Rod Stewart: The First Cut is The Deepest
“Here, then, are 10 of my favourite records to have come out of Muscle Shoals – from soul to rock’n'roll.” Jason Isbell, The Guardian
Muscle Shoals Keyboard Legend Barry Beckett in His Own Words By Barney Hoskins
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section members Roger Hawkins and David Hoo.
When it got to Paul Simon, that’s when it really developed. That was the first time we cut a true pop act. Of course the reason he came down was to get a black sound. He liked what we got on the Staples’ ‘I’ll Take You There’. We cut ‘Mardi Gras’ in thirty minutes, so he pulls out six more songs and asks which ones we wanna cut. We said, ‘This is it, if we don’t jump on this one, we’re losing our chance.’” Barney Hoskyns, Sonic Boomers
Originally Published: 06/15/2009, Rock’s Backpages
Barry Beckett R.I.P.
Tribute To Barry Beckett (Bob Seger: Down on meanstreet)
“As a studio musician in the 1960s, Mr. Beckett played in the band affiliated with Fame Studios, the production house that turned an unlikely Southern town, Muscle Shoals, Ala., into a center of indigenous American popular music. The band, known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and also called the Swampers, split from Fame in 1969 and, helped by the producer Jerry Wexler, created its own studio, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, in nearby Sheffield.
Either with the Rhythm Section — which also included the guitarist Jimmy Johnson, the bassist David Hood and the drummer Roger Hawkins — or on his own, Mr. Beckett played behind a remarkable list of performers. They include Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, Percy Sledge, J. J. Cale, Boz Skaggs, Paul Simon — he played the organ solo on Mr. Simon’s “Kodachrome” — Bob Seger and Leon Russell. The Swampers were immortalized in Southern rock ’n’ roll when the band Lynyrd Skynyrd tipped hat to them in the 1974 hit “Sweet Home Alabama”” Bruce Weber, New York Times
