![]() So I wasn’t that excited that they were coming. I grew up with the blues, and listening to Chuck Berry. ‘They said they played the blues but to me that wasn’t the blues. ![]() ‘To be honest, I didn’t like the Rolling Stones music,’ he tells us. Johnson hadn’t been especially looking forward to the Rolling Stones’ visit, but working with them changed his mind. The Swampers even got a name-check in what’s become a kind of unofficial state song, Sweet Home Alabama, by Lynyrd Skynyrd, who recorded several albums and singles at Muscle Shoals.Īnd they’ve been known to pick a song or two His Wikipedia entry is definitely a long player. He went on to play on, produce or engineer an astonishing series of records, including working with artists such as Julian Lennon, Glenn Frey, Little Milton, Eric Clapton, Bob Seger, Levon Helm, and Steve Cropper. Johnson was surprised to find himself engineering the tracks, when the Stones’ regular producer, Jimmy Miller, couldn’t make it. ‘When they played Brown Sugar,’ says Jimmy Johnson, ‘I thought the building was going to come off its foundations.’ The Stones did three songs in three days in Muscle Shoals, which would later appear on their Sticky Fingers album: Wild Horses, Brown Sugar, and the blues standard You Gotta Move. ‘He had the chorus but that was about it. ‘Keith had this tune, Wild Horses, but I don’t think that was really finished,’ Mick Jagger said in an interview. It was in this tiny room that Keith Richards shut himself off from the rest of the band and the studio so he could concentrate on finishing writing a song he was working on. It opens right off the studio, and is the toilet. What everyone wants to see is the smallest room in the house, though. If Johnson pushed his chair too far back, he’d hit the back wall of the nondescript building. Like all recording studios where legendary songs have been made, it’s remarkably small, the size of a large living room, overlooked by the producer’s room through a glass window. They’re the only photos allowed inside the studio, which was still being worked on. ![]() Johnson is also involved in the renovation of the studio, and poses for pictures at the sound deck they’ve acquired from Nashville. Al Bell said, “Well I can book you the same band but for black guys you’re going to find them awfully pale.”‘ ‘When Paul Simon wanted to come here to record,’ says Jimmy Johnson, another of the original Swampers who still lives nearby, ‘he phoned Al Bell at Stax Records, who had put out some of our recordings, and said he wanted the same black band that had played on those records. Even after the Stones recorded there in 1969 and brought the studio to the attention of more white artists, the house band was still thought to be black. The Swampers had played on Number One hit tracks like Mustang Sally by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin’s Respect, and When a Man Loves a Woman by Percy Sledge. It wasn’t at first too widely known as a working studio, but the arrival of the Rolling Stones in December 1969 changed all that. The Swampers left the FAME Studios across town, where they had been working, and became the first rhythm section to build its own studio. Judy is the wife of David Hood, bass player with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, aka The Swampers, who founded the studio in 1969. ‘We’re recreating it as it was when the Stones recorded here, and as it was through the 1970s,’ Judy Hood explains. Which is where the orange shagpile carpet comes in. The studio, where artists like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Cher, Rod Stewart, and the Rolling Stones have all recorded, has been closed for some time but thanks to a generous donation by Dr Dre’s Beats Electronics company it’s being renovated to re-open later this year both as an active recording studio and for tours, in much the same way Sun Studio in Memphis operates. I’m in Muscle Shoals with a bunch of European music journalists, and we’re going to be the first outsiders allowed in to the hallowed ground of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. Also includes a fold-out sofa, a clawfoot tub, a walk-in tiled shower, luxury bedding, wet bar, refrigerator, single-cup coffee maker and an 18-foot private balcony overlooking historic downtown Florence.‘You can’t believe how hard it is to get orange shagpile carpet,’ Judy Hood tells us. Other features include a king-size bed, with luxury bedding by Peacock Alley. Swampette Judy Hood, wife of Swamper Bassist David Hood, assisted with the room design.Ĭheck out the gold records and authentic memorabilia while listening to music on the bluetooth sound system. This stunning space pays tribute to the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio where hundreds of hit records have been recorded by rock stars including the Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Steve Winwood, Duane Allman, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and many, many more.
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