Muscle Shoals Sound – Something in the Water – Liam Sweeny

Muscle Shoals Sound.

About two hundred and sixty miles from Atlanta, a young woman, blind, deaf, and without speech, held her hands beneath a cascading capillary of the Tennessee River and was so moved that a single word found its way to her lips; “water.” And thus Helen Keller added her voice to the magical repertoire of a place called Muscle Shoals.

In the world of music, the area known as Muscle Shoals may very well have had something in the water. Comprising the Alabama towns of Florence, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals, the area of around 200,000 residents gave us blues legend W.C. Handey, Sam Phillip, founder of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, who all hailed from this region.

But Muscle Shoals is not really famous for those who came from it as it is for those who came to it, and through it, and for that, we have to thank a few key players, some of whom were, in fact, actual players.

But before the players, a little perspective. From Muscle Shoals, we get the following earworms: Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves a Woman”; “I Never Loved A Man” by Aretha Franklin; “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones; and “I’ll Take You There” by The Staple Singers.

The first player in the game to make Muscle Shoals legendary was studio owner and producer Rick Hall. Having grown up in rural poverty, and suffering tremendous loss, Hall turned to music, first as a player, then as a record producer. He opened the first FAME studio above a drugstore in Florence before creating a more professional studio in Muscle Shoals.

Hall found early success with Arthur Alexander, when he recorded the hit song “You Better Move On” in 1961. He and FAME would go on to give a home to the music of Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Clarence Carter and Solomon Burke. Aretha Franklin arguably got her birth here, finding her voice as the “Queen of Soul.”

Franklin’s transformation into royalty highlights the second half of the most important equation in the Muscle Shoals sound. FAME studios, like all studios, had sessions players, unsung heroes who backed up the people being recorded. FAME’s original sessions players left, largely because Rick Hall was paying them peanuts. They went on to gigs in Nashville, and Hall replaced them with a group of sessions players that would become known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, or “The Swampers.”

The lineup was Jimmy Johnson on guitar, David Hood on bass, Roger Hawkins on drums, and Spooner Oldham on keyboards. They collectively had a style that blended blues, hillbilly, country, rock and roll, and gospel, and strained out the finest parts of each. They would set the mic up close to the kick drum, and flush drums and heavy bass into the resulting recordings. They played relaxed, full of melody and heart.

Franklin had never played with musicians like them before, and it was an adjustment, according to her, but once they hit it, it exploded and the rest is music history.

Hall had a close relationship with Atlantic record producer Jerry Wexler, who would go to Hall when he needed southern recording. This is how Hall recorded Aretha Franklin and many others. This deal was brought about when Percy Sledge, a local hospital worker, recorded “When a Man Loves a Woman” in a nearby studio, and Hall was able to get it licensed to Atlantic.

This relationship did not last forever, and Rick Hall ended up losing a lot to his drive and ambition, and, perhaps because of those things, his inability to focus on those around him. Or maybe it started when he fist-fought Aretha Franklin’s husband, Ted White. Either way, he lost the deal with Atlantic.

Another deal he lost was with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who went on to open the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in an old coffin showroom at 3614 Jackson Highway in nearby Sheffield. And so, while FAME was turning to Chess Records to continue recording big names, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio had to find their niche, which is where the story led, as they went on to record The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Duane Allman, George Michael, Wilson Pickett, Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Cocker, Levon Helm, Paul Simon, Bob Seger, Rod Stewart, Tamiko Jones, Cher and Cat Stevens.

One of the secrets of both FAME Studios and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was the perspective of transcending race. In Alabama in the 60s, racial tension was at a snapping point. In 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace stood in front of the doorway of the newly-desegregated University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa to block the entry of two Black students. Lynchings were still too common, and the Klan had a real membership. But in FAME, in Muscle Should Sound Studio, there was only music. When the players were inside, they were one. But when they left the studio, the racism was clear to all.

And oddly enough, if there was one thing people hated more than Black and white going to the corner store together after a session, it was the addition of a hippie. And one man in particular in the Muscle Shoals scene exuded the hippie vibe, and that was guitar player Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. As he walked down the street with a tie dye shirt and rough jeans, long hair and a Mexican mustache, even Black players wanted to keep their distance.

The transcendent quality of the Muscle Shoals studio with respect to color also carried to the music they produced. It was R&B, it was soul. It was country music and rock and roll, It was pop and gospel and funk and it all made it to the charts.

What was the “Muscle Shoals Sound?” Really, it was less of a sound and more of a place. The Swampers said it as a joke, a take-off on the “Memphis sound” and the “Nashville sound.” And in the end, they all shrugged and said, “why not?”

Halfway between Atlanta and Memphis, on the bank of the Tennessee River, the shoals that were its namesake long before destroyed by the construction of the Wilson Dam, a sound came out of the docks and the hospitals, above the drugstores and in the shadows of coffins. This sound found its way to Atlantic and Stax Records and Chess alike, and it is memorialized today. If you’re down Alabama way, check it out. And pour yourself a glass of water.