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- Robert Palmer
- Feb 4, 2003
SHEFFIELD – The thump of Owen Hale’s bass drum shook the well-seasoned wooden floor of 3614 Jackson Highway Studio on April 1, marking the rebirth of a world-famous studio and an anniversary that no one playing the recording session realized until later.
Hale, along with a group of crack Muscle Shoals and Nashville musicians, recorded 11 tracks during a 13-hour session that Sunday for the studio’s first project, Tommy York and Thrillbilly.
The next day, studio owner Noel Webster learned the significance of April 1 to the building he bought more than a year ago.
On April 1, 1969, four local session players incorporated as Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, breaking away from Rick Hall’s highly successful FAME Recording Studios in a risky move to take control of their destinies. Within a year, the new studio grabbed the attention of the world with R.B. Greaves’ “Take A Letter Maria,” a Top 10 hit. Dozens of hits followed, all recorded in the cinder-block building on Jackson Highway.
“I had no idea April 1 was the date that Muscle Shoals Sound started,” Webster said. “I thought we were just late getting the project started.”
In fact, Webster didn’t know the history behind the building when he bought it. Webster grew up in Chicago and moved to Huntsville when he was 15.
Webster had been performing at a Sheffield club and commuting from Huntsville when a couple of local police officers who are friends took him to the empty building one night to look around.
“I bought it, and I didn’t know this was the original Muscle Shoals Sound,” Webster said. “I started doing some research on the Internet, and I found out what I had. That’s when I decided to re-create it to what it should be.”
Muscle Shoals Sound’s original owners – Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett and David Hood, known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section – moved out of the Jackson Highway studio in 1978 after buying the former Naval Reserve building at the end of Alabama Avenue, overlooking the Tennessee River. Webster said that was the only Muscle Shoals Sound Studios he was aware of. The rhythm section sold the studio to Malaco Records in 1985.
When Webster took possession of the original studio, portions of it were near collapse. It had been empty for months and once had served as a second-hand appliance store.
Webster said he originally wanted to create an all-modern recording studio with the latest digital technology – until he ran a sound test on an analog tape recorder.
“I knew I had to put it back,” he said. “There’s no other room that sounds like this.”
He has assembled vintage recording equipment that, combined with the acoustics of the room, yield a rich, deep, warm sound that cannot be achieved with digital equipment.
However, a Pro Tools digital mixing program is being installed.
“It sounds so dog-gone good,” York, a self-described 25-year veteran of a honky-tonk band, said after overdubbing a vocal track. “It’s so warm and creamy. You don’t hear that on the radio anymore. We’re using no computers or vocal tuners.”
The studio has a reputation for magic – of producing recordings that contain something attainable nowhere else. Webster said he discovered the room’s magic right away and is intent on keeping it intact.
Part of the key to the sound is a back-to-basics approach to recording.
“I want to make records for the benefit of the song. I want to capture more of a performance than an edited vocal,” he said.
Sounding uncannily like Florence native Sam Phillips, the founder of Memphis’ Sun Records where rock ’n’ roll was birthed, Webster said he is going for something more elemental than what is heard on radio these days.
“I’m going to do it like they did in the 1950s. I want a raw, honest performance off the (studio) floor,” he said.
“We’re selling emotion, and that’s worth more than selling an antiseptically clean performance.
“We’re not under anybody’s thumb to tell us how to make records, and we’re not going to do it the way they do it in Nashville,” he said. “If you’ve got talent and you’ve got something to show, why cover it up?”
York, 48, of Cullman, is convinced that hooking up with Webster was the right decision. He said he has a wealthy backer who gave him the choice of using any studio in the country. York, who has worked in Muscle Shoals studios since 1976, said Webster and the revitalized studio were obvious choices.
“We finished recording ’Katie Did’ (a York-penned blues) and I glanced in the control room, and I thought I saw a tear roll down the engineer’s cheek,” he said. “I said, ’Naw, I didn’t see that.’ But I looked again and sure enough, the guy had a tear rolling off his check onto the board. The song we got on that session genuinely moved him.”
That is exactly the kind of reaction Webster said he is looking for. He said having good musicians and giving them the freedom to do their best work is an essential part of a producer’s job.
The musicians on the York project include Mike Chapman on bass and Chris Lucinger on guitar, both veteran Nashville players who have worked with Garth Brooks, keyboardist Johnny Neal, Rossington-Collins Band organist Tim Sharpton, Little Richard guitarist Kelvin Holly and Muscle Shoals Horns saxophonist Harvey Thompson.
“We tell the players what we are looking for, but we let them play what they feel,” Webster said. “That’s what we hired them for. It’s an unconventional way of recording in this day and age.”
Webster’s experience as a producer is limited, but he is not daunted.
He fired a Nashville vocal coach on the York session and took over the duties of co-producer. Webster, 35, got his start as a sound technician at Huntsville’s Von Braun Center, then worked as a concert sound technician on world tours for top rock bands.
The activity at the old studio has captured the attention of Muscle Shoals musicians – including the original owners.
Guitarist Jimmy Johnson and bassist David Hood have given their blessings to Webster’s work and have visited the studio to offer historical perspective to his careful restoration work.
“I was in there, and we played some of the old hits that were cut there. To hear them played back in the same control room on the same console was eerie – but comfortable,” Johnson said. “It felt good.”
Webster bought an MCI 400 control board from producer Johnny Sandlin that was used in the original Capricorn Studios in Macon, Ga., where the Allman Brothers Band recorded. Johnson said that is the same type of board the rhythm section used.
“Noel is really doing it right,” Johnson said. “Not only can he keep the old thing alive, he can do a lot of sessions from all over the world. He’s a real lover of what went on there, and I’m excited for him.”
Hood said he has been following Webster’s progress and is pleased with what he has accomplished. He also said he is glad someone saw the potential of the building.
A few years ago, when the old studio was a near-derelict used appliance store, Hood said he took some friends from France to see the building.
“I almost cried after we left, to see what had become of it,” he said. “It almost broke my heart.”
The rhythm section tried for years to buy the building from its owner to expand it, Hood said. They even bought all the land around it, but the owner would not discuss selling it. That’s when they bought the Naval Reserve building. Hood said Muscle Shoals Sound had expanded into publishing and production and desperately needed more space.
“Noel has the naA_vete we had when we bought that studio, and that’s what it takes; because if you knew everything about the business, you wouldn’t take an old building and try that,” Hood said with a grin.
Beckett, who lives in Nashville where he is a much-in-demand producer, said Webster has the potential to recapture the feel of the original studio.
“I think there is some magic to the place, especially if you’ve got good musicians,” he said. “Those that he had on that session are really good players.
“He can be successful if he can get a hit out of there,” Beckett said.
Hawkins, who convinced the other rhythm section members to join him in the studio venture in 1969, said knowing music is being recorded in the old building again is satisfying.
“I drove by there the other day, and I saw (York’s) bus and an old van with a peace sign painted on it, and I just grinned real big,” he said. “I thought, ’Wow, I just hope they get to experience what we got to experience there.’ “
Robert Palmer can be reached at robert.palmer@timesdaily.com or 740-5734
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