Hall built a new, larger studio and pondered his next move. What happened was that it came to him. Bill Lowery, who managed a stable of acts out of Atlanta, came to Fame to record some of them. One result of these sessions was the confirmation of white pop-rock singer Tommy Roe's success with the hit "Everybody."
By the mid-sixties, Fame had assembled a house band that included drummer Roger Hawkins, bassist David Hood, and guitarists Jimmy Johnson and Eddie Hinton. They had been playing in bands on the fraternity-house circuit and brought that stripped-down feel to the records made at Fame.
The song that brought permanent prestige to Fame was a plaintive 1966 ballad by a local hospital orderly named Percy Sledge. "When A Man Loves A Woman" was introduced by trembling sustained organ chords and a slow-blues beat that gave way after a few bars to some of the most memorable wailing in all of soul.
Around the same time, Atlantic vice president Jerry Wexler turned his attention from Stax to Fame. Wexler, an intellectually inclined Jewish black-music connoisseur from New York, had brought Detroit-based Wilson Pickett to Stax the previous year. He put Pickett together with Steve Cropper and instructed them to write Pickett a hit. The result was "In The Midnight Hour," which catapulted Picket to fame. Now he was hoping to further Pickett's star status with the Muscle Shoals flavor. The 1966 Fame sessions yielded such classics as "Mustang Sally," "Land Of 1,000 Dances" and "Funky Broadway."
Chess Records sent one of its r&b stars, Etta James, to the Fame Studio in August 1967 to cut the classic Tell Mama album. The following year, Clarence Carter went to Fame to record the great song "Slip Away," a plea to a cheating woman delivered over a tremolo guitar hook that is the aural equivalent of collard greens. Several more Fame hits for Carter followed.
In 1968, Fame hired a twenty-one-year-old session guitarist named Duane Allman. He was originally from the South, but the band he'd been in had succumbed to the lure of Los Angeles. Disillusioned after some bad breaks, Allman came back and hung out with friends in Florida until he heard about this opportunity.
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Barney Quick's R&B History topic, please visit the Discussions page.