Cale, Leon Russell, Jimmy Cliff, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Boz Scaggs, Bobby Womack, Art Garfunkel, and many others. Performers who recorded at the studio represent some of the most notable and popular recording artists of the 1970s: J. The studio embarked on a decade-long collaboration with some of the era’s top popular musicians. Johnson produced those seminal recordings of southern-rock icons Lynyrd Skynyrd in 19 tracks collected on that album were later reissued in 1998. Another notable early recording session that features the studio as a prominent physical presence in terms of its identity and sound is the collection titled Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Sessions. Greaves’ hit “Take a Letter, Maria,” recorded at MSSS in August 1969, the Rolling Stones recorded three songs at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio-”Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” and “You Gotta Move”-in early December 1969, before performing at their infamous concert at Altamont, California. Coinciding with the commercial success of R. Early sessions with Lulu, Solomon Burke, John Hammond Jr., Ronnie Hawkins, and The Duck and The Bea enabled the studio to solidify its sound. The “sound” associated with Muscle Shoals, because of its rhythm and blues roots, is racially ambiguous, and the MSRS often collaborated with black artists and producers in ways that defied accepted societal standards on race relations in the South.Īfter a rocky start-up year, when projects trickled in and songs performed poorly in the charts, activity virtually exploded at the studio. The photographs surprised many listeners, who assumed MSRS members were African American. The cover of Cher’s album portrayed the artists standing confidently before the studio, and dozens of similar photographs would be shot of session participants at Muscle Shoals Sound, whether for album art, such as Paul Simon’s 1973 There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and Donnie Fritts‘s 1974 Prone to Lean, or for the music press. Although it was housed in an undistinguished gray stone building, the façade is immediately recognizable to music fans of that era. The studio opened in early April 1969 recording Cher’s Atco album aptly titled 3614 Jackson Highway. Such a regional identifier signified to the world the intellectual property of the collaborating entrepreneurs of the Jackson Highway studio and has largely remained so, even beyond its era of operation. Detroit, Philadelphia, Nashville, and Memphis were all home to studios with distinct identities like the “Motown Sound,” “TSOP, the sound of Philadelphia,” and Memphis’s “Stax sound.” And so members of the former FAME rhythm section renamed themselves the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section, simultaneously laying claim to a regional identity and eclipsing FAME’s indirect local association with Florence. The musicians of the MSSS wanted a name that would distinguish their studio from FAME and that would promote their all-important “sound.” In the late 1960s, independent regional recording was at its zenith. The quartet was also joined by a host of songwriters, including George Jackson, Randy McCormick, and Phillip Mitchell (signed to Muscle Shoals Sound Publishing Company), and producers such as Al Bell, Ahmet Ertegun, Glenn Frey, Johnny Sandlin, Jerry Wexler, and Bobby Womack. Although recording artists frequently brought their own producers, much of the production work was done by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section’s members themselves (often garnering co-production credits), as was the case in their work with Bob Seger and Paul Simon. The studio maintained its own staff of writers and engineers. The four musicians combined their resources and purchased the building and installed an eight-track recording machine compatible with Atlantic Records’ recording equipment, with important financial assistance from Atlantic Records’ vice president Jerry Wexler, who wanted the quartet available for his projects. Hawkins and Johnson had envisioned opening a studio for some time and were interested in purchasing a building at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield, which already housed a studio. In March 1969, members of the MSRS- Barry Beckett (keyboards), Roger Hawkins (drums), David Hood (bass), and Jimmy Johnson (guitar)-severed their ties with FAME Studios (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) in Muscle Shoals and organized their own music production facility, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Inc. The musical legacy of the recordings made at the studio rivals the “sounds” of Detroit, Memphis, and Philadelphia. From its establishment in 1969 by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (MSRS) until the mid-1980s, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio (MSSS) in Sheffield, Colbert County, was one of the most sought-after recording studios in the nation.
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