The Forgotten Studios That Recorded The 12 Most Underrated 70s Soul Songs

The hits you know came from specific rooms. Specific consoles. Specific groups of musicians who had developed, through years of playing together in the same space, a chemistry that no arrangement of strangers could reproduce. During one specific week in the late 1960s at American Sound Studio — 827 Thomas Street, Memphis — twenty-five percent of the entire Billboard Hot 100 came from the same building with the same house band. One in every four songs in the American pop chart. One room. Dusty Springfield recorded "Son of a Preacher Man" there because Jerry Wexler of Atlantic understood that the Memphis Boys — the same musicians who backed soul, country, and pop artists sometimes in the same day — had a soul fluency that no London studio could replicate. The most beloved soul recording of her career was made in a building that has since been replaced by a Family Dollar store. A small historical marker is all that's left. The Swampers — Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, and Barry Beckett — were the first session musicians in the history of American recorded music to own their own studio. They built Muscle Shoals Sound Studio at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield, Alabama in 1969 after leaving FAME Studios. The Staple Singers recorded "I'll Take You There" in their room. David Hood's bass line is the foundation of everything. Mavis Staples' vocal rests on it like a voice resting on a certainty. The four musicians who built the room owned the room. Willie Mitchell had been building Royal Studios in Memphis — at what is now 1320 Willie Mitchell Boulevard — into a room that visiting artists described as something they felt rather than heard. When Ann Peebles recorded "Take Me to the River" in that room in 1973, the track she made in Willie Mitchell's stripped-down acoustic environment was the recording that Talking Heads heard five years later and covered for their debut — making it famous for a generation that had never heard Ann Peebles' name. The original is still the better recording. Mel and Tim came from Holly Springs, Mississippi. They recorded "Starting All Over Again" at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1972. It hit number nineteen on the Hot 100 and number seven on the R&B chart. Almost nobody mentions it when they talk about Muscle Shoals. The Rolling Stones get the credit. Aretha's FAME sessions get the credit. Mel and Tim sit in a catalog beloved by collectors and unknown to almost everyone else. That is the recording that proves the room was real. #MuscleShowls #FAMEStudios #MuscleShowlsSound #RoyalStudios #HiRecords #SigmaSound #AmericanSoundStudio #StaxRecords #UnitedSoundSystems #CriteriaStudios #SoulMusic #70sSoul #UnderatedSoul #SoulMusicHistory #ForgottenStudios