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An Almost-Famous Alabama Music Studio Is Open for Tours.
By Nancy Jackson | Online Only | Sept. 15, 2006 The out-of-the-way music studio
The Rolling Stones recorded there. So did Lynyrd Skynyrd, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Cher, and other musicians. In fact, much of the music of a generation was created in the tiny town of Sheffield, Ala., at a recording studio called Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Once condemned, the small stone building that was the birthplace of hits like Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” has been painstakingly restored, listed on the National Register, and in March of this year opened its doors to the public. Although the closest interstate highway is almost 60 miles away, more than 2,000 visitors have already found their way to this historic gallery of American pop culture.
“It’s the music that brings them here,” says Noel Webster, the studio’s current owner. “The songs made here have been the themes to people’s lives. They all know the music, but they don’t know the place where it all happened, so I want to share it with the world.”
A former casket warehouse built in 1945, the studio was opened in 1969 by four local musicians who became its famous house band: the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, also known as the Swampers (immortalized in Lynyrd
Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”). Until 1978, the Swampers hosted scores of famous musicians and recorded dozens of hit albums in the Jackson Highway studio. In fact, of the 400 albums recorded there, more than 50 went gold or platinum during the 1970s.
“This place was different because the Swampers owned the studio,” says Gene Ford, an archaeological historian with the state’s Office of Archaeological Research, who researched the building for the National Register listing. “It wasn’t owned by big record moguls, so they had license to do what they wanted to do. During the 1970s, a lot of musicians were fighting death by disco, and the industry took a lot of [decisions] out of the hands of the musicians. At Muscle Shoals, musicians were free to create, and the studio helped launch and maintain a lot of careers.”
After the studio moved to another location in 1978, the building was home to an appliance dealer and a record store before it was abandoned, and it was eventually slated to be torn down by the city in 1999. That year, Webster, a Chicago native and musician, was working in the area and looking for a place to record his own music. One night, friends showed him the abandoned studio by flashlight, and he purchased it immediately.
“I didn’t know what I was getting,” Webster says. “I just knew it was a studio, and I needed a place to record.” But as soon as he began making repairs to the building, visitors like a local musician who served as a session guitarist at the studio during its heyday started dropping by to tell Webster what he’d bought.
“When I realized all that happened here, I knew it needed to be preserved,” Webster says. As he cleaned up the building, repairing water damage and hauling out more than nine tons of trash, Webster began discovering relics
of the past: the bathroom door and portions of the bathroom wall signed by artists Wilson Pickett, Wayne Perkins, and Cat Stevens; the still-intact vocal booths where performers like Luther Ingram and members of Blackfoot left signatures or notes to the Swampers. Webster also consulted archival photographs and the Swampers to make the studio look exactly as it did in 1969, when Mick Jagger penned “Wild Horses” in the bathroom. He acquired the original vinyl sofa and chairs, which were stored nearby, and ordered exact replicas of the vintage recording equipment used there during the 1970s, down to the same model numbers.
The result is a unique living-history museum: While visitors can peruse photos of legendary recording sessions, search for famous names on the walls of signatures, and watch footage of the Rolling Stones at work in the studio, musicians can use the classic equipment to record a new album with the famous Muscle Shoals sound. “The sounds that came out of this room cannot be duplicated,” Webster says. “I’ve recorded in lots of studios, and the sound in this room just works. The building shakes when you play in it.”
Word has slowly traveled through the music industry that the old studio is open for business, and while mostly local musicians or those from nearby Nashville have recorded there recently, Webster has had calls from producers across the country and the world who want to find out if the studio is really back. “We had people wanting to come record [when we had] holes in the floor and no recording equipment,” he says. “They want to come here to get this tone and to work in this room.”
While the studio’s name is well-known in the music world, it’s been virtually unknown by the general public, even the locals who lived nearby while all its history was being made. “I never really thought about what was going on
there at the time,” says Roger Hawkins, former studio owner and drummer for the Swampers, along with bassist David Hood, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, and keyboardist Barry Beckett. (The partners sold the studio in 1985; it was on the market again in 2003.) “We just went to the studio to go to work every day and most people didn’t know what we were doing. We weren’t trying to hide anything; we just didn’t publicize. But it’s flattering that other people think it’s an important place.”
For some, the studio is more than just an important place. During a recent week in August, more than 100 visitors showed up at the studio’s doors, paying $10 for a peek inside. One family from St. Louis arrived in the parking lot at 4 a.m. to sleep in their car until daylight, when they wanted to take photos in front of the building like the one that appeared on the cover of Cher’s 1969 album, 3614 Jackson Highway, the building’s address.
“People are taking pilgrimages to see this place,” Webster says. “They show up with album covers hanging out their rental-car windows, and when they come in, they’re just blown away by all that happened here.”
Nancy Jackson is a freelance writer based in Alabama.
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