Until I saw this documentary on PBS last night, I either forgot or never knew that the Muscle Shoals (Alabama) recording studio house band were an all-white group of southern musicians—all teenagers when they started recording together. This is the band that played behind Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” the Staples Singers’ “I’ll Take You There” and Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally.” Calling themselves the Swampers, the band later played on records by Bob Seger (“Old Time Rock and Roll”), Paul Simon, who also assumed they were black musicians (“Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock”), and Lynyrd Skynyrd, who immortalized the group in “Sweet Home Alabama” with these lyrics: “Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers/And theyve been known to pick a song or two/Lord, they get me off so much/They pick me up when I’m feelin’ blue.” Basically, the band was the Alabama version of the Wrecking Crew studio session group in Los Angles and the Fabulous Funk Brothers at the Motown studio in Detroit. BTW: The Fabulous Funk Brothers played on more hit records than the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis and Michael Jackson combined.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 07:02:43 +0000
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