What were the first songs recorded at FAME Studios?
You might not necessarily know the studio by name, but you’ll know the singers and the songs they sang when passing through the doors at FAME Studios in Florence and later Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Some of the songs that captured and transmuted the magic in the Muscle Shoals air included things like Aretha Franklin’s ‘I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)’ and ‘Tell Mama’ by Etta James, ‘Mustang Sally’, ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ and ‘Hey Jude’ by Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge’s timeless ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’, and Staple Singers classics like ‘I’ll Take You There’ or Candi Staton’s ‘I’m Just a Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin’)’.
As the 1960s became the 1970s, everyone who was anyone flocked to the studio to record, including Rod Stewart and The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and, much later still, Alicia Keys, Alison Krauss and The Raconteurs.
In fact, so much of the greatest music of the 1960s was recorded in just this one small studio, in this one small Southern town, and was produced by one great big character of a man and played on by the same set of monumentally talented musicians that it is almost a joke. The sign above the entryway that reads “Through these doors walk the finest Musicians, Songwriters, Artists, and Producers in the World” is more than justified.
At the midpoint of the 20th century, so much attention was being paid to Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, 150 miles away in Memphis, TN and his enviable roster of recording artists like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. But not too far away down the road from Bluff City, another fledgling studio was forging a new sound of its own.
In 1959, Rick Hall and business partner Billy Sherrill received an offer from Tom Stafford, the owner of a local recording studio situated above the City Drug Store of Florence, Alabama, to set up a new publishing company which was to be known as Florence Alabama Music Enterprises. Within a year, Hall had taken sole ownership of the business and shortened the name to the snappier acronym of FAME. Before long, he had produced the very first hit out of the studio.
When it was released in December of 1961, Arthur Alexander’s ‘You Better Move On’ steadily made its way up the charts, reaching as high as number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 and catching the attentions of the young Rolling Stones. In the process, the song earned the fledgling publishing company and studio enough money to move out of the Drug Store space and into a bigger building all of its own, the now legendary studios at 603 Avalon Avenue, Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
The atmosphere of ‘You Better Move On’ captured something that must have been in the air in the early 1960s, as it shares an essence with the Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman penned ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ from a year before and the soon-to-be-released ‘Cry to Me’. There is a sparsity to the song and the sound of the production that fills up all of the space it leaves behind with an overwhelming emotional power. This is a slow burning ballad that has a lot of heart, and a lot of guts, and, a lot of soul.
Hall knew he was onto a winning formula with this production style, and tried to repeat its success with the singer Jimmy Hughes, including on a single that he had co-written himself, ‘I’m Qualified’ that did well regionally but didn’t see the same national attention that ‘You Better Move On’ had enjoyed.
Hall had faith in his instincts, though, and in Jimmy Hughes, so when he relocated to Muscle Shoals and to the new FAME Studios, he brought Hughes back in for another session, the first at the new studio. That first session would more than vindicate Hall’s convictions.
‘Steal Away’, written and sung by Jimmy Hughes, became not only the first song recorded in the studio but was the first in a long line of legendary hits, as it made its way up to number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and as high as number 2 on the Cash Box Top 50 R&B charts. With its sparse but deeply impactful rhythm, cascading piano lines and Hughes’ own incomparable and heart-piercing vocal, the song is as evocative as it is transcendent.
It may have been the first hit out of the new Muscle Shoals studio, but with singers like Aretha Franklin, Clarence Carter, Candi Staton, Bobby Womack, Otis Redding and countless other incredible artists soon to flock to the studio, it would be far from the last.
