"Creating 'The Muscle Shoals Sound'" by Charles L. Hughes

S I X D OLL A R S

NUMBER 114, FA L L 2014

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, AND THE ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTOR Y

Alabama Schools Sponsor BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD OF ALABAMA

Alabama Heritage is grateful to Blue Cross and Blue Shield for giving the magazine to every school in the state.

Alabama Heritage wishes to thank the following for their generous support:

Editor Designer Marketing & Advertising Associate Editor Digital Media Editor Consulting Editor Contributing Editors Circulation Assistants/Interns Proofreaders

Donna Cox Baker Robin McDonald Sara C. Martin Susan Reynolds Rebecca Todd Minder Elizabeth Wade L. J. Davenport, Stephen Goldfarb Cindy Sanford Alice Deters, Sara Gibson, Taylor Hughes, Elizabeth Rogers Jessica Lowther, Cassandra M. Nelson

Published by the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Alabama Power Company

The University of Alabama

Hanna Steel Corporation

Judy Bonner, President Joe Benson, Interim Provost Jennifer D. Greer, Associate Provost

Phifer Incorporated Protective Life Corporation

The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Ray L. Watts, MD, President Shirley Salloway Kahn, Vice President, Development, Alumni and External Relations Linda C. Lucas, Provost Alabama Department of Archives and History

Vulcan Materials Company YellaWood A corporate-level gift has been made in honor of John J. McMahon Jr. Alabama Heritage (ISSN 0887-493X) is a nonprofit educational quarterly published by the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Entire contents, copyright 2014 by the University of Alabama. All rights reserved.

Alabama Heritage disclaims responsibility for all statements of fact or opinion expressed in signed contributions to the magazine. The editors will give careful consideration to all unsolicited materials but cannot assume responsibility for their safety; return postage is requested.

Writer’s Guidelines are available at www.

AlabamaHeritage.com.

George P. Evans, Chairman, Board of Trustees Shirley Dowling McCrary, Vice Chairman, Board of Trustees Steve Murray, Director The Alabama Heritage Foundation Board of Directors President: Steve Williams, Birmingham • Vice President: John Scott, Montgomery Edwin C. Bridges, Montgomery; Lella Bromberg, Birmingham; Paul W. Bryant Jr., Tuscaloosa; H. E. Cauthen Jr., Montgomery; Larry Foster, Birmingham; Gillian Goodrich, Birmingham; Charles Graffeo, Huntsville; Elmer B. Harris, Birmingham; Betsy Lowe, Huntsville; Gordon Martin, Birmingham; Gaylon McCollough, Gulf Shores; Sid McDonald, Union Grove; D. Joseph McInnes, Montgomery; Thomas McMillan, Brewton; Tennant S. McWilliams, Birmingham; Emmett Meyer, Tuscaloosa; Vaughan Morrissette, Mobile; Beverly Phifer, Tuscaloosa; Cathy Randall, Tuscaloosa; Barrett C. Shelton Jr., Decatur; Brenda Sonner-Fox, Montgomery; Neal Travis, Birmingham; Neal Wade, Montgomery; Suzanne Wolfe, Tuscaloosa.

Editorial and Advisory Board Edwin C. Bridges, Emeritus, Alabama State Department of Archives and History; Wilton S. Dillon, Senior Scholar Emeritus, Smithsonian Institution; J. Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Auburn University; Robert Gamble, Retired Senior Architectural Historian, Alabama Historical Commission; Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton, Professor Emerita, Department of History, University of Alabama at Birmingham; William J. Koopman, Chairman Emeritus, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Tennant S. McWilliams, Professor Emeritus, History Department, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Robert O. Mellown, Department of Art, University of Alabama; George C. Rable, Summersell Chair in Southern History, University of Alabama; Michael Thomason, Department of History, University of South Alabama.

Changing your address? Please notify Alabama Heritage as soon as possible; the post office does not forward bulk mail.

Rates, postpaid in the United States: One year (four issues) $18.95; two years (eight issues) $32.95; single copies $6.00 plus $2.00 for postage and handling. All correspondence regarding subscriptions, donations, or manuscripts should be directed to: Alabama Heritage, University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870342, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0342, (205) 348-7467.

Toll-free (orders only): 877-925-2323. Visit us online at www.AlabamaHeritage.com.

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

1

Table of Contents FEATURES CREATING “THE MUSCLE SHOALS SOUND”

BY CHARLES L. HUGHES

For more than five decades, a small corner of Alabama has helped the music industry produce a soulful sound that reverberates throughout the nation and the world.

Cover: Cher and friends gather in front of Muscle Shoals Sound. See caption, page 10. (Stephen Paley)

AN INVISIBLE MAP REVEALED: THE FIRST STATE SEAL OF ALABAMA

BY DAVID M. ROBB JR.

DEPARTMENTS 4 Southern Architecture & Preservation Birmingham’s Boutwell Auditorium

18

High-resolution scans uncover an early state map, published here for the first time, providing insights about Alabama’s founding and the first state seal.

46 Becoming Alabama Quarter by Quarter Calendar of Events

ALABAMA’S JEWISH SERVICEMEN IN WORLD WAR II

52 Alabama Governors Alabama’s Territorial Governors

Members of Alabama’s Jewish population gained a profound sense of purpose and found themselves ever-changed as a result of their World War II service.

BY DAN J. PUCKETT

54 Revealing Hidden Collections Glimpses of the Great War at Home and Abroad 58 Portraits & Landscapes Remembering a Female Civil War POW 62 Nature Journal Mrs. Royall’s Judge, or, A Tale of Two Historical Markers 66 Reading the Southern Past William Bartram, Naturalist and Traveler www.AlabamaHeritage.com

8

28

COMING OF AGE IN GEE’S BEND

BY MARY STANTON

36

Alabama sociologist Olive Stone spent years researching the culture of Gee’s Bend, discovering a community that thrived on independence and a unique identity that survives to this day.

PLACES IN PERIL 2014: ALABAMA’S ENDANGERED HISTORIC LANDMARKS

BY MICHAEL PANHORST

This year’s list of historic places in need of restoration and preservation includes a number of compelling sites throughout the state.

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

44 F A L L

2 0 1 4

3

8

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

Starting in a studio above a drugstore in 1958, Rick Hall went on to create the Muscle Shoals sound at legendary FAME Studios, producing hundreds of hits heard around the world. Hall posed for photographer Carol Highsmith in FAME’s Studio A in 2010. (Library of Congress)

CREATING “THE MUSCLE SHOALS SOUND” For more than five decades, a small corner of Alabama has helped the music industry produce a soulful sound that reverberates throughout the nation and the world.

By CHARLES L. HUGHES A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

9

I

N THE 1960S AND 1970S, MUSCLE SHOALS, Alabama, became one of the most important locations in American popular music. This small area hosted several recording studios and a core of musicians who produced a vast catalog of legendary recordings, becoming as famous as their counterparts in Memphis, Nashville, or other acknowledged centers of the pop-music industry. While these players produced a wide variety of recordings, they were most associated with the “Muscle Shoals sound,” a funky brand of soul that became widely celebrated as the backing for hits by African Americans from Aretha Franklin to Wilson Pickett, and eventually attracted white artists ranging from pop stars such as the Osmonds to rock stars such as Bob Seger and even country singers such as Willie Nelson. The Muscle Shoals sound—which blended black and white musical styles and was produced by an integrated group of musicians—subsequently became a symbol for the civil rights movement and a testament to music’s power to break down racial boundaries. The actual story is more complicated, but the success of the Muscle Shoals sound undeniably represents the key role that Alabama’s musicians played in shaping our broader cultural history.

Muscle Shoals’s music scene—like the area more generally—owed its development to the New Deal of the 1930s.

The Shoals served as a center for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a hydroelectric power program that brought thousands of people to the Shoals in the hopes of getting one of the TVA’s well-paying jobs. In 1951 a former TVA turbine operator opened the first recording studio in the area,

WHO’S WHO ON THE COVER? When producer Jerry Wexler fell out with Rick Hall following the Aretha Franklin session, he encouraged the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section to start its own studio. The first artist Wexler brought to the new studio was Cher, hoping to create the same magic that restarted Aretha Franklin’s career. The album, named 3614 Jackson Highway for the studio’s address, was a critical success but a commercial disappointment.

