![]() Oldham got the intro and by the time Franklin broke loose with “You’re a no good heart-breaker / You’re a liar and you’re a cheat”, her first big hit was on the way. Session man Spooner Oldham was fiddling around with a five-note riff on a Wurlitzer electronic piano. When the song was recorded, he was working as a hospital orderly.įranklin, aged 24, was at a grand piano in FAME’s wood-panelled Studio A, trying to turn an idea into a song. The singer of what became a soul classic, When a Man Loves a Woman, was Percy Sledge. Atlantic picked her up and in early 1967 sent her to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, where a hard-charging wannabe impresario named Rick Hall had made his first No 1 hit the year before. ![]() "Muscle Shoals, being between those two places, has been able to combine those two styles into a real Southern rhythm and blues that was very appealing.The consequences would help define modern music, not only launching Franklin but sparking a feud in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which started a wave of creativity that helped define music in the 1970s, bringing a stream of superstars to the cluster of four towns on the banks of the Tennessee river.īefore she was the Queen of Soul, Franklin had a false start, singing in quite a controlled way on poppy, jazzy releases for Columbia Records. "You can draw a triangle from Nashville to Memphis to Muscle Shoals, and while Nashville is the country center, Memphis is generally known as the blues center," Lair says. That sound is a blend of country, gospel and R & B, says Alabama Music Hall of Fame curator George Lair. "There is some soul in Alabama that you can't find in Los Angeles," Carter says. Seger liked the sound and kept it in the final song.Ĭlarence Carter, who has been recording in Muscle Shoals for nearly five decades, says there's a vibe in the town that he could never capture when he recorded in California. An engineer's mistake gave the song its distinctive da-da-da intro. Detroit rocker Bob Seger's signature song - "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll" - began as a demo tape at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. "And it's a lot more laid back than any other music center in the country."Īrtists from outside the South also found their sound there. "I think they just got funkier records here than they did anywhere else," says Fame studio president Rodney Hall. ![]() But the music kept the stars coming, and in its heyday in the mid-70s, the area was home to eight studios. Muscle Shoals seemed an unlikely place for a celebrity crowd: the nicest hotel was a Holiday Inn, and sometimes the area's studios would put artists up in mobile homes at the local trailer park. That was 1961's "You Better Move On," by local bellhop Arthur Alexander, and it was the first of a string of R&B hits recorded there by such artists as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Clarence Carter. In fact, that sound was already developing in Muscle Shoals at a studio called Fame - the first studio in the region to cut a hit record. And then after a bit we thought, 'Heck, why not?'" "And we all thought that was just the funniest thing. "There was a Motown sound, there was a Nashville sound, there was a Memphis sound, and I said, 'Muscle Shoals Sound,'" Hood tells NPR's Debbie Elliott. David Hood, the group's bass guitarist and studio co-founder, says the studio's name was a joke of sorts. In 1969, four local session players known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section decided to open up their own recording studio. The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was a recording mecca for rhythm and blues, rock and pop artists in the '60s and '70s. In an obscure northwest corner of Alabama, a little-known piece of music history is up for sale.
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