Jimmy Hughes was born in 1938 and grew up in Leighton, not far from Muscle Shoals. His early experience of performing came at high school, when he became a member of the Singing Clouds Gospel quartet, in 1956. In 1962, he was introduced to Rick Hall by a friend, Bob Carl Bailey, who had also sung in the Singing Clouds quartet.
Jimmy Hughes 1967
Photo: Atco Records Trade Ad (Wikimedia Commons)
Rick Hall gave Hughes an audition and then recorded him singing a Hall/Ivy song called “I’m Qualified”. It was released on the Guyden label, a Philadelphia company, but failed to make an impression. Hughes started singing secular songs, performing in local clubs and building up his experience. He also started writing songs, one of which he took with him on his next visit to FAME in 1964. “Steal Away” was based on a Gospel song and suited Hughes’ style. It was to prove an important song in the development of the Muscle Shoals sound.
“Steal Away” was the first hit recorded at the new FAME studio and set the pattern for future success. It was a powerful ballad, which had been recorded in one take, with the FAME session band, with Jerry Carrigan on drums, Norbert Putnam on bass, David Briggs on keyboards and Terry Thompson on guitar. Thanks to the exposure that the song was given on radio stations in the southern states, it sold well, rising to number seventeen on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart.
The national success of Hughes’ single enabled Rick Hall to sign a distribution deal with Vee-Jay Records for his FAME releases. That was an important step, as it meant that Hall did not have to hawk each recording he made around a multitude of agents and record companies, until he found a deal.
Jimmy Hughes cut four more singles at FAME that made the charts between 1964 and 1967. He also recorded an album called “Steal Away” that was released by Vee-Jay, which featured several songs written by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, working together for the first time. He then moved to Stax Records in Memphis, where his first single, “I Like Everything About You” (1968), issued on the Volt label, went to number twenty-one on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart. Subsequent songs failed to chart, however, and Hughes retired from the music industry in 1970.
Three albums of Hughes’ songs have been released on Kent Records; two are collections of the FAME recordings and the third is a compilation of the songs recorded at Stax.
The importance of Hughes’ early success was that it established FAME as a recording centre in the R&B/Soul music field. It gave credibility to the white musicians who played on the sessions and to Rick Hall too, who produced all the tracks. Hughes, a cousin of Percy Sledge, became a prototype for later artists in Muscle Shoals and even for Johnnie Taylor and Al Green in Memphis.
Header Image: Jimmy Hughes Kent Records
