heard.

The list of
artists who recorded here is staggering: Aretha, Otis and Percy; the Staple
Singers and the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Lynyrd Skynyrd and countless others. And backing many of these artists, on more hit songs than you probably ever realized, are the same four musicians: bassist Dave Hood, whose performance
on “I’ll Take You There”–a vocal remake of the Harry J.
Allstars’ reggae classic “The Liquidator”–is perhaps the
Everest of basslines; Jimmy Johnson, whose understated chukka-chuck guitar earned him the title “king of chink,” and not for his love of lo mein; the
technically awesome Roger Hawkins, who is perhaps the Bach of drums; and Barry Beckett, whose percolating keyboards glued the whole thing together. Together
they formed the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, a group that was so incredibly inventive and funky that as one story has it Paul Simon, upon hearing one of
their records, asked who “those Jamaican musicians” were.

Four white
boys from northern Alabama, that’s who.

Mention Muscle
Shoals today, and most people simply scratch their heads and look perplexed. What happened? Why isn’t Muscle Shoals, musically speaking, as well known as Nashville, Memphis or, hell, Seattle? Why has it been, for all but a small percentage of music industry types and aficionados, completely forgotten?

3614
Jackson Highway

It begins with
a wrong turn. Traveling south on Rte. 43 through Muscle Shoals I miss
a left and wind up on a smaller two-lane street. I’m early for my first appointment, so I decide to see the sights before turning around. I look at
a street sign to get my bearings and the hairs on my arms begin to rise. I go another block and see a small, hopelessly forlorn flagstone building, alone in an overgrown lot. I hit the brakes hard, nearly causing a pile-up behind me, and screech into the gravel driveway.

Some addresses
speak for themselves: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, say, or 10 Downing Street. For lovers of Southern soul music that address may very well be 3614 Jackson Highway, the site of the original Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. The Rolling Stones recorded “Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses” and “You Gotta Move”
here. This is where Mavis Staples told Barry Beckett to “play, play your
piano now,” and implored “little Davey” to play his bass on “I’ll
Take You There.” Don Covay recorded his best work here, including his Superdude and Hot Blood albums. Cher titled an early solo album simply 3614
Jackson Highway.

I get out of
the car, grab the camera and take a snapshot of the front. There is plywood inside the windows, weeds and crabgrass everywhere. It looks like the loneliest building in the world.

I call George
Lair, curator at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, to tell him I’m in town.
He asks where I’m at and when I tell him he perks up. “You’re
at 3614?” he asks. “Have you gone inside and met Noel? He’s the
fellow who’s fixing up the place.” George tells me he’ll be going
to lunch soon, so we make a plan for later. I walk around to the back and go down some steps. The door is open.

Noel Webster
is doing dishes. He’s wiry, wearing shorts and a baseball cap, with long dark hair halfway down his back. I tell him who I am and what I’m doing, and he shakes my hand. “You came to the right place,” he laughs, “come on in.”

In a flash
he’s at the fridge, pulling out burgers, buns and fixings. “We had
a big barbecue here yesterday. You hungry? We got tons of food.” Soon I’m devouring a delicious cheeseburger with potato chips. Noel tells me that 3614 still draws a small but steady stream of fanatics.

“People
who know, know,” he says. “During spring break we had something like
150 people come by here. It was insane. Just last week, a group of four girls from Notre Dame drove all the way down just to see the place. We can’t
go up to work on the roof without someone screeching into the parking lot and screaming SKYNYRD!” He shakes his head. “This town is like Mayberry
on acid.”

We go upstairs.
The studio is remarkable, a humble single room with a small vocal booth and
a glassed-in control room. Noel has found the original furniture and wall sconces, and even tried to match the original color on the walls. “They had everything
in storage,” he says. “When they moved out of this building they took
an inventory of every single thing, down to the pens and paper.” He points
to the ugly orange vinyl furniture in the corner. “The Rolling Stones sat
on those couches.”

