For any of you music aficionados out there, none of this is news. But for the rest of us, this will hopefully be an awakening revelation of understanding as to what can happen when one man is placed within a certain time and space.
For this story, that time was the late 1950’s, and the space was a tiny city of 8,000, called Muscle Shoals, Alabama. From its first wax cutting, the birth of the Muscle Shoals sound was unique. The delivery room was 603 East Avalon Avenue, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where a non-descript roadside building sprouts from the red Alabama clay. It was miles from nowhere, but yet, history sees this as a special place. “It’s an enigma.” Says Steve Winwood.
The letters “FAME STUDIOS” were emblazoned across the building façade. Now generally, you would think that this “off the beaten path” building was named by a proprietor whose dreams of grandeur had overtaken his sense of reality, but in this case, you would be dead wrong.
For the owner was a man driven to be somebody. That somebody was Rick Hall, who grew up in a single parent shack without running water, a dirt floor and an oil drum heater that kept them warm while sleeping on straw they pulled from the fields. Rick hated the poverty that confined and defined him and the want and desire to be someone special drove him to achieve greatness.
But this story is about where great creative magic comes from, and how a barefoot, back-woods boy lived through personal tragedies of extreme poverty, and first a brother and then a wife’s death, with nothing but a dream and self determination to create what would come to be called: The Muscle Shoals Sound.
Just as his Memphis contemporary, Sam Phillips of Sun Records was winding down the hits and closing the doors at 706 Union, Jim Stewart of Memphis Stax Records and Rick Hall of Fame in Muscle Shoals had sent a new sound across the ocean to Liverpool and Dublin.
Rick Hall opened his doors in a little town resting on the North Western tip of Alabama. Here, many of the first songs cut by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were remakes of the original Muscle Shoals classic sounds that emanated from the voices of Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett and others.
Four local white boys called “The Swampers” played back up to local black talent during the civil rights era in the South. That same mixture of black and white musicians working together also fueled the Memphis Stax sound. Fame & Stax each defined their own unique R&B sound. “Its like the sounds come out of the mud” – Bono
But the sound coming out of Muscle Shoals was so great it became a giant magnet that drew people from around the world including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Osmond’s, Cher, Elton John, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Glenn Fry and others. Muscle Shoals went on to discover the Allman Brothers who pitched a tent outside of The Swampers’ building. Lynyrd Skynyrd cut Sweet Home Alabama and of course, the most requested song in the history of rock music; Freebird. Muscle Shoals had given birth to a new genre in American Music; Southern Rock, and The South had found its new national anthem.
This tiny town shook the music world and drew global talent to itself like flies to a cut watermelon on a hot Alabama scorcher. This is what I call the Muscle Shoals effect; when a location that seemingly offers nothing unique, suddenly becomes the heart and soul of an industry due to nothing but one man's’ vision and sheer determination against all odds. His belief was that if you’re alive – you can make that difference, no matter where you are – that difference is in you.
So all of this was due to one man and his desire to be somebody, and more than anything, to be shown respect. Which is either fitting or ironic that the Swampers were flown to NYC to record the mega-hit R-E-S-P-E-C-T with Aretha Franklin. It just goes to show you what a little respect will do to power your creativity.