Country Music Hall of Fame features iconic music made in Muscle Shoals, Alabama

The Country Music Hall of Fame wasn’t sure they were going to get the piano. The Apollo baby grand that was at FAME Studios from 1961 to 1970. The piano Aretha Franklin played on “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” her breakthrough hit, recorded at FAME in 1967. The piano played on virtually every FAME recording with piano on it from the studio’s most hallowed era.

Country Music Hall of Fame curator R.J. Smith says, “The whole family [of late FAME Studios owner/producer Rick Hall] has been incredibly generous with their time, with their thoughts, with their artifacts,” for use in new exhibit “Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising,” which opens November 14 at the Nashville museum.

Smith continues, “The one thing that there was reluctance, perhaps just because it’s such a big thing, was that piano. We didn’t press it, and we’re so grateful that it happened. It fills the room and it kind of defines the exhibit like nothing else I could think of might. It was a big ask, and we waited for a while holding our breaths.”

Curator Michael Gray adds, “[Rick Hall’s son and FAME general manager] Rodney Hall and his mother Linda Hall, they’ve been extremely supportive.”

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For the new Muscle Shoals exhibit, the hall of fame conducted more than 20 oral history film interviews with different Shoals area musicians. Many of them were done in the studio at FAME.

“They just opened up the doors and let us use the studio, gratis,” Grays says. “But when it came to the piano, they had to just think about that for a minute, just because they’re still giving tours there at FAME and need to have neat materials to show their visitors. And that piano means a lot to the family, to Linda. And they just wanted to think about it for a minute before they said yes. But they eventually did.”

The baby grand is positioned in the center of the Country Hall of Fame’s 5,000 square-foot exhibit. “Low Rhythm Rising” focuses on the vibrant 1960s and 1970s recording scene in Muscle Shoals, at studios like FAME and Sheffield’s Muscle Shoals Sound and Norala/Quinvy Recording.

An otherwise humble agrarian North Alabama area at the time, Muscle Shoals was an unlikely recording hotbed. But thanks to visionaries like Rick Hall and Atlantic Records executive/producer Jerry Wexler, a bevy of talented studio musicians, including collectives known as Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, The Swampers and FAME Gang, and an absence of big city distractions and temptations, the Shoals became just that.

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A staggering list of legendary artists, from R&B (Franklin, Etta James, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Staple Singers, etc.) to rock (Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Bob Dylan) to pop (Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Cher, The Osmonds) to country (Bobbie Gentry, Willie Nelson, Mac Davis) and beyond (reggae star Jimmy Cliff), recorded classic tracks in Muscle Shoals.

In addition to that FAME Studios piano, notable objects exhibited in “Low Rhythm Rising” include a 1964 Fender Stratocaster played by Duane Allman, during the soon-to-be Allman Brothers Band guitar hero’s time as a Muscle Shoals studio musician in 1968 and 1969. Allman traded the Strat to another key Shoals studio musician, Mickey Buckins, who lent it for the exhibit.

There’s also a 1957 Fender Telecaster that Allman played in his pre Allman Brothers band Hour Glass. The Tele was also used by Pete Carr, known for his lead guitar on Bob Seger’s hit “Mainstreet.”

Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take Your There” and “Respect Yourself” are two of the most enduring songs cut at Muscle Shoals Sound. A 1970 Fender Telecaster played by Pop Staples when Staple Singers performed the song “The Weight” with proto-Americana icons The Band at their final concert in 1970, as seen in director Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz,” widely regarded as one of rock’s greatest documentaries.

The exhibit also boasts Slingerland snare drum played by late great Swampers drummer Roger Hawkins early in his career. Hawkins supplied the beats on Muscle Shoals essentials like Wilson Pickett’s “Land Of 1000 Dances” and “Mustang Sally.” Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Clarence Carter’s “Slip Away” and Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” too.

Aretha’s FAME session was cut short due to a kerfuffle between her entourage and someone at the studio. But Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler thought so much of Muscle Shoals musicians, he’d bring Hawkins and others to New York to back Franklin in the studio for hits like “Respect,” “Chain of Fools” and “Think,” among others.

