Rick Hall facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Rick Hall
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Hall at FAME Recording Studios, 2010
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Roe Erister Hall
January 31, 1932 Forest Grove, Tishomingo County, Mississippi, U.S.
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| Died | January 2, 2018 (aged 85) Muscle Shoals, Alabama, U.S.
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| Musical career | |
| Genres | Soul, pop, country |
| Years active | 1959–2018 |
| Labels | FAME Records |
Rick Hall (born January 31, 1932 – died January 2, 2018) was an American music producer, songwriter, and musician. He was famous for owning FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. People called him the "Father of Muscle Shoals Music." He helped record and promote both country music and soul music. He also helped start the careers of famous musicians like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Duane Allman, and Etta James.
Hall was honored in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985. He also received the John Herbert Orr Pioneer Award. In 2014, he won a special Grammy Award called the Grammy Trustees Award. This award recognized his long and successful career. Rick Hall stayed active in the music world with FAME Studios, FAME Records, and FAME Publishing until he died.
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Rick Hall's Early Life
Rick Hall was born in Forest Grove, Tishomingo County, Mississippi. His family were sharecroppers, meaning they farmed land owned by others and shared the crops. His father worked at a sawmill and also sharecropped. Rick had one sister.
When Rick was four years old, his mother left home. He and his sister were raised by their father and grandparents. They lived in rural poverty in Franklin County, Alabama. Rick's father loved gospel music. When Rick was six, his uncle gave him a mandolin. Later, he learned to play the guitar.
As a teenager, Hall moved to Rockford, Illinois. He worked there as an apprentice toolmaker. He also started playing music in local bands. During the Korean War, he chose not to fight. Instead, he joined the honor guard of the Fourth United States Army. He played in a band that included other musicians like Faron Young.
Starting a Music Career
After the war, Hall returned to Alabama. He worked at a factory called Reynolds Aluminum in Florence. In 1957, he faced a very difficult time. He later began playing guitar, mandolin, and fiddle with a local group. This group was called Carmol Taylor and the Country Pals. Here, he met saxophonist Billy Sherrill. The group performed on a weekly radio show.
Later, Hall formed a new R&B group called the Fairlanes. Billy Sherrill was in this band too. The singer Dan Penn was the lead, and Hall played bass. Around this time, Rick Hall also started writing songs.
Hall decided to leave the Fairlanes. He wanted to focus on writing songs and producing music. He had his first successful songs in the late 1950s. George Jones recorded his song "Achin', Breakin' Heart." Brenda Lee recorded "She'll Never Know." And Roy Orbison recorded "Sweet and Innocent."
In 1960, Rick Hall started a company in Florence, Alabama. He teamed up with Billy Sherrill. They named their company FAME, which stood for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises. They opened their first small studio above a drugstore.
Sam Phillips, a famous producer, was an early helper for Hall. Hall remembered their talks in a 2015 interview. Phillips told him, "Rick, don't go to Nashville, because they'll eat your soul alive." Hall wanted to be special, just like Sam.
FAME Studios Becomes a Success
In 1959, Hall and Sherrill joined Tom Stafford, who owned a recording studio. They wanted to start a new music publishing company called FAME. But in 1960, Sherrill and Stafford left the partnership. This left Rick Hall with the rights to the FAME studio name.
Hall's first big success as a producer came in 1961. He recorded Arthur Alexander's song "You Better Move On." This song became very popular. Its success gave Hall enough money to build a new, larger FAME recording studio. This new studio was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. "You Better Move On" was the first gold record in Muscle Shoals history. Hall licensed the song to Dot Records. Other artists, like the Rolling Stones, also recorded it in 1964. In those early days, his studio musicians included Norbert Putnam and David Briggs.
Rick Hall grew up with country music. But he also loved R&B music. Even though Alabama was very segregated at the time, Hall often recorded black musicians. He wrote that "Black music helped broaden my musical horizons." He said it opened his eyes to the appeal of "race music," which later became known as "rhythm and blues."
Hall's success continued. An agent named Bill Lowery brought him artists to record. The studio produced hit songs for Tommy Roe, Joe Tex, the Tams, and Jimmy Hughes. However, in 1964, Hall's regular studio musicians left. They were not happy with their pay. They moved to Nashville, Tennessee to start their own studio.
Hall then put together a new studio band. This group included Spooner Oldham, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, and Roger Hawkins. With this new band, Hall continued to produce many hit records.
