Rick Hall - The Man from Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame

To the love of my life, Linda Kay Hall, and our three sons, Gregory Rick Hall, Markus Anthony Hall, and Rodney Roe Hall for all the sacrifices you made for me to pursue my dreams. I will always love you all.

I would like to acknowledge Terry Pace for all of his precious time and dedication while actually traveling with me to all of the sites of my early life where we relived most of the tragedies and joys that took place.

I was invited to visit Fame Studios for the first time after Rick Hall and I had agreed that I would publish this book. I was already in awe of his accomplishments in the music world, but little did I know the sanctimonious feeling I would have the moment I actually walked into the hallowed halls of Fame Studios.

There was an electricity that I felt flowing through me, and I realized almost instantly as I looked at Paul Ankas Platinum album on the wall that I was in a place like none other in the world. Rick gave me a personal tour, and I was overwhelmed with the surreal reality that those mega stars that I had grown up listening to cut those songs under the tutorship of legendary Rick Hall.

On a Sunday afternoon after church, Linda Hall chauffeured us in their black Lexus, and we traveled almost three hundred miles visiting the communities around Muscle Shoals where Rick grew up as a boy. I was raised in the mountains of Kentucky, and I have seen poor people, but I dont believe Ive ever witnessed an upbringing poorer than Ricks.

We visited all the homesteads, and the place where the sawmill shack was built. Rick stood on a little bridge over a creek and stared at the water where he was baptized as boy only thirteen years old. We visited the place where his wife was tragically killed in a car accident and the cemeteries where Ricks family are buried. Rick told of his loneliness as a boy, and the longing he had for his mother.

Walking through Ricks mansion on his 1,600 acre cattle ranch was the exclamation mark on a life filled with tragedy to a myriad of successes too vast to comprehend. More than three hundred gold and platinum albums hang on the walls of Fame Studios. The most famous singers, songwriters, and musicians in the world got their start under the genius productions of Rick Hall. I am privileged to be a part of this great story and the life of a great man, who is my friend.

When Rick first told me about his book I dont know how many years ago this was now, a lot! he said he wanted it to be raw, something like a cross between Tobacco Road and Harry Crews.

I dont have any record of my response (this was a pre-email conversation) but Im sure it was along of the lines of Yeah, yeah, mm-hmmm. Because everybody always says they want to tell the true story but then when it comes down to it, they are inhibited by, I dont know, politeness, concern for image or reputation, or just continuing survival in the world in which they have made their reputation and continue to do business.

But Rick, as I soon found out, really meant it. He sent me the first part of his book and it was as real and as raw as either of his two cited inspirations. Together with Terry Pace, he had revisited the actual scenes of his childhood, not just scenes of triumph or humiliation he had sought out the sources of his inspiration, and contemplating them, often just sitting by the side of the road, succeeded in translating the pain of his experience into art.

I dont know why I should have been surprised. Id known Rick for almost 25 years at this point, and I was well aware of his proclivity for commitment tests. Rick sets tasks to be performed, goals to be achieved and when you have achieved them, he says, You know, you can do better. So why wouldnt he make the same demands of himself?

As the book has progressed over the years, it has just gotten better and better, and Ricks dedication to the process (not merely the result) is something with which any true writer should be able to identify. But what I come back to in the end, what I come back to every time, are those childhood years rendered not so much with technique (though there is more rewriting here than you could imagine) as raw feeling.

Im sure its as hard for Rick to let this book go as it is for any author to send his long-labored-over work out into the world. But that was always the aim no matter how many times he rewrote it and I think in the process, like every writer, Rick learned something about himself. There is a mythic quality to the tale that he tells, one that I think creates as much of a sense of wonder for author as for reader, but always the harsh grit of experience recalls us to a real world riddled with tragedy but filled with exuberance, too, a world that reflects the complicated, contradictory stuff of which all our lives are made, whether or not they encompass the bleak, uncompromising beginnings that Rick Hall describes so brilliantly in an odyssey that began for him in the Depression-era Freedom Hills.

This is the first-person story of legendary record producer Rick Hall and his historic role in the development of the world-famous Muscle Shoals sound.

Although virtually every major record producer, songwriter, artist, and musician is familiar with its musical power and influence, the recording industry of Muscle Shoals remains the music worlds most fascinating and untold story. In a tiny north Alabama town on the banks of the Tennessee River, a close-knit group of true music believers recorded hundreds of hit records for the rhythm-and-blues, rock and roll, pop, Southern rock, teeny pop, and country markets. Many of these chart- topping hits went on to become timeless musical standards.

Rick Hall made music history when he founded FAME Recording Studios, which was the first professional recording studio not only in Muscle Shoals, but in the entire state of Alabama. After producing and Engineering the areas first national hit on Arthur Alexanders Southern Soul classic You Better Move On, Rick went on to earn international fame and acclaim and eventually a Grammy for a life time of achievements in the music industry.

In the days when Martin Luther King Jr. was marching for freedom, and Alabama Gov. George Wallace was standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama, Rick proved to be a civilrights pioneer in his own right promoting racial harmony through the healing and uplifting power of his music. In the color-blind atmosphere of FAME and Muscle Shoals music, Rick produced hit records on black artists in those tense and trying days when black was black and white was white. His records helped introduce white audiences to the black market and black audiences to the white music market.