Muscle Shoals a small but mighty music town boasting of legends
- Cheré Dastugue Coen
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Music history began and continues in the small Alabama city.
Listening to "Main Street" by Bob Seger and I drifted back in time to 2015 and found my feet in a small Alabama town.
It was a year I met music legends.
As in giants.
Just outside Florence, Alabama in the small town of Muscle Shoals.
You might be thinking Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift or someone more modern such as Chappell Roan but these giants are names you likely don't recognize. But they are giants, nevertheless.
First stop on my 2015 trip to Muscle Shoals was FAME Studio, where owner Rick Hall let us interview him from an office that had seen the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, the Osmonds, Ottis Redding and Bobby Gentry, to name just a few. Even Duane Allman credits FAME for his start. Hall explained how this small town hugging the top of Alabama along the dreamy Tennessee River began attracting top names in country, jazz, blues and rock ’n’ roll.
Hall and his FAME Studio started it all. His first hit was Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On" in 1961, which helped fund his current studio (which is open for tours). Jimmy Hughes's "Steal Away" followed in 1963. Hall started inviting the talent and they answered the call and his fame grew, pun intended. All of the early albums of The Osmonds, for instance, were recorded at FAME, with their single "One Bad Apple" raising up the charts. Area girls would chase young Donny Osmond when he rode his bicycle down the city's streets.
Some musicians hesitated visiting the rural Alabama town. When Wilson Pickett flew into Muscle Shoals during segregation and was greeted by Hall at the airport, he thought it was the sheriff coming to take him to jail. He took another double take at FAME's backup band; Hall hired white men to work the studio.
"It was a dangerous time, but the studio was a safe haven where blacks and whites could work together in musical harmony," Hall wrote in his autobiography.
Later the backup band would call themselves the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, otherwise known as the Swampers. (Leon Russell gave them the Swampers name.) When Lynyrd Skynyrd sang in “Sweet Home Alabama” that “Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers…” they were talking about these musicians who backed up numerous bands, including Pickett, Joe Cocker, Willie Nelson and Leon Russell. Lynyrd Skynyrd added that Shoals was a place to pick you up “when you’re feeling blue.”
FAME is on the National Register of Historic Places and the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage. Hall was named Producer of the Year by Billboard in 1971 and inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985 as the “Father of Muscle Shoals Music.”
“We are the beginning and we will be the end,” said Rodney Hall, Rick Hall's son who took over FAME with Rick's widow, Linda Hall, after Rick passed in 2018.
“An argument can be made that Muscle Shoals was the birthplace of Southern rock,” said music historian Robert Palmer.
The Swampers went on to start their own Muscle Shoals Sound Studio at 3614 Jackson Hwy.—you might have seen an exterior shot of the studio on Cher's 1969 album of the same name—and that's where we met Swamper Jimmy Ray Johnson. The modest man regalled us with stories of playing with the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger and the Staple Singers as if it was something we all did everyday. He pulled out a compilation of all the hits produced at 3614 and it folded out like a giant accordion.
Ex-Swamper David Hood (yes, we met him, too) performed for us at designer Billy Reid's men's clothing store in downtown Florence, a larger town adjacent to Muscle Shoals. Despite his illustrious history and his stories of when The Rolling Stones came to town, Hood is also a modest man. He did admit that the legend of the Swampers is still strong, especially abroad. A cab driver in London once asked him where he was from and when he replied “Muscle Shoals” the cabby started reciting Lynyrd Skynyrd. Hood said he was a Swamper and the cab driver halted the car and demanded a photo, gushing like a rabid fan.
Songwriters and musicians love Muscle Shoals and Florence for both the musical history and camaraderie. Or maybe something else.
“It’s really an enchanted little area,” said musician and recording engineer Jimmy Nutt, who has worked with Drive-by Truckers, Sons of Roswell and Jimmy Buffett, plus one of the Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band members, Mac McAnally, who calls the area home. “I don’t know what it is. They call it (the Tennessee River) the ‘Singing River,’ back to the Native Americans. So, something attracts the musicians here.”
Did you know?
Aretha Franklin’s first hit, “I Never Loved a Man,” was recorded at FAME studios.
When Rod Stewart arrived to cut “Tonight’s the Night” and other songs at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, he was amazed the back-up musicians were white.
The Rolling Stones jammed all night on “Brown Sugar” until they ended up with a song.
Filmmaker Greg Camalier explains the city's musical heritage, including interviewing Hall and the Swampers, in his documentary "Muscle Shoals: The Small Alabama Town That Changed America's Music."It's a must-watch.
In Florence, visitors can also walk through the rustic cabin birthplace of W.C. Handy, known as the “Father of the Blues.”
If you go
Tourists can visit both FAME Studio and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. For more information on the Muscle Shoals-Florence area, visit www.VisitFlorenceAL.com.
Excellent story! Love the Swampers!