When the Swampers Session Band left FAME in 1969, they moved into a building at 3614 Jackson Highway. It was an old warehouse in Sheffield, where coffins had been stored, opposite a cemetery. In 1967 Jimmy Johnson had helped the owner, Fred Bevis, turn it into a four-track recording studio. Some of the local musicians and songwriters had rented space there to work, but things didn’t go as well as Bevis had hoped, so he decided to sell the property. He offered it to Roger Hawkins, who persuaded the others that it was an opportunity not to be missed. Any doubts were settled when Jerry Wexler offered financial and artist support, and the sale was agreed. The four session men were co-owners, the first to own their own studio.
Their first task was to upgrade the equipment to an eight-track system. They were then ready to go. Wexler provided the first client, the Pop singer Cher, who came to Muscle Shoals Sound to record her sixth album, marking the opening of the new facility by naming her album “3614 Jackson Highway”. Boz Scaggs then arrived to record his 1969 album “Boz Scaggs”, with Duane Allman playing lead guitar on several tracks.
Just like Rick Hall at FAME, the Swampers took the decision to invite artists from all genres to their studio, but there were still opportunities to produce excellent R&B music. It was indeed an R&B song that achieved the first big hit for the new studio, when in August 1969 R.B. Greaves, another Atlantic artist, came to record a song that he had written, called “Take a Letter Maria”.
3614, Jackson Highway
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (Wikimedia Commons)
Greaves was a nephew of Sam Cooke, with a similar smooth, rich voice. The single sold well, rising to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, selling over two million copies by 1970, achieving gold certification. It was the first hit for the Swampers, who were joined for the session by Eddie Hinton (guitar), Mel Lastie (trumpet) and Donna Jean Thatcher (later Godchaux), who sang the backing vocal. Producers were Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records and Marlin Greene, who had switched from Norala Studio to Muscle Shoals Sound.
Just a few weeks later, the UK female solo artist Lulu recorded a now-classic album in Muscle Shoals which was not a major hit record but had some outstanding tracks, according to many music historians and music industry critics. The album “New Routes” was recorded between September 10th and October 2nd 1969 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. It was one of that facility’s earliest recordings, the album being released on January 16th 1970 in America. The album was the debut release for Lulu on the Atco Records label, a music division of Atlantic Records, co-produced by the legendary Atlantic Records team of Tom Dowd, Arif Mardin and Jerry Wexler.
Only one single was released from the album, called “Oh Me Oh My (I’m a Fool for You Baby)”. During February 1970, “New Routes” debuted on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart on its way to number eighty-eight. A series of performances by Lulu on United States television channels had helped to break the single “Oh Me Oh My…” into the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart in December 1969 and then buoy the track, as it gradually gained momentum to become Lulu’s first Top 30 hit since “To Sir With Love”, at the end of February 1970. “Oh Me Oh My…” would peak at number twenty-two in March 1970 on the Cash Box Pop Singles Chart listing.
The album produced no further A-sides, but in May 1970 the track “Where’s Eddie” was utilised to back “Hum a Song (From Your Heart)”, the advance single from her next studio album “Melody Fair”.
Lulu was followed in December by some surprising visitors from the UK. The Rolling Stones arrived at Muscle Shoals on December 2nd in 1969 for a short recording session to see if they could, assisted by Jimmy Johnson the chief sound engineer at the studio, create a sound that had a Rolling Stones feel mixed with a Muscle Shoals signature sound. Keith Richards has remarked on the effect it had on them: “I thought it was one of the easiest and rockin’est sessions that we’d ever done. I don’t think we’ve been quite so prolific ever. I mean, we cut three or four tracks in two days.”
The results were dynamic and powerful, with the lead single “Brown Sugar” going to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart week-ending May 29th 1971 (2 weeks). Contractual issues delayed the release of the album that the Rolling Stones were making. The tracks recorded at Muscle Shoals were eventually included on the album “Sticky Fingers” which peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart in May 1971 (4 weeks). The album also did extremely in the UK by reaching the number one position on the Official UK Pop Albums Chart week-ending May 8th 1971 (5 weeks).
The single “Brown Sugar” sold in excess of a quarter of a million copies in the UK and was awarded a silver disc by the BPI on November 1st 1975. The “Sticky Fingers” album did very well in France and was awarded gold certification for selling over one hundred thousand copies in that country and peaked at number three on the French SNEP Albums Chart. The album was number one in nine different music markets across the world. In the United States at present the album has eventually achieved triple-platinum status for over three million copies sold, according to the RIAA.
The single “Brown Sugar” also received gold certification in America for over one million copies sold according to the RIAA. The other Muscle Shoals songs were “Wild Horses” and “You Gotta Move”. The last of these was recorded first on the first night of their two-day session. It is a traditional Gospel song, recorded in 1965 by Mississippi Fred McDowell. Mick Jagger chose the song to celebrate being in Alabama!