For audiophiles,
3614 isn’t just a recording studio, it’s The Room. Noel stomps on
the floor, and there is a solid thrum that vibrates through me. “Hear that? This whole floor is like the top of an acoustic guitar. You play a note on the bass and the drummer can feel it over there. That’s how those guys were able to lock in so tight, so rock solid. Of course, they weren’t bad players, either,” he adds with a wink. “Hell, Ted Turner could come down here
and build a ten-billion-dollar megaplex, state-of-the-art recording studio, and know what? Nobody’d give a shit. It’s all about the feeling, man–you just can’t buy what this room’s got.”

Noel tells
me that he is originally from Chicago, but that his family moved to nearby Huntsville when he was 15. Now 35, he says he decided to move to Muscle Shoals a couple
of years ago, in order to set up a rehearsal and recording studio for his band.
He says that when he bought 3614, he had no idea of its significance. “I
just needed a place to keep my equipment and make music. The building had actually been condemned by the city. Most recently it had been a washer-dryer sales and repair place. “When I got in here I found out the building’s history
and whoa, my whole life just changed.”

Noel takes
me into the control room and reaches behind one of the monitors. He pulls out some pieces of paper and hands them to me. They’re track sheets, which studio engineers use to write down what’s on each track of the master tapes. “They’re original,” he says. “They were in storage, with
the other stuff.” As a former engineer it’s like being handed one
of Shakespeare’s quills. I put them carefully into my valise.

Alabama
Music Hall of Fame

Noel hops in
the rental car and guides me to the Hall of Fame. George Lair isn’t back
from lunch yet, so we sit outside and have a cigarette, and a minute later George pulls up. He invites me into his office and Noel takes off to explore the museum.

Opened in 1990,
the Hall of Fame is an important first step in bringing people to the area,
but by itself it’s not enough to correct the lack of understanding about
Muscle Shoals’ greater significance. George says that the problem is primarily one of promotion. “When people hear ‘Nashville’ they think country
music,” he says. “Nashville made itself successful through a partnership between the music industry and the local community. That’s what we’ve
got to do here, if people are ever going to understand.” I ask him what
he would like people to think of when they hear the name Muscle Shoals, and after some thought he answers, “the Muscle Shoals sound. It’s not
pop. It’s not country, like Nashville, or rhythm & blues, like Memphis,
but a blend of the three. Songwriters love saying they’re from Muscle Shoals for that reason, because then they’re not going to get locked into one
style.”

George walks
me through the exhibits. The number of artists who were either born in Alabama
or made their mark there would be impressive for an entire country, let alone
for a single state: Hank Williams and Tammy Wynette; Nat King Cole, Lionel Richie and Sun Ra; Alabama and Wet Willie. The thick, stapled list George gives me, titled “Facts about a few of Alabama’s Music Achievers,” reads
like a who’s who of American music.

George takes
me into a workroom, where there’s a giant tarp covering something. We each
take a corner and peel it back. It’s a huge Bonneville convertible that
used to belong to Nudie, the clothing designer. The car is a wonder, every bit
as flamboyant as the suits Nudie designed for country music stars over the years,
like the memorable marijuana, poppy and dinosaur suits he created for Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. The interior of the car is upholstered completely
with tooled leather, there are pearl-handled revolvers for door handles and
a rifle mounted to the rear hood. Each seat has its own holster with a real,
functional pistol; even the steering column shifter is a long-barreled six-shooter. George explains that they are still restoring the car, and when it’s finished
it will be put on display.

