Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • Debbie Young
  • Jimmy Buffett
  • Key West
  • Your Survival Guy
  • How We Are Different
  • Paris
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • The Great Reset
  • The Swiss Way
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • Dick Young
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool
  • Anti-Gun Control
  • Anti-Digital Currency
  • Joel Salatin and Alfie Oakes
  • World Gold Mine Production
  • Fidelity and Vanguard Since 1971

The 50th Anniversary of Fame Studios

October 9, 2019 By Richard C. Young

By sevenMaps7 @Shutterstock

Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama turns 50 this year.

A few years back, Debbie and I were in a 8th row center Nashville Symphony Hall seat to watch The Swampers, along with Booker T. & the MGs, Buddy Holly’s Crickets, and Dwayne Eddy inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame.

What a night it was including surprise introductions by Keith (small and twitchy) Richards and Kid (shockingly good) Rock.

At The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Kronsberg explains the history of the studio, writing:

IN DECEMBER OF 1969, four days before they’d take the stage at California’s Altamont Raceway, the Rolling Stones traveled to the small northwest Alabama textile town of Florence and checked into a Holiday Inn. From there, they shuttled back and forth across the Tennessee River to the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where over the course of three nights, they cut the songs “You’ve Got to Move,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Wild Horses,” which Keith Richards wrote while sequestered in the studio’s tiny bathroom. In his autobiography, “Life,” Mr. Richards reminisced that the studio “was the crème de la crème, except it was just a shack in the middle of nowhere.”

Keith had a point. This corner of Alabama could feel like the middle of nowhere. Florence, surrounded by cotton fields, was an hour’s drive from the nearest interstate. Sheffield, where the studio was, had a Ford plant that cast aluminum auto parts. Adjacent to Sheffield was the studio’s namesake, Muscle Shoals, home of the powerhouse for the massive Wilson Dam. Then there was Tuscumbia, famous as the birthplace of Helen Keller. Collectively, the group of towns is known as the Shoals.

What made the studio the crème de la crème was the reputation of the men who opened it—a group of studio musicians that became known as the Swampers. As the mid-60s house band at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, they played on everything from Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You,)” to Etta James’s “Tell Mama” to Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1,000 Dances.” When the musicians left Fame in 1969 to open Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in a former casket showroom in Sheffield, artists followed. Beyond the local musicians’ skill, record labels favored the Shoals because they knew the artists they sent there could work without distraction, temptation or notice. Even into the ’80s, these were dry towns in dry counties; you had to drive up to Tennessee (or know a bootlegger) to buy booze. “When people came here to record with us, all they could do at night was go home to the hotel, because there was nothing else to do,” remembers David Hood, the Swampers’s bassist.

This year, as the still-active studio celebrates its 50th Anniversary, it looks much as it did when its stone facade was immortalized on the cover of the first album recorded there, Cher’s “3614 Jackson Highway.” A legend that still manages to be obscure, the studio draws about 12,000 visitors a year, with about a third hailing from overseas, said Judy Hood, David’s wife, who leads private “Swampette” tours of both Muscle Shoals Sound and Fame studios.

Read more here.

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • VIDEO: The Beach Boys Do It Again - 50th Anniversary Edition
  • Different Era Same Free Spirit - Summer of Love 50th Anniversary
  • 2009 Essential Music Archives
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Richard C. Young
Richard C. Young
Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.
Richard C. Young
Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)
  • “The Goal Is to Break Down the Individual” - September 29, 2023
  • Blackwater Founder Erik Prince a Hillsdale College Graduate - September 29, 2023
  • “The Economy Is Buried Under Trillions in Debt” - September 29, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • SVB – There’s Panic in the Air
  • TOP HEAVY: Focus on Big Indexing Could Cause Market Chaos
  • A Cashless Society Is A Debacle for Americans
  • You’re Ready to “Make It a Good Month”
  • The Fed – “Independent” and “Non Political” – Joins The Resistance
  • Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Charles Koch Team Up
  • You May Be Surprised by America’s “Least Woke City”
  • Marry Compound Interest, Divorce Market Timing
  • Biden Wants to Gut the Tax Benefit of 401K Plans
  • Democracy: The Most Dangerous and Insidious Effect of Majority Rule.

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Skyrocketing Costs of Building a Green Grid Are Starting
  • The Government Attack on Americans' Independence
  • Wellington and Wellesley Funds Not Managed by Vanguard
  • Fighting Russian Power with a Hill of Crosses
  • Your Survival Guy Fishing with Dolphins
  • “You Didn’t Eat That Again, Did You?”
  • Speaking of Bad Ideas …
  • The Constitutional Case Against CBDCs
  • The Single Worst Market Timing Event in History
  • "But What Happened to Eggs?"

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball
  • “Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”
  • India Choose to Promote Coastal Trade. The US Should Too
  • “No Way I’m Spending That Much on Those”
  • The War Machine’s Manpower Problem
  • Profits Becoming Elusive in China
  • “You Didn’t Eat That Again, Did You?”
  • Your Survival Guy Fishing with Dolphins
  • The Single Worst Market Timing Event in History
  • Government Intervention Begets More Intervention

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball
  • Your Survival Guy: “Life on Main Street Hasn’t Been This Hard in a While”
  • Your Retirement Life: Striped Bass Fishing off Block Island
  • “Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”
  • How Joe Biden Raised Oil Prices
  • Is the Philadelphia Looting Spree the Wake-up Call America Needs?
  • “No Way I’m Spending That Much on Those”
  • What Trade Policy Serves America’s National Interest Best?
  • California Wants to Make the 2nd Amendment Unaffordable
  • “You Didn’t Eat That Again, Did You?”

US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

Five Year Treasury Yield

Bidenomics: Distrust of Public Officials and Institutions

Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball

“The Goal Is to Break Down the Individual”

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince a Hillsdale College Graduate

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives