The Sound of the Shoals

Gale Joiner said the musical heritage enjoyed by the Shoals is something that should be cherished.

After all, this is the area that gave birth to W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues, Sam Phillips, “The Father of Rock ‘N’ Roll,” and Buddy Killen, who helped create the bond between country music and Nashville, Tenn.

There’s Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals. There’s The Swampers, the rhythm section that created that Muscle Shoals sound that was so sought after in the late 60s and early 70s.

They were immortalized in the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic “Sweet Home Alabama” in the line “Now Muscle Shoals has got The Swampers.”

Joiner’s husband, James Joiner, is credited with being the man who jump-started the recording industry in the Shoals when he cut “A Fallen Star” in 1957.

The track was sung by an 18-year-old Cherokee High School student named Bobby Denton, who is now a state senator.

It was recorded at WLAY radio station by a disc jockey between songs.

Denton admitted that he did not realize at the time that he would be a part of history that lives on to this day.

“It’s a heritage everybody ought to be proud of,” Joiner said.

Sadly, her husband died last July, but his music will live on.

How did this rich musical heritage come about?

“I have no idea,” said drummer Roger Hawkins, a member of “The Swampers.”

Much of The Swampers’ work was done at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios, until the rhythm section left FAME in 1969 to open Muscle Shoals Sound Studios at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield.

While Joiner cut the first record in the Shoals, Hall had the first hit record from the Shoals with Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On.”

The track reportedly provided Hall with the means to build FAME Studios.

“It showed a lot of people that it could be done in a small town and it went from there,” Hawkins said.

Eventually, artists took notice of what was going on in northwest Alabama and wanted to be a part of it.
People such as Aretha Franklin, Little Richard, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Rod Stewart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Rolling Stones and Paul Simon to name a few.

Hawkins said Simon came to the Shoals to record one track at Muscle Shoals Sound and ended up recording the entire album, “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon,” which featured the hit “Kodachrome.”

“We were on most of it,” Hawkins said of the Swampers, which include David Hood on Bass, Barry Beckett on piano and Jimmy Johnson on guitar.

Hood said much of the success in music in the Shoals was due to people like Hall who chose to remain here while others sought their futures in places like Nashville, Tenn.

“Rick and us were the first guys to stay, the rest of them had to go anywhere else to do anything."

Hawkins said artists liked working in the Shoals because of the laid back atmosphere and the attention they received from the producers and other musicians.

“When the artists got here they saw that the people here had a genuine interest in their future, their career and themselves,” Hawkins said. “That had a lot to do with it.”

Like Hawkins, singer/songwriter Donnie Fritts said he has asked himself for years how a small area as this could have had such an impact in the music industry.

“I’ve never come up with a good answer to that,” Fritts said.

He noted that he and several of his contemporaries were “just kids” when they got their start in the music business. Rock ‘n’ roll was new and there was no set way to do it.

“Personally, I was born into it,” Fritts said. “My father was a great musician, a guitar player and a bass player.”

He said Huey Fritts played all over the Shoals when he was young.

Donnie Fritts’ brother, Wayne Fritts, also is a piano player.

“It’s one of those things that’s supposed to happen,” Fritts said.

Joiner speculates that music became such a part of the area because years ago, before modern technology gave us radio and television, people created their own entertainment.

People worked hard during the day and later they played music together.

She said her husband, who was reared on a farm and later worked for the family’s bus company, liked to paint and write songs.

“It’s a God-given talent that everybody doesn’t have, especially writing songs,” Joiner said. “It comes from the heart.”