When my tour
is finished I go to the gift shop, where I pick up a shot glass, bumper sticker
and refrigerator magnet–the holy trinity of cheesy tourist stuff. There
are dozens of great CDs for sale, but my budget will only allow one, so I decide on a recent release from Travis Wammack, an obscure session guitarist who is generally credited with inventing the fuzz guitar sound that came to dominate rock music in the 1960s. The seminal reissue of Wammack’s early work, That Scratchy Guitar from Memphis, features the 16-year-old wunderkind’s paint-peeling solos and frenetic picking work. Remembering the fuzzed-out frenzy of tracks like “Scratchy” and “Night Train” makes me smile,
so I pick up Wammack’s new disc, Snake, Rattle and Roll in Muscle Shoals.
I pay for the stuff and go out to the lobby. Noel is regaling George with his

idea for a Hard Rock Cafe-style restaurant in Muscle Shoals. Noel is animated, talking fast. When he’s done I thank George, then Noel and I head out to
the car.

“How’d
your talk with George go?” I ask. Noel pulls down his cap and snorts.

“Man,
I think I talk way too fast for these folks. I don’t think he understood a word I was saying.”

The Palace

My next appointment
isn’t for another hour, so Noel suggests a stop at the Palace, a renovated
drug store and soda fountain that had its grand opening a week earlier. It’s
a big deal in sleepy downtown Tuscumbia, the beginning of what Noel hopes will be a sustained revitalization. We sit at the counter and Noel orders a chocolate shake. I order the same, then change my mind. I tell the waitress what I want. She asks me to repeat myself.

“Black
and white shake,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“Vanilla
ice cream and chocolate syrup.”

She crinkles
her brow. “Chocolate what?”

“Syrup.
Sirr-up,” I trill. I make a motion like I’m squeezing an upside-down bottle.

“Did you
say chocolate surp?”

“Yeah,
chocolate surp,” I say. She carefully writes it down and walks away, still looking completely perplexed. I’m glad I didn’t ask for an egg cream.

Noel is shaking
with laughter. “Shit, man, you nearly blew her mind. Look over there, they’re having a conference about it.” I look. Indeed, four waitresses are huddled around, staring at the order ticket like it’s a dead snake in the road.
Noel nearly falls off his stool. Another waitress, a fine young thing, comes over and asks in a hard voice to explain what strange and exotic creation I have requested.

“Vanilla
ice cream,” I say, “with chocolate syrup. Or surp. Either is fine.”

The girl runs
back, another huddle. One of the waitresses looks over her shoulder and gives me a dirty look. They’re all wearing Palace t-shirts. On the back it says
“We treat folks the way they used to be treated.” Hmmm.

“You’ve
done it now,” Noel chuckles, “you’ve gone and created a major incident in downtown Tuscumbia. They’ll be talking about it for weeks.” I’m feeling suddenly very hot.

A gentleman
and lady walk up. The man and Noel shake hands and Noel introduces us. We exchange pleasantries, then the man and the lady go over to a table and sit down.

“You know
who that was, don’t you?” Noel asks. I shake my head. “That was Roger Hawkins.”

Noel tells
me that Roger isn’t playing drums anymore, because of some health problems. “He’s got a ringing in his ears, real bad, and I think a problem with
his back. It’s really a shame.”

We get our
order and enjoy the milkshakes, which are delicious, without further incident. When we’re done Noel snatches the check and pays. Back at the car, I get my valise and pull out one of the original Muscle Shoals track sheets.

“Not exactly,”
he explains. “I mean that’s his blue van. He’s probably in there recording. Want to go in and say hi?”

We pull into
the parking lot and I get my bag from the Hall of Fame gift shop. I pull out the Travis Wammack CD I’ve just bought. Noel smiles when he sees it. “Shit, man, did you just buy that? Hell, bring it in and have him sign it.”

Travis is leaning
back in a swivel chair with two men. He looks good, youthful despite the graying beard, still trim and with a wicked look in his eyes. It’s the look of
an unrepentant hellraiser and prodigious guitarist. Travis and his two companions, both named Donnie, look amused as I shake their hands and unwrap the CD. There is some argument over what’s the best pen to use, but it gets done. We
sit and make small talk for a few minutes, then take off.

