Little Muscle Shoals, Alabama boasts an enormous legacy because the birthplace of blues, “Brown Sugar” and miraculous American icons.
Helen Keller, W.C. Helpful and Sam Phillips have been every born alongside this sleepy stretch of the Tennessee River in northern Alabama.
Keller’s life story of overcoming blindness and deafness to grow to be an creator and icon was instructed in “The Miracle Worker.” Helpful, “The King of Blues,” is among the most influential musicians in historical past.
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Each are nonetheless celebrated in birthplace museums round Muscle Shoals.
Phillips modified the course of popular culture when he based Solar Information in Memphis, Tennessee and found a younger singer named Elvis Presley. Tens of millions of individuals world wide know the identify Muscle Shoals, nonetheless, and its hit-making musicians, the Swampers, from the Southern-rock anthem “Sweet Home Alabama.”
R&B singer Etta James, again, recording with FAME Studios founder Rick Corridor, far proper, and members of the home band The Swampers, circa 1967, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. (Home Of Fame LLC/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Pictures)
“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers/And they’ve been known to pick a song or two,” Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant rhapsodized within the band’s greatest chart hit.
The Swampers was the widespread nickname for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part. They have been the home band first at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, then later at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio simply down the highway in neighboring Sheffield.
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They recorded a number of the greatest hits by the most important stars in music historical past: the Rolling Stones, Etta James, Wilson Pickett, Bob Seger, Percy Sledge, Paul Simon and Aretha Franklin, to call only a few.
“I got here in 1980 and, you know, there’s no traffic jams. It’s beautiful. It’s on the river,” longtime Muscle Shoals musician Will McFarlane instructed Fox Information Digital.
Singer and songwriter Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd. He wrote the rock hit “Sweet Home Alabama,” which features a tribute to The Swampers of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a session band. (Tom Hill/WireImage)
“I went back to Los Angeles and gave everybody notice and moved to Muscle Shoals.”
McFarlane, a guitarist, toured with Bonnie Raitt and performed on the “Urban Cowboy” soundtrack, amongst many different recordings.
“The Swampers, they were legendary. They were world-class.”
He was inducted into the Musicians Corridor of Fame in Nashville as a “friend” of The Swampers, most of whom have since gone to the good massive jam session within the sky.
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McFarlane mentioned his buddies from The Swampers helped make rural northern Alabama a world hit manufacturing unit within the Sixties and Seventies.
“Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones, “Mustang Sally” and “Land of 1000 Dances” by Pickett, “Kodachrome” by Simon, and “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Seger are simply a number of the international rock and R&B anthems recorded at FAME or Muscle Shoals studios.
“The Miracle Worker” play is carried out all year long within the yard of Ivy Inexperienced, the birthplace of Helen Keller in Tuscumbia, Alabama. (Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Pictures)
The Swampers performed on most each main hit by Queen of Soul Franklin. Amongst them: “Respect,” “Think” and “Chain of Fools.”
Members of the group toured with Steve Winwood and the “Dear Mr. Fantasy” British hitmakers Site visitors in 1973.
Duane Allman was a Muscle Shoals musician when his guitar work on Pickett’s model of “Hey Jude” caught the ear of Eric Clapton.
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The British guitar star was greater than impressed by Allman’s work in Muscle Shoals, based on McFarlane. Clapton invited the Nashville-born musician to play the long-lasting slide guitar masterpiece heard on the rock epic “Layla.”
“The Swampers, they were legendary. They were world-class,” Gene Odom, Van Zant’s childhood pal and longtime safety supervisor for Lynyrd Skynyrd, instructed Fox Information Digital.
Keyboard participant Barry Beckett and bassist David Hood of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Part (The Swampers) carry out on stage with Site visitors on the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome on March 29, 1973. (Brian Cooke/Redferns)
Odom joined the band on certainly one of their Muscle Shoals recording classes.
“Sweet Home Alabama” was not recorded in Muscle Shoals, although. The Swampers have been already icons of music by the point the Skynyrd hit was recorded in 1974.
Each FAME and Muscle Shoals studios are in enterprise as we speak. The town is situated 150 miles east of Memphis and simply 130 miles south of “Music City” Nashville.
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The “Muscle Shoals Sound” is one level of a triangle of southern-born American music that has unfold world wide.
Keller is one other native icon. She was born in neighboring Tuscumbia, Alabama.
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Ivy Inexperienced, her birthplace, has been open since 1954 as a “permanent shrine to the ‘miracle’ that occurred in a blind and deaf seven-year-old girl’s life,” based on HelenKellerBirthplace.com.
Blues-master Helpful was born in a log cabin simply throughout the river from Muscle Shoals in Florence, Alabama.
W.C. Helpful was born on this log cabin in Florence, Alabama on Nov. 16, 1873. (Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Pictures)
His birthplace has been preserved because the W.C. Helpful Dwelling and Museum.
The annual W.C. Helpful Music Pageant, with occasions throughout the area, is well known this 12 months from July 19-28.
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“W.C. Handy, won’t you look down over me?” musician Marc Cohn pleads with the spirit of the bluesman in his 1991 hit, “Walking in Memphis.”
Mick Jagger within the studio; the doorway to FAME Recording Studios; and Aretha Franklin within the studio. (Keystone Options; Andrew Woodley/Common Pictures Group, Michael Ochs Archives, all through Getty Pictures)
Helpful, like The Swampers, was immortalized in pop music.
It’s a tribute to the influential sounds that seem to seep from the soulful soil round Muscle Shoals.
