Rick Hall

Roe Erister "Rick" Hall (January 31, 1932 – January 2, 2018) In 2014, he won the Grammy Trustees Award in recognition of his lengthy career. Hall remained active in the music industry with FAME Studios, FAME Records, and FAME Publishing.

Early life Hall was born into a family of sharecroppers in Forest Grove, Tishomingo County, Mississippi to Herman Hall, and his wife, Dollie Dimple Daily Hall; he had one sister.

After his mother left home when young Hall was aged 4, According to The Guardian, and confirmed by Hall himself in the 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals, Dollie worked in a bordello after leaving the family. His father was a gospel music fan and his uncle gave Rick a mandolin at age 6. Later, he learned to play guitar.

Hall moved to Rockford, Illinois as a teenager, working as an apprentice toolmaker, and began playing in local bar bands. Subsequently, Hall formed a new R&B group, the Fairlanes, with Billy Sherrill, fronted by the singer Dan Penn, with Hall playing bass. He had his first songwriting successes in the late 1950s, when George Jones recorded his song "Achin', Breakin' Heart", Brenda Lee recorded "She'll Never Know", and Roy Orbison recorded "Sweet and Innocent". However, in 1960, Sherrill and Stafford dissolved the partnership, leaving Hall with rights to the studio name.

Hall's first success as a producer in a small studio was with one of his first recordings, Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On" in 1961. on Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals. In that era, his musicians included Norbert Putnam, David Briggs, Peanut Montgomery and Jerry Carrigan. According to Hall, one of the reasons for FAME's success at a time of stiff competition from studios in other cities was that he overlooked the issue of race, a perspective he called "colorblind".

In 1966, he helped license Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman", produced by Quin Ivy, to Atlantic Records, which then led to a regular arrangement under which Atlantic would send musicians to Hall's Muscle Shoals studio to record. The studio produced further hit records for Wilson Pickett, James & Bobby Purify, Aretha Franklin, Clarence Carter, Otis Redding, and Arthur Conley, enhancing Hall's reputation as a white Southern producer who could produce and engineer hits for black Southern soul singers. Subsequently, Hall hired the Fame Gang as the new studio band.

FAME Records was independent in 1962–1963. Hall signed a distribution deal with Vee-Jay from October 1963-June 1965. He moved his label to Atlantic distribution November 1965–September 1967. In May 1969 to May 1971, the label was distributed by Capitol, and finally, to United Artists from May 1972 until approximately April 1974.

The studio continued to do well through the 1970s In the same year, Mac Davis recorded the first of his 12 albums at the FAME studio; four of the songs later received gold and platinum records.

Artists who recorded at FAME in subsequent years include Gregg Allman who recorded the Southern Blood LP, Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, Tim McGraw with his hit "I Like It, I Love It", the Dixie Chicks, George Strait, Martina McBride, Kenny Chesney and others. Later life Some years after the death of his first wife, he met and married Linda Cross of Leighton, Alabama. The couple had three sons, Rick Jr., Mark, and Rodney. Hall had five grandchildren, who affectionately called him Pepaw. Hall's life and career are profiled in the 2013 documentary film Muscle Shoals.

Hall published his memoirs in a book titled The Man from Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame in 2015.

He died on January 2, 2018, aged 85, at his home in Muscle Shoals, after a battle with prostate cancer.

Legacy

In its obituary, The New Yorker concluded its coverage of Hall's career with this comment: "Muscle Shoals remains remarkable not just for the music made there but for its unlikeliness as an epicenter of anything; that a tiny town in a quiet corner of Alabama became a hotbed of progressive, integrated rhythm and blues still feels inexplicable. Whatever Hall conjured there—whatever he dreamt, and made real—is essential to any recounting of American ingenuity. It is a testament to a certain kind of hope." An Alabama publication commented that Hall is survived by his family "and a Muscle Shoals music legacy like no other". An editorial in the Anniston Star (Alabama) concludes with this epitaph, "If the world wants to know about Alabama — a state seldom publicized for anything but college football and embarrassing politics — the late Rick Hall and his legacy are worthy models to uphold".

Aretha Franklin recorded her hit "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" at FAME in 1967, with the "Swampers" providing the accompaniment. She later publicly acknowledged Rick Hall "for the 'turning point'" in her career, taking her from a struggling artist" to a major music star.

In early 2018, Rolling Stone published a retrospective of Hall's career and included this evaluation. "Hall's Grammy-winning production touched nearly every genre of popular music from country to R&B, and his Fame Studio and publishing company were a breeding ground for future legends in the worlds of songwriting and session work, as well as a recording home to some of the greatest musicians and recording artists of all time."

The UK newspaper The Guardian summarized Hall's career with these words: "What made Hall ... stand out was his position at the confluence of the three key strands of black and white American popular music – gospel, country and R&B – which merged to provide the foundation of so much of significance in that and succeeding decades."