Stephen Paley’s album cover photograph shows Cher, front and center, with (front row, left to right): guitarist Eddie Hinton, bassist David Hood, Sonny Bono, producer Jerry Wexler, background vocalists Jeanie Greene and Donna Jean Thatcher, and producer Tom Dowd; and (back row, left to right): lead guitarist Jimmy Johnson, producer Arif Mardin, drummer Roger Hawkins, and keyboardist Barry Beckett.

10

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

In Dan Penn’s words, Alexander brought “the actuality of a black person in the studio with us”.

Above: Rick Hall displays his most recent Grammy, the 2014 Trustee Award, in his gold-record-lined office at FAME Studios. Opposite page, below: Arthur Alexander was working as a bellhop at a Muscle Shoals hotel when he became the first black artist to record at FAME. His first hit, “You Better Move On,” was covered by the Rolling Stones on their eponymous debut album; a later single, “Anna (Go to Him),” was covered by the Beatles on Please Please Me. (Both Dick Cooper) a short-lived effort that inspired local bus operator James Joiner to start Tune Records, Alabama’s first record label, in 1957. Joiner envisioned Tune as an outlet for local country musicians, and he fulfilled that mission with Bobby Denton’s recording of “A Fallen Star.” Denton—later an Alabama state senator—did not hit the charts, but a dozen country stars covered the song, and Tune earned the attention of both Nashville executives and Shoals-area musicians.

Still, Joiner’s ambition had its limits: he had no interest in working with black performers. At one point, he even turned down an audition by future soul star Percy Sledge; Joiner admitted he “couldn’t hear his type of music.” This narrow approach clashed with the young musicians who made

their way to the studio, most prominently Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill, who came to Tune in the late 1950s. Hall, a country fiddler, and Sherrill, who played sax in an R&B combo, started writing songs in the hopes of breaking into the record business. Along with Joiner and businessman Tom Stafford, they formed Spar Publishing in 1958, opening a studio above a drugstore. They soon tired of Joiner’s narrow taste, so Hall, Sherrill, and Stafford split to form FAME, or Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, in 1959.

FAME consolidated around a group of musicians who became the bedrock of the Muscle Shoals music industry.

Like Hall and Sherrill, these musicians were new in town, had interests in performing a variety of musical genres, and were white. The combined accomplishments of these musicians are staggering. After playing its first hits and helping to define the Muscle Shoals sound, FAME’s first house band left for Nashville in 1965 along with Sherrill. Sherrill became one of Nashville’s most successful producers, while the musicians became the city’s most in-demand session players, making their arrival what David Cantwell called “the most important development in country music, between Elvis and Garth.” The FAME musicians brought a distinctive pop/soul influence to their later country recordings, an eclecticism that extended to the songs composed by the studio’s first songwriters. These writers, including Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn, ultimately composed dozens of hits on the pop, R&B, and country charts. Add in Hall and Sherrill, and the original FAME staff transformed American popular music.

Still, in 1959 their ambitions far outstripped their accomplishments. That changed when a black man named Arthur Alexander arrived at FAME to record his original compositions. The studio musicians were immediately intrigued by Alexander’s remarkable talent, particularly the way that he blended country, pop, and R&B influences, and by his race.

They were excited to finally work with an African American—in Penn’s words, Alexander brought “the actuality of a black person in the studio with us”—and they also recognized that the singer’s blackness could break FAME into the black-music market. One of Alexander’s first recordings, “You Better Move On,” became a national hit and reached the pop top 25 in early 1962. A graceful blend of uptown pop A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

11

and downhome twang, Alexander’s debut hit put Muscle Shoals on the map.

The success of “You Better Move On” led Hall and the FAME staff to record an increasing number of black singers. FAME never stopped recording with white artists, but the studio became famous for soul, particularly the gritty blend of blues, gospel, and country that became known as the Muscle Shoals sound. Listeners around the world became familiar with the Muscle Shoals sound through hits by homegrown stars like Jimmy Hughes, a factory worker who scored a smash with “Steal Away,” and national talent like Joe Tex, who recorded his “Hold What You Got” at FAME. Tex described his desire to find musicians that were “half soul, half country” in their approach, and he was not the only one who found that blend in Muscle Shoals.

