Producers like Rick Hall and the team at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios knew the obstacles they were facing in convincing Black artists to record in Alabama. They intentionally created safe spaces and flouted racial customs. Singer Clarence Carter recalled that in most places, he had to refer to white people by “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” where in Muscle Shoals studios, everyone was on a first-name basis. Not that some weren’t hesitant. Wilson Pickett told journalist Mark Jacobson that, upon arriving in Muscle Shoals, “ I looked out the plane window, and there’s these people picking cotton. “Rick Hall, Wilson Pickett, and Jimmy Johnson” via Roots of American Music Trail For them, it was all about the music-the Muscle Shoals sound. These Black artists and the white studio musicians created a collaborative recording environment, a safe interracial space in the middle of a hostile region. The studio musicians of FAME, like Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, and Jimmy Johnson, largely came of age in the 1950s, when R&B and rock and roll music – inspired by Black artists – was becoming the sound. These artists performed alongside studio musicians who, as they discovered upon arriving, were primarily white. The FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound recording studios, with their soulful, bluesy sound, attracted artists like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and the Staple Singers. Certainly, no one would have expected a small town in northwest Alabama to become a hub for the production of soul and rhythm and blues music during these years. In the American South, where Jim Crow laws had been in effect for generations, this commitment to massive resistance and white supremacy was often violent. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement that demanded equality and justice for Black Americans produced a backlash amongst segregationists.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |