Pick it up.

Well, you know, Muscle Shoals was intriguing to a lot of peace, people. I think one thing because of its name and today it's probably more popular in Europe than it is in the United States and people know more about Muscle Shoals, ah, probably in London than they do in Shearfield, Alabama or Muscle Shoals, Alabama because they're intrigued by us over there. Ah, people, you got to remember when we started the music business here, you got a town of one thousand people and you got a studio sitting, a cinder block building sitting in the middle of a cotton patch in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, you don't have one musician to call on to do sessions. We had to teach them, bring them in, congregate them, ah, and indoctrinate them into the industry. This is what we've always done, we've been a proving grounds for New York City, we've been a proving ground for LA to drift out there and make the big bucks, but they got their start a lot of them, here. And you'll find that out as you go through the industry that, ah, the Barry Beckets and, and the big producers even in Nashville, Tennessee today came from Muscle Shoals, Alabama a lot of them, ah, Billie Sherl who is one of the biggest country producers, brought George Jones on the scene, Tammy Wynette, is from here, wrote songs with me, we played in the same band together, Buddy Killen owned three publishing companies, sold to Sony, the biggest country publishing business in the world from Florence, Alabama, Sam Phillips from Florence, Alabama,, W.C. Handy from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. So it's not like people think that you've got a hundred or five hundred musicians to draw on. We had to do our own thing so it was kill, it was kill for all of us. It wasn't one of those things, maybe it will happen. Our attitude was, by God, we're going to make it happen and nobody is going to change it. And that's how it happened, tough, tough.

Did they start out in bands, beach music and fraternity party music?

We all played fraternity party, University of Alabama, Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee, that was our only means to survive. We played weekends, we wrote music, worked in the studio on weeknights and, and weekdays. I sold used cars on the side for fifty bucks a week, ah, to you know, to make ends meet. So it, it was tough for musicians and we all played in bands, various different bands, five or six bands but that's where the musicians came from and they came in and did demo sessions. We'd work for free. They would work for free, two dollars an hour but they were striving to become big and to put Muscle Shoals on the map. And that's where the Jimmy Johnsons and Roger Hawkins when they came here they weren't good musicians, they'll tell you so. They learned, they put their minds to it and their hearts to it and they gave you more than anybody else would give you. They didn't watch the time clock. We weren't, they weren't terribly concerned about the unions because there was one, ha, it was in Birmingham, we're here, ha. So it wasn't, you had a union rep sitting on the session although all of our sessions were union but nobody was concerned about how many hours they spent in a studio. We may spend 18 hours divided into three, three hours per session and pay them off. Unlike New York, LA and Nashville, you got a man, okay, time start, okay time up. You were late five minutes, we're going to dock you fifty dollars. That didn't happen here. There was no uptightness, no clocks, no schedule, no crowds outside the studio and no, nobody knew, I mean the Rolling Stones stay here two weeks and nobody ever knew they were here. The Osmonds stayed here two months and nobody knew they were here. Liza Minnelli was with me at my house for a month and a half nobody, next door neighbors didn't know who she was. They love that, you see, ah, there was no booze here, legal then. Ah, there was no decent hotels to stay in but what there was was gifted people who were willing to kill on a recording session to make sure that Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Percy Sledge, Jimmie Hughes, Clarence Carter and all the rest, Candy Staton, all of them came here because it was a known fact throughout the industry that this was the place to come if you wanted to get a hit record and you were black. That was it.

When Wexler first came down here and, ah, had heard all the music coming out of here and met, started meeting the musicians he was just in awe, he couldn't believe it. These guys were white? You know a little town in Muscle Shoals, how do you guys learn to play that kind of black music? And, me too, you know, the engineer, most people thought I was black for years but, ah, it, it was, all, all people were in awe when they found out about it. And I think it was great reading and great press that the R and B business that was big in this nation, most of it and a lot of it started right here. And now you got to understand Muscle Shoals, I had the first studio here in Muscle Shoals and they call me the grandaddy of Muscle Shoals music industry because I started it I guess and most of them that went on to do well and even better than I did in some cases, started out with me and I'm proud of that fact. But there was eight recording studios here and, ah, they're, I mean Bob Seeger's biggest records were cut here. The Staples Singers biggest records, "I'll Take You There" all those great records were cut here, all, ah, you know, I mean anybody who was anybody came to Muscle Shoals, it was the place to come, not New York, not Nashville, not LA, Muscle Shoals, so.

Where did the white musicians get the gut for that, where did the feel come from?

Well it came with a lot of things. First of all you got to understand that I had about ten or fifteen black songwriters in Memphis were signed exclusively to me. And I, I had a studio in Memphis so I'd go up there and spend a lot of time with them. So we were affiliated with a lot of black people. Also I brought in a lot of black acts, big name acts and, and, and on top of that, the only other influence I can think of that gave it to the white musicians, the black soul, as we called it, was, ah, they loved black music, grew up on it, all played it in bands and, and for fraternities and things, you'd get thrown out of a fraternity if you, ah, with a bunch of drunk football players if you didn't play, you know, black music. So we learned quick how to do that and, and, and it worked, it worked. And it wasn't planned. It wasn't like, we don't want any black people in here playing music we just didn't have any qualifiers or people who were even trying to become musicians in studios, ah, we didn't have any subscribers. You got five thousand people, you may have five hundred black people here so I mean, you know, how many people is going to play?