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FAME is Right Around The Corner

© Michael B. Smith

The sequence of events that brought Rick Hall to prominence in the recording industry could be called accidental. But the continuing success of Muscle Shoals' leading hit-maker comes from his "Never Say Die" attitude. Hall's determination dwells inside the walls of his FAME Studios where he guides a talented staff of writers and musicians. And after more than two decades of hit-making, Hall's business is still growing. His credits include producing and engineering hit records for Aretha Franklin, Bobbie Gentry, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, The Osmonds, Mac Davis, Duane Alllman, Paul Anka, Jerry Reed, Shenandoah and many more.

We spoke with Rick's son Rodney, who today follows in his father's footsteps as a producer and music publicher.

How did the Fame studio get started?

I wasn't there, but my Dad, Tom Stafford, and Billy Sherrill started it around 1959. They started a publishing company. Billy and my Dad went to high school together and they had been coming up here and writing songs together and playing in bands together. They had been writing together so they would come up here and there was a guy named James Joyner who had a little, well it wasn't a studio, he had a tape machine and they would come up here and do little demos with him. They took their songs to Nashville and started getting a few cuts here and there, my dad had a Brenda Lee cut, a George Jones cut, a Roy Orbison cut and they started a publishing company, called Fame Publishing. That stood for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises.

Tom Stafford was in that with them. Tom's Dad owned some buildings, I think there was a movie theatre right around the corner from where those buildings were he owned. They started a little studio in one of those buildings right above the corner drugstore, and the room that they were using used to be a podiatrists office and they had been making fake arms and legs in there before, so there were lots of those things laying around. But they started there and after a couple of years they had had a little success, but not much. Billy left and went to Nashville to run Sam Phillips studio. Tom got out too and they kind of fired my Dad actually. But he kept the name and moved across the river to Wilson Dam highway and built a studio and started to do basically the same thing by himself and gathered some musicians around himself, Peanut Montgomery, Jerry Carrigan, David Briggs, and some of those people and then he came across Arthur Alexander. Arthur came over and could not play an instrument but he sang

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