The Man from Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame

Hall changed the course of popular music history in the early 1960s when he opened his FAME Recording Studios in the tiny town of Muscle Shoals, Ala.%E2%80%94the first professional studio in the entire state. Hall's memoir is a fascinating tale of how he combined a love of country music and rhythm and blues with a band of talented local musicians ("The Swampers," immortalized in Lynyrd Skynyrd's hit "Sweet Home Alabama") to create "a safe haven where blacks and whites could work together in musical harmony," producing hits for many different musicians including Wilson Pickett, Joe Tex, Clarence Carter, Aretha Franklin, Paul Anka, and the Osmonds. The "Muscle Shoals Sound" created at FAME is often associated with the rival Muscle Shoals Sound Studio founded in 1969 by the Swampers after an acrimonious split with Hall. But the book firmly puts the spotlight on Hall's unique accomplishments, and provides a moving tale of Hall's rise from a poverty-stricken youth surrounded by "starvation, deaths, sickness, divorces, and tornadoes" to his nurturing of a regional sweet soul sound that exploded onto the national music scene. (Mar.)