FAME Recording Studios: Home of The Muscle Shoals Sound

Tucked in a quiet, unassuming corner of Alabama, FAME Recording Studios is a musical and historical landmark — literally. It has been designated a historical landmark both by the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage and by the US National Register of Historic Places. In this article, Sweetwater delves into the storied history of FAME Studios and explores its recently restored Studio B.

The Soul of the Shoals

Founded in the late 1950s by legendary songwriter/producer
Rick Hall, Florence Alabama Music Enterprises — FAME for short — moved to its
current location in Muscle Shoals in the early 1960s. This prosperous studio
churned out hit record after hit record, starting with the Jimmy Hughes
classic, “Steal Away.” It was at FAME that the original Muscle Shoals Rhythm
Section cut their teeth on a huge cache of 1960s-era recordings. After that,
the legendary “Swampers” rhythm section started making history at FAME before
establishing their own Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in nearby Sheffield, Alabama.

After the Swampers struck out on their own, Rick assembled a
new house backing band, dubbed the FAME Gang and also called the FAME Rhythm
Section. This group consisted of eight musicians and an arranger. The group was
also bolstered by frequent guitar contributions from the pre–Allman Brothers
Band guitarist Duane Allman.

By the mid 1960s, FAME had become a first-class recording
destination, attracting such artists as Little Richard, Etta James, Otis
Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Aretha Franklin. In fact, Aretha Franklin credited
her early experience at FAME Studios for her transformation from an unknown
jazz-pop vocalist to the one-of-a-kind “Queen of Soul.”

FAME Studios was notable for its racially inclusive mindset
— a rarity during the turbulent pre-civil-rights era. “It was a dangerous time,”
Rick noted in his autobiography, The Man from Muscle Shoals. “But the
studio was a safe haven where blacks and whites could work together in musical
harmony.”

Thus, FAME Studios became ground zero for the burgeoning
soul genre, introducing Caucasian audiences to “Black” music and African
American audiences to “White” music. This yielded a multitude of
record-sales-breaking songs.

The Hits Kept on Coming

As the 1970s approached, FAME Studios branched out into
other genres, most notably pop and country, earning the studio a distribution
deal with Capitol Records. The ensuing decades yielded a string of hits from a
diverse array of artists including the Osmonds, Mac Davis, Jerry Reed, Bobbie
Gentry, the Gatlin Brothers, and more. The Studios’ success earned Rick a
Grammy nomination along with a “Producer of the Year” designation from Billboard
magazine.

In addition to producing hits for established acts, Rick
also developed new artists, such as Shenandoah, a local bar band that Rick
helped transform into a hit-making country-music powerhouse.

Rick Hall’s Untouchable Legacy

In 1989, Rick turned the day-to-day operations of FAME
Studios over to his children, Mark, Rodney, and Rick Hall Jr. When Rick Sr.
passed away on January 2, 2018, after a battle with cancer, it was just 28 days
before his 86th birthday.

Rick has received many accolades. In its obituary, The
New Yorker stated, “Muscle Shoals remains remarkable not just for the music
made there but for its unlikeliness as an epicenter of anything; that a tiny
town in a quiet corner of Alabama became a hotbed of progressive, integrated
rhythm and blues still feels inexplicable.”

Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed, “Hall’s
Grammy-winning production touched nearly every genre of popular music from
country to R&B, and his FAME Studio and publishing company were a breeding
ground for future legends in the worlds of songwriting and session work, as
well as a recording home to some of the greatest musicians and recording
artists of all time.”

FAME’s Legendary Studio B

Rick built Studio B in 1967 to absorb overflow from the
often-overbooked Studio A. Centered around a custom 12-channel Universal Audio
console, Studio B quickly became legendary in its own right. The space hosted a
myriad of legendary artists, including the Allman Brothers Band and others, and
it produced many classic hit songs, such as “Hey Joe” by Wilson Pickett and “Greenwood,
Mississippi” by Little Richard.

Studio B became renowned for the unique sonic character of
its live room, which lent a magical character to every source tracked in it.
The room was especially coveted for the distinct acoustic beauty it brought to
horn arrangements. In fact, sessions in Studio A would oftentimes record horn
parts in Studio B just for the sonic mojo.

Enter Glenn Rosenstein

Grammy Award–winning producer/engineer Glenn Rosenstein
began his music career at New York City’s legendary Power Station. He then
sharpened his skills at Sigma Sound Studios, working with chart-topping artists
like Ziggy Marley, U2, Madonna, Miles Davis, the Ramones, Talking Heads, James
Brown, and many others.

FAME Studios Studio B

Glenn describes a longtime affection for Studio B’s live
room. “When I needed to track drums or do other ‘big studio’ tasks, I went to
FAME Studios and fell in love with the live room in Studio B,” he recalls. “FAME’s
Studio B is one of the finest live rooms anywhere,” Glenn continues.

Returning Studio B to Its Rightful
Glory

Glenn’s affinity for FAME Studios inspired him to partner
with Rodney Hall to bring Studio B up to modern specs. They started by
expanding the studio’s cracker-box-size control room, which was too small to
accommodate a large-format console. They then installed a 56-channel Solid
State Logic 6056E console — the actual console Stevie Ray Vaughan used to
record Soul to Soul, The Sky Is Crying, and Live Alive.
They also refurbished Rick Hall’s original custom Universal Audio console for
use as a sidecar to ensure that the studio’s classic sound is easily within
reach. The SSL is powered by a custom Atomic Instrument power supply and is
outfitted with a dedicated THD-Labs Tangerine automation computer.

The room’s original UREI 813 midfields are bolstered by
modern ATC
SCM45A studio monitors. “I’ve used virtually every high-end monitor
available, and ATCs always speak to me,” Glenn notes.

“Most importantly,” Glenn exclaims, “we didn’t touch the
live room.” The studio also boasts three isolation booths, and everything has
been acoustically tuned by the sound experts at Steven Durr Designs.

Studio B is outfitted with an Avid Pro
Tools | HDX system. Its selection of outboard gear consists of two Pultec
EQP-1A3 equalizers, a blackface UREI
1176 limiter, a Tube-Tech
compressor, a Summit
Audio ECS-410 Everest channel strip, a trio of Empirical
Labs EL8 Distressors, and a whole lot more.

The studio’s drool-worthy mic locker includes selections
from Neumann,
Manley, Blue
Microphones, AKG,
RODE, Shure, Sennheiser,
sE
Electronics, Electro-Voice,
and others.

There’s also an impressive cache of musical instruments on
hand.

FAME Studios Today and Tomorrow

While it might be easy to reduce FAME Studios to a mere historical curiosity, that would be doing it a disservice. It’s hardly a relic of the past. Quite to the contrary, it’s a thriving recording destination. Artists like the Raconteurs, Margo Price, Jason Isbell, Alicia Keys, Ann Wilson, Third Day, and Zach Williams flock to FAME, invoking the spirits of their forebears to create music for the next generation with an unmistakable sound they can’t achieve anywhere else.

If you want to hear a modern recording that was created at
FAME Studios, then we recommend that you check out the Muscle Shoals: Small
Town, Big Sound compilation. Released in 2018, this album includes classic
FAME hits recut by some of the industry’s top artists, including Steven Tyler,
Grace Potter, and Demi Lovato — all recorded at FAME Studios.

To learn more about FAME Studios or to book a session, visit
https://famestudios.com/.

All images used with permission of FAME Studios.

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