FAME Studio became very successful. By the mid-1960s, it was a popular place for many pop musicians. Artists like the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, and Aretha Franklin recorded there. Singer Aretha Franklin said that Hall helped her career a lot in the mid-1960s. She went from a struggling artist to the "Queen of Soul."
Hall believed one reason for FAME's success was that he didn't care about race. He called this being "colorblind." He wrote that "the studio was a safe haven where blacks and whites could work together." Years later, people still remembered him as a "white fiddler who became an unlikely force in soul music."
In 1966, Hall helped license Percy Sledge's song "When a Man Loves a Woman." This song was produced by Quin Ivy. It went to Atlantic Records. This led to a regular agreement where Atlantic would send musicians to Hall's studio. FAME Studio then produced more hit records. These were for Wilson Pickett, James & Bobby Purify, Aretha Franklin, Clarence Carter, Otis Redding, and Arthur Conley. This made Hall even more famous as a white Southern producer who could make hits for black Southern soul singers. He also produced many recordings using guitarist Duane Allman. He helped Etta James record Clarence Carter's song "Tell Mama."
In 1969, FAME Records made a deal with Capitol Records. This helped distribute music from artists like Candi Staton and Clarence Carter. Hall then started to focus more on mainstream pop music. He produced hits for the Osmonds, Paul Anka, and Tom Jones. Also in 1969, another FAME Studio band left. This band was called the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, or The Swampers. They started their own studio called Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. After they left, Hall hired a new studio band called the Fame Gang.
FAME Records was independent for a while. Then, Hall signed deals with different record companies to distribute his music. These included Vee-Jay, Atlantic, Capitol, and United Artists.
The studio continued to do well in the 1970s. In 1971, Billboard magazine named Hall Producer of the Year. That same year, Mac Davis recorded his first album at FAME. Four songs from that album later became gold and platinum records.
Through the 1970s, Hall started to work more with country music again. He produced hits for Mac Davis, Bobbie Gentry, Jerry Reed, and the Gatlin Brothers. He also worked with the Osmonds as they moved into country music. Hall also helped a local band called Shenandoah become very popular. His team of songwriters wrote some of the biggest country hits of those years. In 1985, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. They called him the "Father of Muscle Shoals Music."
In 2007, Hall brought back the FAME Records label. He made a deal with EMI to distribute the music.
Many famous artists recorded at FAME in later years. These include Gregg Allman, Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, Tim McGraw, the Dixie Chicks, George Strait, Martina McBride, and Kenny Chesney.
Rick Hall's Later Life
Rick Hall later married Linda Cross. They had three sons: Rick Jr., Mark, and Rodney. Hall had five grandchildren, who called him Pepaw.
Hall's life and career are shown in the 2013 documentary film Muscle Shoals. Before the movie came out, Hall shared something special. In 2009, he and his wife gave their home to the Boys and Girls Ranches of Alabama. This charity helps children who have been abused or neglected. Their house now helps up to seventeen teenage girls at a time.
In 2014, Rick Hall received the Grammy Trustees Award. This award recognized his important contributions to music recording.
Hall wrote his life story in a book called The Man from Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame. It was published in 2015. On December 17, 2016, the University of North Alabama gave Hall an honorary doctorate degree.
Rick Hall died on January 2, 2018. He was 85 years old. He passed away at his home in Muscle Shoals after battling prostate cancer.
Rick Hall's Legacy
The New Yorker magazine wrote about Hall's career after he died. They said that Muscle Shoals was amazing because it became a center for music. It was surprising that a small town in Alabama became a hot spot for progressive, integrated rhythm and blues. They said whatever Hall created there was important to American creativity.
An Alabama newspaper said that Hall left behind a "Muscle Shoals music legacy like no other." An editorial in the Anniston Star said that if the world wants to know about Alabama, Rick Hall and his legacy are great examples.
Aretha Franklin recorded her hit song "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You" at FAME in 1967. The "Swampers" band played on the song. Aretha later publicly thanked Rick Hall. She said he was the "turning point" in her career. He helped her become a major music star.
In early 2018, Rolling Stone magazine looked back at Hall's career. They said that Hall's Grammy-winning work touched almost every type of popular music. This included country and R&B. His FAME Studio and publishing company helped many future legends. These included songwriters, session musicians, and some of the greatest recording artists ever.
The UK newspaper The Guardian summed up Hall's career. They said Hall stood out because he brought together three key parts of American popular music. These were gospel, country, and R&B. These styles merged to create much of the important music that followed.
See also
In Spanish: Rick Hall para niños