The Swampers now had two gold discs and a number one. Unfortunately, Jerry Wexler had had second thoughts about using Muscle Shoals and switched his artists to a studio in Florida. The threat to the new studio was obvious, but the word spread that the boys from FAME were open for business. Next to come were Mel & Tim, followed by the Staple Singers. Mel & Tim had had one hit in Chicago, before Barry Beckett brought them to Muscle Shoals to record “Starting All Over Again”. Stax Records in Memphis picked the recording up and released it in 1972. The single spent five months on the charts in the USA, reaching number four on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and number nineteen on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart.
The Staple Singers were well-known when they came to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in 1971. Having started their recording career in Chicago, they had teamed up with Steve Cropper at Stax in Memphis to consolidate their breakthrough into the mainstream of secular music.
In 1970 things changed. Steve Cropper left Stax and Pervis left the group. Sister Yvonne took over from Pervis, and Al Bell replaced Steve Cropper as producer. Bell’s first decision was to switch the centre of operations to Muscle Shoals. He brought the Staple Singers to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios to work with the Swampers.
The first album master-minded by Bell was “The Staple Swingers”, released in 1971, which entered the Soul Albums chart, reaching number nine. Three singles were taken from the album, “Love Is Plentiful”, “Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom Boom)” and “You’ve Got to Earn It”, which all charted on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart. Their popularity was growing! The songs on the album were written by a wide variety of songwriters, including several of the Stax in-house team, plus Maurice and Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and Pops Staples too. Strings and horns were provided by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and the Muscle Shoals Horns, with the Bar-Kays responsible for some of the horn arrangements. Final production work was carried out by Bell and Terry Manning at Ardent Studios in Memphis. There was a lot of Stax input, but the Swampers drove the songs, and that, of course, is why Al Bell brought them to Muscle Shoals rather than record the album in Memphis.
The follow-up album, “Be Altitude: Respect Yourself”, finally sealed their break-through, reaching number three on the Billboard R&B Albums Chart and number nineteen on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart. Again, three singles from the album broke into the national charts: “Respect Yourself” (number nine Pop and number two R&B), “I’ll Take You There” (number one on both charts) and “This World” (thirty-eight Pop and six R&B). Their style is now much funkier, with a dance beat. “I’ll Take You There” adds some reggae too, with the inspiration coming from Al Bell, who wrote the song.
Musicians involved in the session were Jimmy Johnson, Raymond Banks, and Eddie Hinton (guitars), Barry Beckett (Wurlitzer electronic piano), Roger Hawkins (drums), and David Hood (bass), plus Ben Cauley from the Bar-Kays (trumpet), and the South Memphis horns. Horn and string arrangements were done by Johnny Allen and recorded at Artie Fields recording studio in Detroit. The finishing touches were added in Memphis at Ardent Studios by Terry Manning, who overdubbed guitar, Moog synthesizer, mellotron and harmonica parts. Al Bell oversaw production. With the help of the Swampers, the songs from this album have become classics in the field of Gospel-tinged Soul.
There were two further albums on Stax, “Be What You Are” (1973) and “City in the Sky” (1974), which both charted to number thirteen on the R&B Albums chart. Four singles reached the top four of the R&B Singles chart, with the most successful “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” spending three weeks at number one on the Hot Soul Singles chart in 1973. Everything looked set fair, but in 1975 Stax ran into financial difficulties and the family moved back to Chicago.
Around the same time as the Staple Singers were putting these songs together, a new American rock band came to work at the studios, with the unusual name of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The recorded a number of songs for their first album, before the decision was taken to shelve those tracks when they failed to attract a record company to release them. They started again elsewhere and did well. When several members of the band were killed in a plane crash in 1977, it was decided to release the early material as a posthumous compilation album with the album given the ironic title “Skynyrd’s First and … Last”. The album was re-released in 1998, with eight additional tracks, with a new name “Skynyrd’s First: The Complete Muscle Shoals Album”.
It was this band that gave the four session men who owned the studio an additional push towards iconic status by writing about them in one of their songs, “Sweet Home Alabama”:
Now Muscle Shoals has got The Swampers
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two (yes they do)
Lord they get me off so much
They pick me up when I’m feeling blue, now how ’bout you?
According to the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio website: “MSS remained at the Jackson Hwy location for nine years from 1969 to 1978. During that time, the Swampers played on over 200 albums, with over 75 RIAA Gold and Platinum records, and hundreds of hit songs with artists such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Dylan, Duane Allman, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Bob Seger, the Staple Singers, Rod Stewart, Leon Russell, Willie Nelson, Cat Stevens, Dr. Hook, and Eddie Hinton.”
Header Photo: Muscle Shoals Sound Studio 2022 (A1bi, Wikimedia Commons)