As Tex’s comments suggest, the Muscle Shoals sound— and southern soul more generally—was based on a racial irony: it was a black-identified style produced by players who were almost all white. Among the many who were attracted by this paradox was Atlantic Records vice-president Jerry Wexler. Wexler was one of the most powerful men in the music business, having defined the sound of soul through his work with Ray Charles and others, and he was intrigued by the blends in southern cities like Memphis and Muscle Shoals.

“The musical integration was a joy to hear and to behold,” he remembered. Sensing a chance to link his musical interests to the growing civil rights movement, Wexler made integrated southern soul central to Atlantic’s creative and commercial strategy. It worked: Atlantic grew bigger and more profitable than ever, and other national companies followed Wexler into the South. Wexler had a special affection for the players at FAME. “It was the boys in Muscle Shoals who taught me a new way of making records,” he remembered.

Wexler released Tex’s “Hold What You Got” and scored a #1 smash with Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman.”

He also sent Atlantic artists to record at FAME; one of the first and most successful was Wilson Pickett. By 1966 Pickett had already recorded hits in Memphis, but he worried about working in Alabama: “I see black folks pickin’ cotton, and I say ‘…ain’t no way I’m goin’ back there.’” When he got off the plane, Pickett was shocked to see Hall. “How did I know Jerry Wexler was gonna send me to some big white Southern cat?” Pickett admitted later. Hall assured him that they were about to make “some funky records” and Pickett continued cautiously to FAME. Pickett’s FAME sessions, which produced hits like “Mustang Sally” and “Land of a Thousand Dances,” defined his

12

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

Above: The four core members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, dubbed “The Swampers” in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s iconic song “Sweet Home Alabama,” were, left to right, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, and Barry Beckett. They became the first rhythm section to own a studio when they left FAME to open Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Opposite page, below: Jerry Wexler and Willie Nelson in front of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1973. (Both Dick Cooper) career and the sound of Muscle Shoals soul. Later, Pickett admitted that not coming to FAME would have been “the biggest mistake of my life. Rick Hall made things grow down there.”

Still, the dreams of an interracial paradise in Muscle Shoals had limits that were vividly illustrated by an Aretha Franklin session in January 1967. Wexler had high hopes that Franklin would be “a natural for the southern style of recording,” and the FAME musicians shared his excitement.

Despite this, a noticeable tension underlay the session even before it started. Franklin’s husband/manager Ted White expressed deep mistrust of the studio and its surroundings.

“Oh, there was serious tension because I was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1967. It wasn’t a relaxed situation,” he recalled. His concern may seem unfounded in light of the

The ill feelings provoked by the Franklin controversy played an important role in a split between Rick Hall and the FAME players.

Pickett sessions or others, but African American musicians have made similar remarks. Stax’s Marvell Thomas turned down a full-time position at FAME because the “atmosphere for black people in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, was not all that cool at that time,” and several black musicians—even Arthur Alexander—have criticized aspects of FAME’s racial politics.

The concern was shared by Wexler, who pleaded with Hall to include at least one black musician for the sake of what he called the “racial mix.” Despite this, the band remained entirely white, including a horn player named Ken Laxton who had never worked a session in Muscle Shoals. The session began smoothly, with Franklin and the band laying down the bluesy “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You),” but they had trouble with the flipside, “Do Right Woman.” Frustrated, Hall and Wexler called for a break. White and Laxton began poking fun at each other, an exchange that quickly turned unfriendly and racial. The epithets led to a heated argument and ultimately a physical confrontation, which also involved Hall. Franklin left the next morning, and Wexler was furious at Hall for stoking fires of racial hostility and leaving the job unfinished. He decided to fly the FAME musicians to New York in secret to finish work on Franklin’s album.

When Hall learned of Wexler’s plan, he immediately called the FAME musicians home for a session. Guitarist Jimmy Johnson said this was untrue—“We got home and there was no work”—and the musicians resented being caught in a struggle between the two producers.

