At Norala Studio, Quin Ivy spent most of 1966 organising sessions for Percy Sledge. Jerry Wexler was happy for the tiny studio in the Shoals to keep on working with Atlantic’s new R&B star. He knew from experience that it wasn’t easy to create the sound that Percy Sledge had taken into the charts. He realised too that his company would benefit from all the attention that Quin Ivy and his team were going to give their number one performer. And that was more important than the fact that the studio only offered very basic technology.
Atlantic Records were planning to send a few of their existing Atco artists to Norala, in search of the Percy Sledge effect. They were also hoping that Quin Ivy would unearth more diamonds from the Muscle Shoals music mines. For this reason, they signed a new deal with Ivy in early 1967, promising to take material from any new artists that seemed to have the potential to break into the charts. Ivy set up a new record label, which he called South Camp, and the Norala label was abandoned.
The new South Camp label
June Edwards was the first singer singed to the new label. For the first single release, she recorded a Penn/Oldham song “My Man (My Sweet Man)” and a Spooner Oldham composition “Heaven Help Me (I’m Falling In Love With You)”. Sadly, the single attracted little attention.
The next arrival at Norala was Don Varner, a young singer from Birmingham, Alabama. He recorded two songs in February 1967. The first was “Down In Texas”, written by Eddie Hinton and Marlin Greene, followed by “Masquerade”, another Eddie Hinton composition, co-written with Paul Ballenger. Once again, Atlantic were not tempted, despite some excellent guitar input from Marlin Greene, Junior Lowe and Hinton himself (on bass).
The first of the Atco artists arrived later in 1967. Ted Taylor was an experienced singer but needed a hit to convince Atlantic to keep him on their roster. He recorded a number of songs, two of which were selected for his next Atco single release: a Penn/ Oldham composition “Feed The Flame” and “Baby Come Back To Me”. The A-side is a romantic Country ballad that Taylor infuses with Soul, with soaring vocal lines and falsetto frills. Quin Ivy must have been hopeful of a breakthrough, but the single failed to chart and Taylor moved on from Atlantic.
Percy Sledge returned to record his album “The Percy Sledge Way”, featuring a series of covers. The band for the sessions included Spooner Oldham, Roger Hawkins and David Hood from FAME, plus Marlin Greene, Jerry Weaver and Eddie Hinton. The album and several singles charted, and Quin Ivy was happy.
He set about attracting new talent to the studio once more. Tony Borders came to Norala Studios in 1967 to record the first of a series of singles with Quin Ivy. Side A, “You Better Believe It”, is a David Briggs/ Donny Fritts song, and side B is a song that Tony Borders had written called “What Kind of Spell”. The single was released on the South Camp label.
Borders returned to Norala later in the year to record six more songs, which Quin Ivy took successfully to Revue Records. “Cheaters Never Win”, a Penn/ Oldham song, is backed by “Love and a Friend” by Billy Butler, released by Revue in 1968. The following year saw the release of another Penn/ Oldham song “I Met Her in Church”, backed by “What Kind of Spell”, recycled from South Camp, and then “Polly Wally”, backed by “Gentle On My Mind”.
In what was his most productive year, Tony Borders saw another of his Quin Ivy productions released on Uni Records. The “Lonely Weekend” single was backed by “You Better Believe”.
In 1970 two more Borders singles emerged on Quin Ivy’s renamed own label. The first was “For My Woman’s Love”/ “Please Don’t Break My Heart”, the second was “Promise To Myself”/ “Mix and Mingle”.
While the earlier songs recorded by Borders at Norala were ballads, the later tracks were more up-tempo. The results were equally as good, which was no surprise. The session band consisted of Eddie Hinton and Junior Lowe (guitars), Roger Hawkins (drums), David Hood (bass) and a horn section made up of Gene “Bowlegs” Miller, James Mitchell and Aaron Varnell. As so often, the lack of publicity meant that the singles received little attention, far less than they deserved.
In 1988, the Japanese company True Sound Records issued a twelve-track compilation of Borders’ songs. Better still, in 2007, the UK’s Soulscape Records released a compilation album with eighteen tracks, making available several previously unreleased songs. They are well worth a listen.
In 1967 Quin Ivy decided to change the name of his studio and record label again, to bring them into line with his publishing company. They all now became Quinvy.
The new Quinvy label
Visitors included The Wee Juns, the Demon Brothers and Bill Brandon. The first two acts were seeking success in the Pop music field, but Brandon, a Black singer from Huntsville in Alabama, had a strong baritone voice that was suited to Soul and Gospel songs.
Bill Brandon recorded a number of excellent tracks at Quinvy, including “Self Preservation” (later recorded by Percy Sledge), “Full Grown Lovin’ Man”, “Since I Fell For You” and “Strangest Feeling”. The first of these is a very good Country Soul ballad, produced by Spooner Oldham. The second is driving dance track. The third is a cover of an old Buddy Johnson song from 1948, and the last has a strong flavour of Blues, written by Penn and Oldham. The first two songs were issued Quin Ivy on his South Camp label in 1967. The last two were paired for release on a 1970 Quinvy single.
However, the best of Brandon’s songs with Quin Ivy is “Rainbow Road”, which Ivy leased to Tower Records in New York for 1968 release. It was written by Dan Penn and Donnie Fritts, probably with Arthur Alexander in mind, and Alexander did record the song later. Brandon’s version fits the sad storyline perfectly, with horns and strings adding to the poignancy of the lyrics.
When these singles failed to gather any momentum, Brandon on, first to Moonsong Records in Birmingham, Alabama, and then to Prelude Records in New York. He recorded several singles and an album for Prelude at Wishbone Studios in the Shoals, and then left the music industry.
Ben E. King came to Quinvy in May 1967 to record five tracks. Marlin Greene did all the arrangements and also produced the songs, along with Quin Ivy. The arrangements had been set up by Atco Records, who chose two of the songs for release on the label. The tracks in question were “Don’t Take Your Sweet Love Away” and “She Knows What To Do For Me”. The first was co-written by Marlin Greene and his wife Jeanie. The second was a Dr. John/ Jessie Hill song. Sadly, the single failed to make much impression.
Another significant 1967 arrival was Eddie Hinton. Born in Florida in 1944, Hinton had lived in Tuscaloosa, one of the Quad Cities since childhood. He was a White singer/songwriter and guitarist, who loved Black music and developed a style that was perfectly suited to Muscle Shoals R&B. Hinton was invited by Marlin Greene to play on sessions at Norala/ Quinvy from 1967. They wrote several songs together, including “Cover Me” and “It’s All Wrong But It’s Alright” for Percy Sledge. Hinton played on many of the recordings that Sledge undertook with Quin Ivy and his talents were well-known amongst the local session men.
Hinton went on to join sessions at FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in addition to his work at Quinvy. His list of credits is impressive, including hits by Aretha Franklin, Arthur Conley, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and Johnny Taylor. Hinton played lead guitar on many well-known hits from Muscle Shoals.
He also recorded two albums in his own name during this period. The first was “Very Extremely Dangerous” released on the Capricorn Records label in 1978. The second, “Letters from Mississippi”, was a compilation of six songs recorded with Jimmy Johnson in 1982 and some later tracks recorded at Birdland Recording Studio with John Wyker in 1986. Wyker called on Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, and Donnie Fritts to help put the album together. This latter album was released in Europe and sparked interest in Hinton’s work. His career was re-ignited, and a number of Soul-influenced Blues albums followed. Listen to the Hinton composition, “Hard Luck Guy”, to see just how much Hinton owes to Otis Redding! The session band included Johnny Sandlin (drums), Spooner Oldham (Hammond B3 organ), Clayton Ivey (piano) and Eddie Hinton (guitar), with members of the Muscle Shoals Horns. Eddie Hinton died in 1995, at the age of 51.
In the first half of 1968, James Carr visited Quinvy, to record three songs, namely “Love Is a Beautiful Thing”, “Life Turned Her That Way” and “That’s the Way Love Turned Out for Me”. He had also found time to record one track at FAME Studios in 1967, a George Jackson/ Raymond Moore song called “Search Your Heart”. After a long time in the vaults, the Quinvy tracks and the FAME song were released on an EP in 2011, entitled “In Muscle Shoals”, by Kent Records in the UK and Goldwax in the USA. “Love Is a Beautiful Thing” is a classic, with beautiful horn arrangements and a lovely flute fill adding some real class.
Percy Sledge’s continuing success enabled Quin Ivy to build a new studio in 1968. The new Quinvy Studio building was on Broadway in Sheffield, a little further out of town. The new studio had four-track recording equipment, which meant that overdubbing extra tracks now became possible. No longer did Ivy need to send tapes to Memphis or Miami to have strings or horns added. Other local recording venues had moved to eight or sixteen track machines, but four was enough for the improvements that Ivy wanted to make.
David Johnson was given the responsibility of managing the new studio by Quin Ivy. Johnson had worked at Norala with Ivy and now took on sound engineer duties. Johnson had met Ivy earlier, in fact. As a young teenager, Johnson used to go to the WLAY Radio station to speak with the DJs and listen to the music. Ivy gave him a job at his record store and later Johnson became a DJ at WLAY. When Ivy opened Norala Studios, Johnson turned up there too and was able to watch and learn.
In 1969, the Swampers left FAME, which also meant that they were concentrating on their new venture at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. As a result, they were no longer available for session work at Quinvy. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham were together again at American Sound Studios in Memphis, and Marlin Greene, on whom Quin Ivy had depended since he opened Norala, was finding work with the Swampers at MSS. It was a period of rapid change. Johnson soon took Greene’s place as Ivy’s right-hand man. New session musicians were brought in, including a number of the members of the FAME Gang, and the pattern set in 1967 and 1968 continued. Percy Sledge came to record new material when he could fit sessions in between his live performances. Other less well-known artists came in search of elusive success. In 1969, Quin Ivy sold the old Norala premises to James Thomas and Billy Cofield, the sax player who had played on Percy Sledge’s original version of “When A Man Loves A Woman” alongside Don Pollard.
Quin Ivy started out much as Rick Hall had at FAME, but he has never been as well-known. Nevertheless, the songs that were produced at his studios in the Shoals are some of the best to emerge from the area.