“I feel
like a boob,” I say in the parking lot, looking at the CD. Noel laughs.
“Are you kidding? They love that shit. Absolutely eat it up. I bet it blows
their minds, this New York guy coming in and knowing who they are. Travis could walk into the Family Dollar across the street and nobody would look twice. Here you come all this way and act like he’s a rock star.”

We pull back
into the road. Noel is still laughing, something he does wonderfully often.
“Did you think in a million years when you came down here that you’d
be meeting Roger Hawkins in an ice cream shop, or get Travis Wammack to sign your new CD? The Good Lord will provide,” he says.

A day ago I
might have laughed at such a statement. But now I just nod.

“Come
on, let’s go see what’s happening at FAME,” he says.

FAME

FAME, which
is an acronym for Florence, Alabama Music Enterprises, is the 800-pound gorilla
of Muscle Shoals. Although the region had long had a fertile music scene, it
wasn’t until a Sheffield bellhop named Arthur Alexander came to a young
producer named Rick Hall with a song called “You Better Move On” that
the true golden age of Muscle Shoals began. The song did well, and the next
single Hall produced, on his newly formed Fame Records label, was Jimmy Hughes’ “Steal Away,” which broke into the Top 20. As Hall has said in an
earlier interview, “I was batting a thousand, and nobody could tell me
anything!”

In the Muscle
Shoals musical mafia, Hall is probably the capo di tutti capi. He has a reputation for being reclusive and unapproachable, at least to strangers, and handles all interview requests through his son, Rodney. In photographs, Hall frequently wears his mustache waxed and twirled up at the edges, like his other gig is tying virtuous women to railroad tracks. I’ve been told he rarely grants interviews. I decide not to push it.

Daniel Beard,
the studio manager, shows me around. He says that the entire recording industry is in a slump, and that Nashville is hurting, which only hurts Muscle Shoals
more. Much of FAME’s continuing success, he says, is centered around the publishing arm of the business, trying to place songs with new and established artists. One of FAME’s writers recently hit paydirt with the mega-smash
“I Swear.”

Walking into
Studio A is like walking into any number of old photographs I’ve admired
over the years: here’s Jerry Wexler standing next to a young Aretha Franklin; here is Spooner Oldham working with Dan Penn and Chips Moman on their latest song. In the control room we talk about mixing consoles, outboard equipment and echo chambers, then I buy a t-shirt and move on.

When we get
back to 3614 I’m exhausted. The sun, the heat and the driving have all
taken their toll, and I’m nodding off–on the same couch Keith Richards
probably once nodded off on, in fact. Noel offers me a place to crash, but I’ve
spent the past week sleeping on beaches, hammocks and roof decks. I sorely need a proper bed. I find a cheap, clean room at the Holiday Inn in Florence, and halfway through a can of Coors Light my eyes begin to close. It’s not even
7:30. It’s all I can do to get over to the bed before I fall straight across
the covers, fully clothed. For the next 12 hours I dream of Travis Wammack playing guitar in a sarong and Mavis Staples singing in a coconut-shell bikini.

Muscle
Shoals Sound Studio

Dave Hood is
pressed for time. He’s got to drive to Nashville for a photo session that Fender guitars has organized. “It’s for some kind of publication,”
he explains, “and they want to get pictures of all these bass players.
We’ve been trying to set it up for a couple of weeks, and today is the
only day it worked out for all of us.” Dave says that he’s picked
a favorite bass, a 1956 Fender Precision, but doesn’t know what they expect him to wear. “From April to October, I’m in shorts.” He pauses
thoughtfully. “I hope they like my legs.”

I’d never
know he was in a rush if he didn’t tell me; Dave takes me on a leisurely
tour of the new Muscle Shoals Sound. Gold and platinum records line the walls: “Chain of Fools,” “Respect,” “There Goes Rhymin’
Simon” and many more, stretching up to the ceiling. Does he have a particular session, or record, that stands out to him as definitive?

