RICK HALL’S BEST PRODUCTIONS
Ten R&B, soul and country tracks given some FAME studios magic
ARTHUR ALEXANDER You Better Move on 1961
Hall had just set up operations in a candy and tobacco warehouse, and this was his first official production. On the charts it was a modest hit; off the charts, it was wildly popular.
JIMMY HUGHEs steal Away 1964
Like Arthur Alexander, Jimmy Hughes was a local black artist who came to FAME. After a few flop singles, Hall suggested he write his own song. The result is this pleading R&B burner that went to No 2 on the R&B charts.
WILSON PICKETT Land of 1000 dances 1966
After Pickett alienated the crew at Stax in Memphis, Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler sent the singer down to the Shoals. One of his first efforts there was this excitable dance song, which features Roger Hawkins’ ferocious drumbeat and some of Pickett’s best vocals.
ARTHUR CONLEY I Can’t stop (No No No) 1966
Conley is best known for “Sweet Soul Music”, which was recorded at FAME in 1967, but produced by Otis Redding. This previous single, which Hall produced based on a tune by house songwriter Dan Penn, has a similar energy and buoyancy, double-tracking the vocals to make Conley sound like a one-man Sam & Dave.
ARETHA FRANKLIN I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) 1967
After their success with Pickett, Wexler sent another Atlantic artist to FAME. Franklin and the Swampers had trouble figuring out the arrangement to this tune, until Spooner Oldham improvised the intro on his Wurlitzer organ. A massive hit, it established Franklin as the top soul singer.
ETTA JAMEs Tell Mama 1967
Chess Records hoped FAME could do for Etta James what they did for Aretha. With its towering horns and gale-force vocals, her version of the Clarence Carter hit established her as a commanding R&B artist.
BOBBIE GENTRY Fancy 1969
Hall’s production on this story song about a young woman who escapes poverty by becoming an escort is eccentric but sympathetic, allowing the narrator to maintain her dignity despite her controversial profession.
WILSON PICKETT Hey Jude 1968
Session guitarist Duane Allman persuaded the singer to tackle this Beatles tune, and Hall’s production highlights a roomful of musicians playing perfectly. On the coda, the producer simply steps out of the way while Pickett howls beautifully and Allman invents Southern rock.
CANDI STATON I’d Rather Be An old Man’s sweetheart (Than A Young Man’s Fool) 1969
Just hours after auditioning for Rick Hall in 1969, Staton was in the studio recording her first FAME single. Her emphatic vocals, honed on the gospel circuit, found a perfect setting in Hall’s production.
WILLIE HIGHTOWER Back Road Into Town 1971
Alabama native Hightower never achieved the success of other artists on this list, but he recorded a number of solid singles with Hall, the best of which is this sad tale of poverty and personal sacrifice.
especially tumultuous. “I must have sung ‘I’m Just a Prisoner’ a hundred times, ’til I was so hoarse I could barely talk. He kept saying, ‘I want you to sound like a prisoner!’ ‘Rick, I don’t know how to sound like a prisoner.’ I sang that song all day, came back the next morning and sang it some more. We did it until I got so angry at him. ‘I ain’t singing this song no more!’ He just smiled and said, ‘Yes, you are.’” at wit’s end she gave it one more try, sounding utterly hopeless. “He finally shouts, ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ He put his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘You don’t have to sing that song no more.’
“Rick was a feeling producer,” she continues. “He felt you. He wanted that emotional thing that would make people laugh or cry. He used to say, ‘If I can’t feel it, nobody else can feel it.’ I loved Rick. He was a friend and a brother.”
AFEW weeks after Hall’s death, Jimmy Johnson and David Hood are holding court across town at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, a squat stone building recently restored to its ’70s glory: green and gold burlap covering the ceiling, brightly painted walls, coloured lamps, vintage chairs, and rows and rows of guitars. Johnson regales a crowd of about 100 friends and fans with tales of The Rolling Stones: how he had to scream in Mick Jagger’s face, how he devised the guitar sound on “Brown Sugar”. The pair are doing a Q&a for the release party of a new Swampers album, Muscle
Shoals Has Got The Swampers (titled after a line in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home alabama”). The band recorded most of these tracks more than 40 years ago, but they’re only just now getting a proper release.
