Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section musicians say being white surprised many who heard their music

A few days after his return from performing in the United Kingdom, veteran music producer and guitarist Jimmy Johnson sits in his small Sheffield recording studio and plays a CD of one of his artists, Shelly Bonet.

The CD, a collection of Bonet’s demo recordings, soon fills the room with the smooth, classic sound Muscle Shoals was known for in the 1960s and ’70s.

That sound, mixed with Bonet’s powerful vocals, energizes Johnson, evoking reminders of his days in local recording studios as a musician during the heyday of the Muscle Shoals music industry.

“She is absolutely unbelievable,” Johnson said of Bonet.

He should know. His studio is filled with music equipment, photos and gold records that are confirmations of his important contribution to the music industry.

As a member of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Johnson was part of the group that is considered one of the best studio rhythm sections in the world. Members of the group — Johnson on guitar, Roger Hawkins on drums, David Hood on bass and Barry Beckett on keyboards — are credited for creating the “Muscle Shoals sound,” a soulful rhythm that attracted black artists such as Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Bobby Womack, as well as millions of music fans, both white and black, around the world.

White guys, ‘black’ sound

Whites and blacks in north Alabama in the 1960s lived in a segregated, yet relatively peaceful environment. The “whites only” and “colored only” signs were prevalent on public buildings and private businesses, and as long as no one defied the understood rules of society, everything stayed calm.

In the midst of that separate society came a small group of white musicians who appreciated the sounds from blues and jazz artists of the day, most of whom were black, as well as gospel and country artists.

What emerged from these influences was a new, funky, soulful beat that became known as the “Muscle Shoals sound.” It was a variation from the R&B and soul music heard in the 1950s and ’60s, including the emotional rhythm of the blues and the “Motown Sound” of Detroit, which was characterized in the mid- to late 1960s with tambourine, string, horns and carefully arranged harmonies.

“We probably used a lot more bass than the other styles of music,” said David Johnson, the executive director of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and a former music engineer and producer. “It made it real dirty, muddy, deeper and funky.”

Johnson said the combination of the bass guitar, as well as the different techniques used to mix records compared to Memphis and Nashville, helped in defining that sound.

“I was flown out to L.A. quite a few times because they wanted me to mix some L.A. recordings like (we would in) Muscle Shoals and try to give L.A. recordings that Muscle Shoals sound,” Johnson said. “But you never could get that sound out of anywhere else. It was all a part of the players, mixers and the way it was put together.”

David Hood, a bass player with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, said they weren’t trying to make a “sound” of their own.

“We thought we were sounding like the Stax (Records) or the Memphis sound (and) the Motown sound. We were trying to sound like the band that should be backing the different artists that we were working with,” Hood said. “Looking back now, I can hear the music and say, well, we did kind of create a sound, but at the time, we were not trying to do that.”

The creation and popularity of the Muscle Shoals sound would soon take local musicians out of the small towns and countrysides of north Alabama and into America’s big cities, including New York.

“Through the eyes of a 22-year-old guy who had never been anywhere much in his life ... going to these big cities and working in these big, famous recording studios was mind blowing,” Hood said.

“But we were there to do a job, a job that we had already been doing down here,” he said. “We were prepared for it. We all worked very well in that environment. We learned a lot.”

David Johnson said Muscle Shoals’ musicians always had a different attitude than most musicians in recording studios across the country.

“The attitude here was ‘We want to cut hit records.’ It wasn’t necessarily about making money. Money was the byproduct of it all,” he said.

“If it took two hours or two days to do something right, that’s what we did.”

Hood said the work was hard.

“It’s not glamour or anything,” Hood said. “You get in there and you work and you sweat, and we did it.”

Music has no color

Idrissa Dia is a former disc jockey in Africa and director of the French-to-Africa service for Voice of America, a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He played many of the songs recorded in Muscle Shoals over the airways in Senegal and said listeners loved the music because it “seemed to talk more to my people.”

“They were ... more authentic,” Dia said. “These musicians were playing the music they love and the way they love it. They were not trying to dilute it in order to reach a wider audience. They were themselves, and they were telling us in no comprising terms: ‘Here it is. You like it? Fine. You don’t? Fine. But this is what we are.’ Culturally, that perception was very important to ... the Senegalese.”

Dia said when he and other people in Senegal saw pictures of the musicians who comprised the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, they were shocked.

“They are white! How is that possible? With all that ‘soul’?,” he said. “Indeed, it is not a matter of skin color.”

No one among the rhythm section musicians thought about racial perceptions.

“For years, everybody thought we were black,” Jimmy Johnson said. “The highest form of flattery for us was for someone to tell us that.”

In an era of segregation and racism, the collaboration between white and black musicians and artists was an example of how musicians of both races were able to work together and appreciate one another. Rick Hall, owner of Fame Studios, said society’s segregation issue was not a factor for them in the music business.

“We knew no boundaries,” Hall said. “People in the music business like music, and we did the best music we could with the best musicians (and) it made no difference about the color, creed religion or anything of this nature.”

David Johnson said music from black artists was an important factor for the history of Muscle Shoals and the Muscle Shoals sound.

“It was highly accepted by white audiences,” David said. “But in fact, the people in the industry didn’t even think about any color line. It was just great music.”

In fact, some of the musicians modeled themselves after black soul musicians. Hood said his idols were Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and said that he grew up listening to black music throughout his high school years.

“These were groups that I didn’t even know whether they were white or black. Race didn’t even enter into it. I just liked the music,” Hood said.

“When I started recording and playing on some records, I was playing with my heroes.”