There’s also clothing in the Country Hall of Fame’s Muscle Shoals exhibit. There’s the black jumpsuit Wilson Pickett wore on the cover photo for his volume two best-of compilation from 1971. That album contained his 1969 R&B version of The Beatles “Hey Jude,” recorded at Fame and backed by Duane Allman and the Swampers.

In all the great singers Rick Hall worked with at FAME, Candi Staton was his favorite. Known for classic soul tracks like “In The Ghetto,” Staton’s custom-made buckskin suit, adorned with feathers and fringe, is on display in “Low Rhythm Rising.” As is a blue jacket worn in the ‘60s by Dan Penn, the Shoals songwriter who had a hand in writing hits like Aretha’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” James Carr’s “The Dark End of the Street,” and James & Bobby Purify’s “I’m Your Puppet.”

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Muscle Shoals music is most often associated with vintage R&B made there. But country music has been pivotal in Shoals success too. right down to the most accurate description of its signature sound: Country soul.

Before his FAME days, Rick Hall was a local country musician. The “Low Rhythm Rising” exhibit includes a fiddle Hall played at square dances when he was a teenager.

Mac McAnally, longtime guitarist in Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, loaned the hall of fame his 1967 Martin acoustic. McAnally used it during his time as a Muscle Shoals studio musician.

There’s also an early handwritten draft of Mac Davis’ lyrics to his number one hit “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me.“ Davis penned the song as a response to Rick Hall telling him none of his new songs they were working on had a hook.

Curator Michael Gray says, “We like to look at how country music, even though this exhibit does have a lot of just straight ahead country music in it, there is all these other connections where country music is rubbing against soul and R&B and rock and pop. And we love telling those stories.”

Curator R.J. Smith adds, “There’s this story in Rick Hall’s book, in his autobiography where he’s talking about Etta James coming to record ‘I’d Rather Go Blind,’ and he’s like, telling her to sing it like [country singer] Kitty Wells would. And we’ve got [Shoals keyboardist/songwriter] Spooner Oldham talking about how Percy Sledge sort of had a nasal country tone to his voice.”

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Although Muscle Shoals music is being featured in a museum, Muscle Shoals music itself isn’t a museum. The area has seen a resurgence in recent decades, boosted by popular 2013 documentary film, “Muscle Shoals.” Artists like Jack White, Gregg Allman, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Heart’s Ann Wilson and Chris Stapleton have recorded there since then.

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Former longtime Muscle Shoals resident Jason Isbell has become one of the most, if not the most, acclaimed songwriters of his time. Isbell loaned his 1956 Martin acoustic guitar, used on Grammy winning Isbell albums “Something More Than Free” and “The Nashville Sound,” for “Low Rhythm Rising.”

Isbell was a staff songwriter at FAME before joining Drive By Truckers, a rock band led by Shoals native Patterson Hood, the son of Swampers bassist David Hood, and later achieving solo stardom.

Now a Nashville area resident, Isbell narrated a YouTube video promoting the Country Hall of Fame’s exhibit. He wrote the forward to the book accompanying “Low Rhythm Rising,” too.

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In that forward, Isbell wrote, “Listening to the music that had been made in Muscle Shoals was really the first experience that I had with the inner life of people who didn’t look exactly like me. If that hadn’t happened, I could have been a totally different type of person than I am now.”

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On Thursday, the night before the exhibit opened, Isbell was part of a reception at the Country Hall of Fame. He performed solo acoustic versions of Shoals-made songs, including Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On,” Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” and Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.”

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The hall of fame has more events to promote the exhibit. On November 15, there’s a 12 p.m. songwriter session with Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, and 2:30 p.m. panel discussion with Candi Staton, Linda Hall, keyboardist Clayton Ivey and musician/recording engineer Marlin Greene. A 1 p.m. November 16 musician spotlight features Mac McAnnaly. More info at countrymusichalloffame.org.

Smith says, “One thing we like to do is think about what exhibits are up at any given time and the balance. Right now we have a Dolly Parton exhibit. And maybe that’ll draw people in the door, but while they’re here, they’re going to learn about who David Hood is.”