Muscle Shoals
Bob Wray remembers the day he was sitting in the Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama when Clarence Carter outlined the next song he was ready to cut. Bob was to play guitar on the song, which was “Patches.” The song was the biggest in Mr. Carter’s career and Bob knew then and there that...
Jimmy Nutt is the recording engineer in the Muscle Shoals area of Alabama who established The Nutt House Recording Studio. Jimmy began his playing career as a teenager and he was always the member of the band who took care of the PA and sound for the gigs. As he grew up and saw a need that fellow...
Jimmy Johnson was a co-founder of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama along with fellow studio musicians Roger Hawkins, Barry Beckett and David Hood. The four musicians, known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, started playing together in and around Jimmy’s hometown of Sheffield, Alabama,...
Donnie Fritts was born in Florence, Alabama, the right place at the right time to grow up to become a studio musician and songwriter. Just a little way down the road from where Donnie grew up was the epicenter of the Muscle Shoals Sound –and Donnie was there, front and center! In the mid-1960s,...
Rick Hall was born just down the country road from Sam Philips, the founder of Sun Records in Memphis. Perhaps there was something in the Florence River there near Muscle Shoals because Rick too went on to establish a famous recording studio, Fame! Rick entered the music publishing industry in...
Randy McCormick began playing piano as a child and while still a teenager began making money playing in and around the studios of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He began working at Fame Studios and later for Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Along the way he performed on hundreds of albums including those...
David Hood is the co-founder of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama. The studio was formed in 1969 when four session musicians left Frame Studios to create their own recording studio. The four, Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, Barry Beckett and David, were first a well-known rhythm section that...
Milton Sledge is the studio musician best known for a string of sessions in Muscle Shoals, Alabama as well as several albums with country super-star Garth Brooks. With Garth, Milton wrote and played drums on several key albums including the self-titled 1987 Capitol release, “No Fences,” “Ropin’...
David Briggs was a struggling musician in Nashville when he received a call to replace Floyd Cramer on a recording session. That session just happened to be for an album titled “How Great Thou Art” for Elvis Presley. That session took place in May of 1966, impressing Elvis and his band enough to...
Norbert Putnam is a studio musician’s studio musician. With a career that includes playing on most of the early Muscle Shoals recordings as well as hundreds of tracks with Elvis Presley, Norbert also played with and produced such artists as Jimmy Buffett, Dan Fogelberg and Joan Baez. At the heart...