“I just
recently listened to the Staple Singers’ Beatitude: Respect Yourself,
maybe for the first time since we did those sessions. I have to say, listening to that record again, all the way through, I think we were doing some pretty advanced stuff, stuff that hadn’t ever been done before, how it blends gospel, pop and soul.”

Dave explains
that the studio was sold to Malaco Records in 1985, and that eventually the
four Rhythm Section members went their separate ways. Three are still in the
area, but keyboardist Barry Beckett has gone on to a successful career in Nashville. Dave is clearly eager to keep playing, but admits that there aren’t as
many gigs as before, and that most of his work is for blues records, a style
he admits to never being particularly crazy about. “But hey, it’s
work,” he shrugs. He notes the time and says he has to get on the road
if he’s going to make his photo session. I tell him there’s just one
more thing, and hand him the track sheet to sign.

Gone Hollywood

After leaving
Muscle Shoals Sound I swing by 3614. Noel is already in overdrive, getting the studio ready for a session.

“I’ve
got some of the original guys from the band Cowboy coming in this afternoon,” he says. “They’re cutting some new tracks, and I’m worried we’re
going to get rained on big time in the studio.” He’s looking through
the yellow pages, trying to find a roofer who will spray an extra layer of tar where the roof joins the outside walls. He’s not having much luck. “Well,
I guess it’s back to using the big cans to catch the leaks,” he chuckles.

Bobby Whitlock
emerges from the front offices. Whitlock is one of the members of Derek and the Dominos, and is the first bona-fide Rock Star I’ve met since arriving.
I learn that he’s sleeping in the front offices while his new house is
being renovated. He had been staying at a hotel, but at Noel’s urging has decided he’d rather be here. I soon understand why. Whitlock picks up one of the vintage Stratocasters from a rack and plugs it into a classic Marshall stack. He begins wailing out a series of blues-rock riffs and progressions at an ear-splitting volume. When he’s done he puts down the guitar and pumps his fists in the air. “GodDAMN, that feels GOOD!” he screams. We all
grin at each other and nod.

Noel has sung
the praises of the Hollywood Inn, a nearby soul food restaurant, so we break
for lunch. At the Hollywood we are greeted by Feedie, a tall, immaculately dressed black man. We go into the back room, a former bar, which Noel calls “the
smokin’, spittin’ and cussin’ room.” Two beauties in hospital
scrubs are enjoying fried chicken, mashed potatoes and cigarettes. We pull out our Marlboro Lights. Feedie is playing a kind of down-home dozens with one of the waitresses. They’re the floor show, snapping on each other in an hilarious, rapid-fire exchange, accusing each other of trying to reserve the best tables
for their friends, tearing up one another’s tickets, stealing tips. Noel
points to the cashier, an ancient black man hunched over the register. “Every
once in a while the old man gets ticked off,” he whispers, “and will
yell at those two, ‘Cut that silly shit out now!’”

On the way
back we stop to see the gravestone of Arthur Alexander, one of the early soul giants from the area. We pull into a hilltop graveyard and Noel points out a
large black stone with musical notes inscribed on it. “Arthur died several
years back, and there was no money for a headstone. It was such a shame. About six months ago there was a big benefit, and everybody, I mean everybody, came out and played. It was pretty amazing. We gave all the money to the family.”

We leave the
cemetery and a stunning blonde in a convertible pulls alongside us at a stop
light, teasing her honey hair and singing along to Rick James’ “Super
Freak.” Noel snorts and slaps his knee. “How perfect is that? It’s
like a babe bomb went off down here. You can’t believe how many beautiful
women there are. Trouble is, most of them wind up with illiterate redneck assholes.”

