Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section

The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section is a group of American

To replace these musicians, Hall hired a core group consisting of Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood and Jimmy Johnson, initially called "the Second FAME Gang", but widely known by the nickname "The Swampers" .^[2] The Swampers subsequently recorded, produced, or engineered classic hits by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Leon Russell, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger and The Staple Singers. The Swampers were the subject of the 2013 documentary film Muscle Shoals, winner of the 2013 Boulder International Film Festival Grand Prize. They were mentioned by name in the lyrics of "Sweet Home Alabama" (1974) by Lynyrd Skynyrd and appear on the cover of Cher's 1969 album 3614 Jackson Highway.

In 1958, Rick Hall, a local musician and songwriter in Florence, Alabama, befriended Tom Stafford, whose father owned a pharmacy in downtown Florence. Above the pharmacy, up some rickety stairs, Stafford had some recording gear.^[6] He had partnered with Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill to create "SPAR" (an acronym for Stafford Publishing And Recording). He asked some 16-year-old members of a local band, Norbert Putnam, David Briggs and Jerry Carrigan, to make some song demos.^[6] It was here that these young musicians were first exposed to creating original parts on new songs, and they became proficient at it. Also frequenting these rooms were future musical elites, such as Donnie Fritts, Spooner Oldham, Terry Thompson and Dan Penn.^[6] Stafford and Sherrill later terminated Hall from the partnership, and Hall's humiliation fueled him to attempt to outdo them as their competitor.^[7]

Achieving recording industry stature

In 1961, Hall took out a loan to buy an abandoned brick warehouse in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to make a recording studio.^[7] Muscle Shoals is one of four towns in northwest Alabama clustered along the Tennessee River; the others are Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. His rhythm section (piano, bass and drums) was Briggs, Putnam, and Carrigan.

One of Hall's first protégés was an

Well-known producers began coming to Muscle Shoals to record with this house band to capture the perceived "Muscle Shoals sound". Atlanta producer Bill Lowery brought The Tams, who recorded "What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)", and Nashville's Felton Jarvis brought Tommy Roe to record "Everybody". Percy Sledge's cousin, Jimmy Hughes recorded "Steal Away" with the same teenaged session players, and it rose to #17 on the Billboard Hot 100^[9] It was followed by "Neighbor, Neighbor" and "Why Not Tonight"– both of which made the charts. Hall stated, "Those hits showed that FAME could be musically diverse, and they announced our open-door policy toward other labels".^[7] Rick Hall's financial success from "You Better Move On" gave him the capital to secure land in Muscle Shoals City, where, in 1962, he built a first-rate studio at 603 Avalon Avenue patterned after Owen Bradley's in Nashville.^[6] Some 50 years later, the building would be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[10]

Before long, Nashville music moguls Ray Stevens, Bob Beckham and Felton Jarvis made overtures to lure away Hall's backing musicians, saying that in Nashville, they would make four times the money Rick Hall was paying them.^[6] They resigned as a group to pursue independent careers in Nashville, and Hall was without his hit-making rhythm section. The replacement musicians were initially called "the Second FAME Gang" but were later nicknamed "The Swampers".^[11]

Swampers' early days

The core group of Rick Hall's new rhythm section was:

• Barry Beckett— keyboards
• Roger Hawkins— drums
• David Hood— bass
• Jimmy Johnson— guitar

Affectionately called The Swampers, but later officially adopting the name The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, this group achieved extraordinary success as one of the best-known group of

Guitarist Jimmy Johnson was the first FAME employee and did many jobs there, including playing rhythm guitar, engineering, and sweeping the floors.[13] In 1964, drummer Roger Hawkins was hired. When bass player David Hood first received the call that a job at FAME had opened up, he was working at his father's tire store.^[14]

Keyboard player Barry Beckett knew nothing about Muscle Shoals in 1967, but was hired on a session there,

Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler became acquainted with Hall and brought artists such as Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to record at FAME with the group of southern musicians based on their previous string of hit recordings.^[17]

1967 Aretha Franklin session

In January 1967, Jerry Wexler brought Aretha Franklin, then in her mid-20s, to Muscle Shoals for her first session for Atlantic.^[18] During this first session with the Swampers, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You", Franklin's husband at the time, Ted White, who had been cordial at first, became belligerent. White had secretly been sharing a bottle of vodka with the horn section during the session.^[7][19] White then demanded that Ken Laxton, the trumpet player who was white, be fired for making passes at Aretha.^[20] Hall and Wexler reluctantly agreed. About an hour later, White burst into the control room and demanded that the sax player be fired, saying, "He's flirting with my wife".^[7] The producers then fired the sax player. By this time everyone was exhausted and the rapidly-deteriorating session was terminated.

