A Studio On The Road To ‘Fame’ For Soul Musicians

Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill were a couple of Alabama boys in their teens when they started writing songs. At first, the only place they had to record was in a room in the back of the Trailways bus station in Florence, Ala. But one of the songs they recorded there, “Sweet and Innocent,” became a small local hit, and a guy named Tom Stafford read about it in the local paper. He built a recording studio above City Drugs in Florence and went into business with the two young men. It didn’t last long: Sherrill was hugely ambitious and was soon off to Nashville. At that point, Stafford brought a bellhop from the local hotel to Hall and played him a song. They gathered up some local musicians and cut it, and it became a hit.

Arthur Alexander was black, but everyone else involved in his 1961 smash, “You Better Move On,” was white. There must have been something in the water in Florence, because that’s the way it continued for years. It continued without Stafford, who fired Hall — a huge mistake. Undaunted, Hall rented a former tobacco warehouse and then found a building at 603 East Avalon in the nearby town of Muscle Shoals; there, he started FAME Recording Studios, the name standing for Florence, Alabama, Musical Enterprises. But for a lot of the people who came to use its facilities, it also stood for fame itself.

“Steal Away” was Hall’s second huge hit, and Jimmie Hughes was just a guy who came in off the street with a song he wanted to record. Rick Hall wasn’t sure it was a hit, so he didn’t do what he usually did and try to find another label to put it out. Instead, he released it on the Fame label — and watched it take off. Soon, artists in search of a hit started booking studio time at Fame and getting results: Joe Tex, Joe Simon, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Arthur Conley, who had been discovered by Otis Redding and, with Redding producing, cut what could have been the anthem for Fame, “Sweet Soul Music.”