If Muscle Shoals
is ever to revive itself and reclaim its rightful place in pop music history,
then Noel Webster might well play a vital role in that renaissance. Although he has his reservations–a full day later, for instance, he’s still
worried that George Lair didn’t understand a thing he was saying, and he frequently mutters things like, “They’re probably going to run me
out of town”–Noel takes some obvious pleasure in his outsider status.
“It’s actually helpful that I’m not from here. These other guys
have so much history between them. I don’t know what went down or who did what to whom, or what bad blood there might be, but none of that matters to me. My job, as I see it, is to bring people together.

“None
of us can make it if we don’t all work together,” he adds, as we pull
into 3614 for the last time. “There’s plenty of work out there for
all of us. We just have to get it here.” We shake hands, he runs off to
make his session and I give the building one last look before pulling out onto Jackson Highway.

Soul Clan

I’m not
looking forward to meeting Jimmy Johnson. The legendary guitarist and producer has sounded gruff and intimidating on the phone, and has given me the distinct impression he’d rather have minor dental surgery than entertain some pushy stranger from New York. He has explained that he is flying out of town in a
day or so and has a lot to take care of, but I persist, and when I tell him
I’m leaving town in a few hours he finally relents.

Jimmy’s
office, in a building adjacent to his father’s house, is a riot of equipment,
CDs and papers. He appears to be overwhelmed with work before his upcoming trip. On top of it, he’s having printing problems. A file that looked fine before
is now all wrong. Luckily I’m able to help, and the problem is soon fixed.
The new pages are printing fine, and Jimmy is pleased. The tension I felt in
the air is dispelled. Just when I think my technical prowess has won him over,
Jimmy focuses a hard gaze on me.

“What
kind of article are you going to write?” he asks. When I start to give
him my standard line he waves me off. “I mean, is it going to be positive
or negative? Because a lot of writers, you know, have an agenda. I just want to ask you up front, so I know where you’re coming from.”

I tell him,
as honestly as I can, that although I have come as a fan of the music, I also want to know why the region is languishing in obscurity while Nashville has flourished. He nods slowly.

“Nashville’s
done it right,” he agrees. Like George Lair, he believes the problem can only be cured by promotion, promotion, promotion.

Jimmy, who
is still very much in demand as a producer, is passionate about another area: artists’ rights. He says that the modern recording contract treats artists “basically as slaves,” and says that he is working to correct that
through his own company. “A lot of big artists have recently spoken out
about the abuses,” he says. I mention Prince and Courtney Love. At the mention of Love’s name, Jimmy leans over the desk. “You want to know something about Courtney Love?” His voice drops to a growl, and his finger punches every word into the desktop: “Courtney…Love…is… fucking…right.”

The phone rings
constantly. I hear him explaining to one caller that “you can’t make
it unless you get a band together and write your own material. There’s
no Colonel Parker with a cigar who’s going to come up and make you a star. I’d help you if I can, but I can’t offer what I can’t give. You
have to do it on your own.” When he hangs up he looks at me. “I have
to tell it to them like it is,” he says.

I ask Jimmy
who his biggest musical influences were. “Basically, all the black guys,”
he says. “Jimmy Reed, Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry.” He says that the key to his distinctive style was, ironically, not to stand out but to blend
in, to become a part of the drums and bass. “Nothing I do on its own would really stand out,” he says, “but if you took it away, you would notice
a lack.” Just like his playing, it’s an amazing understatement.

We go into
the studio next door for some pictures. In the room with me are Jimmy, his father Ray, son Jay and grandson JJ. Jay is the leader of the Southern Rock Allstars, and Ray was a local celebrity in his own right in the 1930s and 40s, as Country Ray. Jimmy and Jay have recently produced an album of Ray’s favorite songs, with Ray singing. Ray gives me a copy, and I ask him to sign it. As the elderly Johnson leans over the mixing console and signs his name in a shaky hand he whispers to me conspiratorially: “I signed one of these for Sam Phillips.”

Before leaving,
I pull out the track sheet. Jimmy takes a big Sharpie and signs boldly across the center.