An hour later, Rick Hall, who had begun drinking after the session ended, went to Aretha and Ted's hotel room at the Downtowner Hotel in Florence "to try to smooth things over", but a fist fight erupted between Hall and White, with Aretha joining in to try to get Hall out.^[7] Hall then screamed, cursed and pounded the door, arousing Wexler, whose room was nearby.^[21] Wexler was horrified. Hall went to the lobby, called Aretha's room, and told Ted he'd better get out of town.^[7] They left the following day.

The only song that had been finished, "

In 1969, after a financial dispute, the Swampers broke away from Rick Hall and FAME to purchase a tiny studio with burlap-covered walls at 3614 Jackson Highway.^[14] They were aided in the process by Wexler, who arranged a loan from Atlantic Records to make much-needed equipment upgrades to 8-track recording machines that were compatible with Atlantic's equipment. The Swampers were to pay the loans back by providing studio time. At first, Hawkins and Johnson had more ownership, but subsequently they made Hood and Beckett equal partners at no cost.^[14] The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section created more than 50 hits at this studio.^[21]

The studio's sole bathroom was often used as a sound booth. The musicians would listen out on the porch to make final judgement on finished songs. David Hood said, "The building was a crackerbox building. A loud truck driving down the street or a heavy rainstorm, you'd have to stop working, because it was not built as a studio. It was a just a commercial building that had been adapted for studio use."^[20]

They asked themselves, "What are we going to call this place?" David Hood suggested the name, "Muscle Shoals Sound" and they all laughed. The joke was that the new studio, technically was in Sheffield, not Muscle Shoals. Only locals would know that, because the towns melded together. Since they had had a dispute with Rick Hall, Hood said, "So I thought, let's call it ' Muscle Shoals Sound ' just to get at Rick."^[20] They also trademarked the name "The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section".

Things were lean the first year. Finally they had a hit single with "

When Atlantic Records recorded in New York, the typical procedure was to hire an arranger who would come up with the song style from a demo recording and write out the parts for all musicians.^[7] In the session, musicians would come in and just play what was written for them. If it was not successful, the arranger was to blame.^[7] In Muscle Shoals and other Southern studios, the process was quite different. The musicians rarely read music, and usually nothing was written in advance; it was called a "head session".^[24]

As an example, in the Muscle Shoals recording of Wilson Pickett's classic hit "

When the session started, the Swampers began trying different rhythm patterns, dance beats and tempos for the song. After an hour of this, nothing was gelling.[7] Then Chips Moman hit on a guitar lick that set the basic groove and everyone fell in. The arrangement built communally. They decided to break it up by putting a solo drum interlude. During this, Pickett started screaming over the drummer, "nah, nah nah nah nah," then said, "I need somebody to help me now". It was captured on tape, and the players were summoned to the control room, where Rick Hall shouted, "Guys, we are now cutting a smash record".^[7] Musicians Moman and Cogbill disagreed, saying that there was no intro and no turnaround— the song was far from finished. Pickett borrowed the line, "nah, nah nah nah nah" and its melody from Cannibal & The Headhunters' 1965 version of "Land of 1000 Dances".^[25] What started as an ad lib by Frankie Garcia (Cannibal) from a live performance was then incorporated into their recording of the song, which reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1965.^[25] It was not part of Chris Kenner's own original 1962 recording.

In Hall's autobiography, he said Pickett suggested singing the count off, "one, two, three".^[7] Wexler told a different story and stated, "After dozens of abortive attempts, I came up with an idea. 'Sing the counts, Wilson', I suggested. 'Make the counts part of the intro' ".^[24] Hall said that was crazy—who ever heard of singing a count off? Pickett said, "let me show you," and got the horn players (Wayne Jackson, Charlie Chalmers, Andrew Love and Floyd Newman) to hit a chord.^[24]

The now-famous bass lick that followed was actually a second count off and took trials by three bass players to find something extraordinary.^[7] Moman suggested they allow Tommy Cogbill (guitar player) to switch to bass and give it a try. Cogbill put Vaseline on his fingertips and delivered the lick they had been hoping for.^[7]

Since they were recording in mono on one track, all had to now play it correctly from start to finish. If anyone missed his part, they all would have had to do the entire song from the beginning, and repetition often loses a song's excitement, due to fatigue. Hall said, "everybody looked at each other like, 'If you miss this, man, you're dead'."^[7] When they succeeded, there were high fives all around the studio. Hall said, "When you hear that record today, you can tell that everybody was feeding off the enthusiasm of everybody else in that room".^[7]

Later years