The ill feelings provoked by the Franklin controversy played an important role in a split between Hall and the FAME players, a split that was directly provoked by Hall’s exclusive deal with Capitol Records in 1969. “We had a built-in clientele, four or five record labels coming to us,” remembered Johnson. “Rick was going with the Capitol deal… and we didn’t want to.” Johnson, along with keyboard player Barry Beckett, drummer Roger Hawkins, and bassist David Hood, opened Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1969.

The musicians—who had backed Franklin, Pickett, and many others—had good reason to claim the Muscle Shoals sound as their own, but Hall responded by asserting that it A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

13

was he, not his former musicians, who was responsible for the soulful music and was the best representative of the interracial blending that became central to the marketing of both studios. Hall’s name and image were prominently featured on Capitol promotional materials, which presented him as a visionary who blended black and white sounds together into a compelling and profitable mixture. With Capitol, FAME recorded hits by soul artists like Candi Staton. Hall’s studio also bolstered the career of white singer Bobbie Gentry, who scored a smash hit in 1967 with “Ode To Billie Joe” but did not return to the top of the charts until her Shoalsrecorded, soul-inflected hit “Fancy” in 1971. Indeed, even as the studio remained important for black artists, a growing number of FAME’s most prominent clients were white.

14

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

The most famous—and controversial—group was The Osmonds. The Utah-born siblings signed to MGM Records in the late 1960s, and label president Mike Curb saw similarities between them and Motown stars The Jackson 5. He brought them to FAME with the explicit hope of making them into soul stars. Hall cut the track with his third house band, an ensemble called the FAME Gang. Ironically, even though the Osmonds’ success symbolized FAME’s turn to white artists, it actually was produced by a more integrated group than any of the studio’s 1960s hits: unlike their predecessors, the FAME Gang featured several African American members. With the skilled musicians behind them, the Osmonds tried to approximate the soulful sounds of the era’s black singers. Donny Osmond remembered that Hall

The fact that the all-white Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section recorded black power anthems signaled the continuing racial contradiction at the core of the Muscle Shoals sound, which led many to assume that the players were black.

Left: Swampers Jimmy Johnson (left) and David Hood (right) pay a visit to the first Muscle Shoals Sound Studio at 3614 Jackson Highway. Above: The studio is now open daily to the public for tours. (Both Robin McDonald) worked to strip the group of their “too stiff, too tentative” and “too white” approach. The hard work paid off. Upon its release, “One Bad Apple” spent multiple weeks at #1 on the pop charts and reached #6 on the R&B charts.

The success of “One Bad Apple” provoked a furor in which the Osmonds (and Hall) were accused of being the latest white thieves of black musical genius. Everyone from white rock critic Robert Christgau to comedian Richard Pryor leveled these charges, and the argument became commonplace in the black press. In one article, Los Angeles Sentinel columnist (and NAACP activist) Booker Griffin offered a blunt encapsulation: “Osmond Brothers Exemplifying Rape of Black Music.” Linking soul music to the historical disparities faced by African Americans and the tense atmosphere

of the early 1970s, Griffin and others explicitly claimed “One Bad Apple” as an example of white-supremacist injustice.

Still, the controversy did not hamper the Muscle Shoals music industry. The Osmonds had a successful run of hits, many recorded at FAME, and Hall used the success to increase his profile. A 1973 profile in the local paper claimed “One Bad Apple” as the justification for its potent headline: “Rick Hall Started The Muscle Shoals Sound.” This grandiose declaration not only helped Hall compete against his old band, but it also helped him authenticate himself as a white southerner working in black music, an issue that was subject to much debate in the heated atmosphere of the black power movement. “The Osmonds did the Jackson 5 better than the Jackson 5,” he said later, and “One Bad Apple” led other prominent white artists to FAME, including everyone from pop crooner Paul Anka to country singer Mac Davis to film/theater star Liza Minnelli. Many of these artists explicitly wanted to make soul-influenced records. “That was my whole attitude,” Hall claimed, “take the white music and make it sound black.”

A similar dynamic occurred at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. In the 1970s, soul stars like R. B. Greaves, Millie A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

15

Jackson, and Bobby Womack recorded hits there, and the studio was regularly booked for sessions by Memphis’s Stax Records, which was then in the process of reinventing itself as an explicitly political label. Perhaps the most celebrated of these sessions involved the Staple Singers, whose hits “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There,” recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound, became unofficial anthems for the black power movement.