Rick Hall is mentioned two or three times during the Q&a, referred to as a central figure in the Shoals music scene, as savvy businessman and a local eccentric, as a studio engineer who would restring a guitar midsession. He looms over the proceedings, his absence reminding everyone that these musicians themselves won’t be around forever to tell their stories.
Hall’s influence can be felt at every studio in the Shoals, but he’s a particularly complicated presence here at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. In 1969, at the height of FaME’s fame, the four Swampers told their boss they were leaving to form their own studio. Hall was understandably angered, not only losing his best players but getting some tough competition as well. “He said stuff like, ‘You’ll never work here again! You won’t make it!’ The usual things you’d expect,” recalls Hood. “It scared us so much that we knew we had to make it – and we did make it. We had to work absolutely as hard as Rick did just to prove ourselves.”
The Shoals turned out to be big enough for more than one major studio, and Hall came around to the idea, even sending some of his sessions over to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. “It’s a small town, and sooner or later you’ve got to have contact and associate with people,” says Hood. “and it did work out. We worked with him again. He would come and record at our studio, and we would go and record at his studio. I consider him a friend – a close friend – so it was a very sad thing to lose him.”
Both Johnson and Hood consider Hall a mentor – the man who taught them what they needed to know in order to make Muscle Shoals Sound Studio a success. “I owe my career to Rick, and most of the people who are in music here do as well,” says Hood. “It was painful sometimes, working for him. Sometimes he would just drive you crazy trying to get what he wanted, but everybody who did work for him was better for it. He made you tough. He made you good.” ack at FaME, Rick’s son, Rodney Hall, is explaining how his father established an empire sturdy enough to weather the ups and down of the music industry. “He started the business as a publishing company that had a studio to record demos. Then he became a record producer who also ran a publishing company. That diversity is why we’re still in business. When one’s down, the other is up. It all works together. and we’re still diversifying.”
Born four years after FaME was built, Rodney Hall grew up in the studio, thinking of it as “a playground with expensive microphones I knew not to touch”. He officially joined the family firm in the early ’90s, and today, “I do a little bit of all of it. I sell T-shirts. I engineer. I produce. I take out the garbage. I’m general manager and co-owner.”
Despite the studio’s storied history, his has not been an easy job. “When I came to work here after college, I remember looking around and noticing that there was nobody my age in the music industry here. My fear was that I’m going to be standing here all by myself if something doesn’t change.” Rodney’s solution was to open up the studio once a week to local musicians, turning it into a workshop and classroom, with music veterans like his father occasionally serving as mentors and collaborators. The sessions became known as the Tuesday Music club, early members including Jason Isbell, Shonna Tucker and Gary Nichols.
“It was our first time in a real studio, and it was a very fertile thing for all of us,” recalls Jimbo Hart, a Tuesday Music club regular who has played in Isbell’s backing band the 400 Unit for 10 years. “When Rick was at the studio, you knew to mind your Ps and Qs.” The Tuesday Music club was a simple yet powerful idea, one that has grown from a weekly event into a nightly event and has allowed Rodney Hall to keep the studio open and relevant at a time when it’s becoming harder and harder for small labels and small businesses to keep their doors open. Following the FaME pop-up store in New York, Rodney Hall will focus on two upcoming projects. One is a concept album about the Shoals featuring contributions from chris Stapleton, alicia keys, Willie Nelson and others. The other is a TV series based on The Man From Muscle Shoals, which producers – including Johnny Depp – are currently pitching to networks. In other words, FaME might be healthier in 2018 than at any point in the last 30 years, as a new generation of artists extend Rick Hall’s legacy into the new century. “It’s been exciting to go from a point where I was wondering if we would even be around in 10 years to a point where it feels like we’ll be around for the next 100 years. Or, as my dad would say, a million years.”
B