Chords for Black White and Blue: The Muscle Shoals Sound

_ Hi, my name is Rick Hall and I'd like to welcome you to Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
_ And thank you for coming. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Dm] We've been here for approximately 50 [Bb] years.
We're the oldest studio in the [Gm] world, owned by the same group of people, which is [A] me and my family.
My father started Fame Studios in [Dm] 1959 [D] and [E] seven years before I was born.
[Bb] And I had a first hit with [Eb] Arthur Alexander, You Better Move On, [G] at a warehouse [A] here in town.
And then took the money from [F] that first hit [Dm] record and built this building.
The song was later [Bb] recorded by the Rolling Stones and the B-side was cut by the [Gm] Beatles within a year.
[C] So it was a pretty big year, [C] first record. _
[Dm] We've cut thousands of hit records [Am] here.
Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, [Bb] Candy Staten, Etta [Am] James and on and on.
A mountain of great artists.
Black acts and blues acts that nobody else [Dm] wanted to record.
So that's [C] the beginning of my [Am] career, was black music.
And in Alabama that [Dm] was quite unique at the time because there was a lot of [Am] racial strife in Alabama.
And the governor [C] was standing in the [Dm] schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama saying_
_ [Am] _ Segregation now, _ segregation [Dm] tomorrow and segregation forever.
[N] _ _ _
_ [A] _ While he was doing that, we were in the recording studio here in Muscle Shoals at Fame, the recording studio.
Cutting Land of a Thousand Dances and Funky Broadway [D] and Mustang Sally.
Everyone asks me about [A] the Muscle Shoals sound.
[D] It's really about the songs and the quality of the sound [B] and the quality of the [Ab]
emotion in [D] the vocals and the singers.
It's got to have a soul to it.
It's got to [Eb] have soul [Db] to the music and that's really [D] what the sound is about.
It's an amalgamation [B] of gospel music, [Eb] country music, rock [A] music, blues, all meshed into one.
So the combination of all those things put together gives you the Muscle Shoals sound.
[Ab] _
Muscle Shoals Sound [Ab] Studios, there's two [Fm] locations of that.
The 3614 Jackson Highway [E] location, which is the original location, [Ab]
is now being [Eb] _ refurbished and [Db] is going to be a _ [F] tourism site during the day.
But a [Db] recording studio at [Ab] night, similar to what Sun [C] Studios does in [Ab] Memphis.
It's an amazing [C] room.
Roland Strong's got [D] Brown Sugar there.
Paul Simon cut Kodachrome there.
[Ab] Bob Dylan cut [Db] there.
[Ab] We're staple singers _ on and [Bb] on.
Leonard Skinner.
We're very particular about our music and [C] we're [E] perfectionists when it comes to [Gb] that.
So [Ab] when we pick companies that we want to partner [Ebm] with, that is definitely something that comes into [Fm] play.
So I think that _ [E] through our partnership with Blue Jackalope [Ab] Mexico, we're doing a very positive thing for us.
We're about making the next [Bb] big [Ab] Wilson Pickett or the next big Aretha Franklin.
[Db] We're not just history.
We're [Bb] about today.
We're about tomorrow.
[Ab] We're about cutting hit records.
[Db] We're tickled [Ab] to death to have [Eb] your microphones and [Ab] headphones in our studio.
[B] We'll do our best to cut hit records with them.
[E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for recording and producing hit records.
And we hope that you help us to preserve the music that we're producing today for the next hundred or thousand years.
We're [Db] always looking for the next hit record, the next hit [E] artist.
The future looks bright and we're looking forward to seeing what happens.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _