Little Muscle Shoals, Alabama boasts a vast legacy as the birthplace of the blues, “brown sugar,” and miraculous American icons.
Helen Keller, W.C. Handy, and Sam Phillips were born this year. Sleepy Tennessee River in northern Alabama.
Keller’s life story of overcoming blindness and deafness to become an author and role model is told in “The Miracle Worker.” Handy, the “King of the Blues,” is one of the most influential musicians in history.
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Both are still celebrated today Birthplace Museum Around Muscle Shoals.
Phillips changed the direction of pop culture when he founded Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, and discovered a young singer named Elvis Presley. However, millions around the world know the name Muscle Shoals, and its hit-making musicians, the Swampers, Southern-Rock Anthem “sweet Home Alabama.”
R&B singer Etta James, back, recording with FAME Studios founder Rick Hall (right) and members of house band The Swampers, circa 1967, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. (House of Fame LLC/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images)
Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant said in the band’s song, “Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers/And they’ve been known to pick a song or two.” Biggest chart hits,
The Swampers was the common nickname for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. They were the house band first at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, then later at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in neighboring Sheffield.
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He recorded some of the biggest hit songs by the biggest stars in music history: The Rolling Stones, Etta James, Wilson Pickett, Bob Seger, Percy Sledge, Paul Simon and Aretha Franklin, just to name a few.
“I came here in 1980, and you know, there’s no traffic jams. It’s beautiful. It’s right on the river,” Muscle Shoals longtime musician Will McFarlane told Fox News Digital.
Ronnie Van Zant, singer and songwriter for Lynyrd Skynyrd. He wrote the rock hit “Sweet Home Alabama,” which includes a tribute to Muscle Shoals, Alabama session band The Swampers. (Tom Hill/WireImage)
“I went back to Los Angeles and informed everybody and went to live in Muscle Shoals.”
MacFarlane, a guitarist, toured with Bonnie Raitt and was played on the “Urban Cowboy” soundtrack, among many other recordings.
“The Swampers, they were great. They were world-class.”
He was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville as a “friend” of The Swampers, most of whom have since gone on to the big jam session in the sky.
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McFarlane said his friends in The Swampers helped turn rural north Alabama into a global hit factory in the 1960s and 1970s.
“Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones, “Mustang Sally” and “Land of 1000 Dances” by Pickett, “Kodachrome” by Simon, and “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Seger are just some of the global rock and R&B songs recorded at FAME or Muscle Shoals studios.
The play “The Miracle Worker” is staged year-round in the backyard of Ivy Green, Helen Keller’s birthplace in Tuscumbia, Alabama. (Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images)
The Swampers worked on nearly every major hit song by Queen of Soul Franklin. These include: “Respect”, “Think” and “Chain of Fools”.
Members of the group toured with Steve Winwood and “Dear Mr. Fantasy” British hitmakers Traffic in 1973.
Duane Allman was a Muscle Shoals musician when his guitar work on Pickett’s version of “Hey Jude” caught the attention of Eric Clapton.
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According to McFarlane, the British guitar star was so impressed with Allman’s work at Muscle Shoals that Clapton invited the Nashville-born musician to play the iconic slide guitar masterpiece heard in the rock epic “Layla.”
“The Swampers were great. They were world-class,” Gene Odom, Van Zant’s childhood friend and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s longtime security manager, told Fox News Digital.
Keyboardist Barry Beckett and bassist David Hood of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (The Swampers) performing onstage with Traffic at Palazzo dello Sport in Rome on March 29, 1973. (Brian Cook/Redferns)
Odom attended one of the band’s Muscle Shoals recording sessions.
However, “Sweet Home Alabama” was not recorded at Muscle Shoals. The Swampers were already music icons by the time they recorded the Skynyrd hit in 1974.
FAME and Muscle Shoals Studios remain in business today. The city is located 150 miles east of Memphis and just 130 miles south of Memphis. “Music City” Nashville,
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The “Muscle Shoals Sound” is one point of a triangle of Southern American music that has spread around the world.
Keller is another local icon. He was born in neighboring Tuscumbia, Alabama.
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Ivy Green, her birthplace, has been open since 1954 “as a permanent shrine to the ‘miracle’ that occurred in the life of a blind and deaf seven-year-old girl,” according to helenkellerbirthplace.com.
Blues-master Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, in a log cabin just across the Muscle Shoals River.
W. C. Handy was born on November 16, 1873, in this log cabin in Florence, Alabama. (Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images)
His birthplace has been preserved as the W.C. Handy Home and Museum.
The annual W.C. Handy Music Festival, with events throughout the region, takes place this year from July 19-28.
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“W.C. Handy, won’t you look at me?” musician Marc Cohn pleaded with the spirit of the bluesman in his 1991 hit song “Walking in Memphis.”
Mick Jagger in the studio; the entrance to FAME Recording Studios; and Aretha Franklin in the studio. (Keystone Features; Andrew Woodley/Universal Images Group, Michael Ochs Archives, all via Getty Images)
Like The Swampers, Handy also became immortal in pop music.
It’s a tribute to the powerful sounds that seem to emerge from the soulful soil surrounding Muscle Shoals.