The fact that the all-white Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section recorded these black power anthems signaled the continuing racial contradiction at the core of the Muscle Shoals sound, which led many to assume that the players were black. At one point, Senegalese deejay Idrissa Dia wrote a letter to Johnson. “He told us,” Johnson remembered, “that he used to call our names on the radio there in Dakar in Senegal as brothers...‘Our African brothers in America’ kind of thing.” Dia was shocked to learn that the Muscle Shoals sound was produced by four white men in rural Alabama. “I could hardly believe that they were all white,” he remembered. “The way they played sounded very black.” Dia admitted that this confusion challenged the ideas that he had developed about soul music and US racial politics. “Despite the headlines that George Wallace was grabbing around the world,” he wrote, “the brothers from Muscle Shoals showed that America was a far more complex society.

Can you imagine, we were saying in sheer amazement, how blues, how...black these musicians born and bred in the same environment as Wallace sound?”

Still, like their counterparts at FAME, Muscle Shoals Sound increasingly marketed itself towards white artists who wanted to make soul-influenced music. Rock stars like The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, and Rod Stewart recorded hits there, as did country iconoclast Willie Nelson, southern-rock upstarts Lynyrd Skynyrd, and pop songbirds Cher and Lulu. Between the two major studios (and a few smaller outlets), Muscle Shoals musicians were in every corner of the US musical marketplace in the early 1970s. City leaders were justified in erecting a plaque at the entrance to the city that declared Muscle Shoals the “Hit Recording Capital Of The World.”

The Muscle Shoals recording boom ended by the close of the 1970s, but even before that African Americans played a

16

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

decreased role in the area’s recording sessions. Less than two decades after the breakthrough of Alexander, both FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound returned to a mostly white client list. “I don’t think that when those white guys opened their studios in the South, their aim was ever to stick with black music,” Clarence Carter, one of FAME’s biggest 1970s black stars, remarked later. Horn player Harrison Calloway argued

Above: Bob Dylan (center), discussing a song with backup vocalists (left to right) Mona Lisa Young, Regina Havis, Clydie King, and Terry Young, during a session at Muscle Shoals Sound in 1980. (Dick Cooper) Opposite page: After standing empty for years, the first Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was purchased in 2013 by the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation.

Beats Electronics, the headphone and music subscription company recently purchased by Apple for $3 billion, has pledged to restore and re-equip the studio. (Robin McDonald) that “opportunities for black musicians were lessened” once whites started coming to Muscle Shoals, especially because they often came backed by more money and more publicity than their black counterparts. Calloway queried, “I mean, what was [soul artist] Eddie Floyd against [rock star] Bob Seger?” Seger recorded most of his hits at Muscle Shoals Sound, including one—“Old Time Rock & Roll”—which lamented the decline of “funky old soul” in the face of disco.

Indeed, although the Shoals produced disco hits, black music had moved beyond the Muscle Shoals sound by the dawn of the 1980s. The success of “Old Time Rock & Roll” demon-

strated the way that white performers incorporated the soulful Muscle Shoals sound into country, pop, and rock sounds during the same period, even as their black counterparts did not share in their success.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio closed in the early 1980s.

The building stood empty for many years before reopening as a tourist site and custom studio. (Popular rock band The Black Keys made its breakout 2010 album Brothers there.)

FAME, meanwhile, returned to its country roots, becoming a successful song publisher and working with Shenandoah and other popular acts. In recent years, FAME has hosted Shoals artists both old (soul singer Bettye Lavette) and new, including singer/songwriters like Jason Isbell and The Civil Wars, who have been critical to Muscle Shoals’s resurgence as a respected site of young talent.

Rock artists like Isbell, The Civil Wars, and Drive-By Truckers have also been central to a resurgence of interest in Muscle Shoals’s musical history. They cover Shoals classics, collaborate with older artists, and eloquently discuss the ways that Shoals music—especially the intensity and stylistic blending of the Muscle Shoals sound—has inspired them.

Their efforts have accompanied a larger renaissance. Record companies have reissued classic Shoals recordings, writers have spotlighted its historical impact, and in 2013 Magnolia Pictures released Muscle Shoals, an acclaimed documentary on the area’s recording legacy. More importantly, perhaps, the area’s transformational impact on musical styles from country to pop to rock to soul continues to reverberate in the music of young artists.

The story of the Muscle Shoals recording industry— begun out of the advancements of the New Deal, symbolic of civil rights and racial tensions in the 1960s and 1970s, and reflecting economic and cultural changes from the 1940s to the present day—is a poignant illustration of the broader history of Alabama, the South, and the United States in the twentieth century. But, through their music, Muscle Shoals’s musicians also significantly shaped this history. They changed the way the world sounded, certainly, but also the way in which people understood race, the South, and what it meant to be American. To this day, the legacy of their achievements remains a potent part of our lives, and the Muscle Shoals sound still echoes around the world. ah A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

17

Contributors CREATING “THE MUSCLE SHOALS SOUND”

BY CHARLES L. HUGHES Charles L. Hughes is assistant professor of history at Oklahoma State University. A native of Wisconsin, he received his PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2015 the University of North Carolina Press will publish his first book, Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South. He has taught and written extensively on race, music, and southern history.

Huntsville Museum of Art (1984–1995). Since retiring he has been researching diverse topics, including the architectural photography of Frances Benjamin Johnston and the natural ice trade in the South, and has written articles about the adventurer Zachariah Cox and the origins of Alabama’s boundaries for the Encyclopedia of Alabama. He recently identified Thomas Freeman’s 1807 “Mother Map” for Madison County, Alabama.

Robb currently serves on the boards of the Friends of the Alabama Archives and the Alabama Historical Association. Robb would like to thank Meredith McDonough for her excellent work in producing the high-resolution scans of the seal.

ALABAMA’S JEWISH SERVICEMEN IN WORLD WAR II

COMING OF AGE IN GEE’S BEND

BY DAN J. PUCKETT

BY MARY STANTON

Dan J. Puckett is an associate professor of history at Troy University. He received his PhD at Mississippi State University and is the author of In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, published by the University of Alabama Press. His work has appeared in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Alabama Heritage, and Southern Jewish History, among other places. Puckett has been a Starkoff Fellow at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, a Chancellor’s Fellow at Troy University, a member of the Alabama Holocaust Commission, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Alabama Historical Association and the Board of Trustees for the Southern Jewish Historical Society.

Mary Stanton is a freelance writer who specializes in southern white civil rights activism. Her work includes From Selma To Sorrow: The Life & Death of Viola Liuzzo (1998), Freedom Walk (2003), Journey Toward Justice (2006), and The Hand of Esau (2006). She has also written for Southern Exposure, The Journal of Southern History, Griot, The Gulf South Historical Review, and Southern Jewish History. Her latest book, Alabama Reds, Whites, Blacks & Bluebloods, a social history of the Great Depression and the New Deal in Alabama, is currently under contract with the University of Alabama Press. Stanton has taught at the University of Idaho, New Jersey’s College of St. Elizabeth, and Rutgers University.

PLACES IN PERIL 2014: ALABAMA’S ENDANGERED HISTORIC LANDMARKS

AN INVISIBLE MAP REVEALED: THE FIRST STATE SEAL OF ALABAMA

BY MICHAEL PANHORST

BY DAVID M. ROBB JR. David M. Robb Jr. is an art historian, has served as a museum director, and is now a regional historian and museum consultant. He has been intrigued by map making and design ever since his college art history studies. Following curator appointments at the National Gallery of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Kimbell Art Museum, Robb served as director of the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia, and at the

Michael Panhorst, PhD, coordinated the Places in Peril program in 2014. He is a historian of art and architecture and a member of the board of the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation. His book, The Memorial Art and Architecture of Vicksburg National Military Park, is forthcoming this autumn from Kent State University Press. His photo essay about the earliest Civil War monuments is forthcoming in Southern Cultures 20, no. 4 (November 2014).

Please visit www.AlabamaHeritage.com for extended information about our articles and their authors.

68

A L A B A M A

H E R I T A G E :

F A L L

2 0 1 4

www.AlabamaHeritage.com