Fame Recording Studios, dwelling of the “Muscle Shoals Sound”
Nestled alongside the Tennessee River, within the state of Alabama, lies a small city that attracts large names. You could not have heard of Muscle Shoals, however you have got positively heard its sound, because of a person named Rick Corridor.
Hidden among the many cotton fields and corn stalks of the agricultural South, Fame Recording studios was first established atop a drug retailer in Florence, Alabama. Corridor began Fame Studios within the late Nineteen Fifties as a publishing firm and recording studio. His son, Rodney Corridor, runs the studio right this moment.
Because the studio grew it could relocate to a former tobacco warehouse, the place it could produce its first music hit. “[My dad] recorded an artist named Arthur Alexander, with a tune referred to as ‘You Higher Transfer On,’ which grew to become a success,” mentioned Rodney.
“From there he went on to document Jimmy Hughes, constructed this studio, and so they’ve been doing it for over 60 years now.”
Session musicians on the studio – a bunch of funky White guys referred to as “the Swampers” – recorded with such artists as Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Clarence Carter, Candi Staton, and Little Richard, and have been chargeable for creating what’s famously recognized right this moment because the “Muscle Shoals sound.”
Little Richard performs “Freedom Blues,” recorded at Fame Studios:
Some of the well-known musicians to come back by way of Muscle Shoals was the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin. Franklin has credited Rick Corridor with turning round her struggling profession within the Nineteen Sixties. His eager sense of sound, and a recording enterprise that was run from a “colorblind” perspective (a uncommon commodity within the rural South), have been the right components to catapult Franklin musically, producing her hit “I By no means Liked a Man the Means I Love You.”
“I believe Aretha discovered her sound in Muscle Shoals,” mentioned Rodney Corridor. “She had been earlier than doing lots of pop music that did not actually seem to be it moved her, or different individuals. And so, she got here to Muscle Shoals [and] I believe related along with her gospel roots, and she or he began to truly really feel the music.”
Rick Corridor was named “Producer of the Yr” by Billboard Journal in 1971; he additionally earned a Grammy nomination. He died in 2018, however not earlier than incomes himself the title “Father of Muscle Shoals Music.”
At this time, Rodney Corridor continues the legacy his dad began, and the “Muscle Shoals Sound” lives on. “The music that was created right here has a soul, the musicians had a soul, and it is all concerning the really feel of the music and the groove and the way it feels, which I believe is the soul of the music,” he mentioned.
Music followers younger and outdated can go to and tour the Fame Recording Studios and stand in the identical room that artists like The Chicks, Kenny Chesney, Demi Lovato and The Rolling Stones have stood in to document a few of their best hits.
“Come expertise it. Come expertise the Southern lifestyle, the music, the laid-back life-style, the river; it is simply an incredible place,” Corridor concluded.
For more information:
- Fame Recording Studios, Muscle Shoals, Ala.
Story produced and edited by Roman Feeser.
