The Florence Main Street Program, a non-profit organization, strives to renovate the downtown sector of Florence, Alabama. One of the organization’s recent projects is the beautiful mural located on the exterior wall of Fred’s Super Dollar store located at 321 North Court St. The project required a two-step process during the years 2013 and 2014 and cost a total of $14,000. Beginning in 2013 Shoals artists Tim Stevenson, Robin Campbell, and Ronnie Riner designed and painted the mural’s panels, which according to Stevenson “captures the quality of life enjoyed in the Shoals.” The mural’s seven panels offers a glimpse into life in the Shoals and represents the rich culture in the region. The first phase of the project consisted of five panels. The first panel depicts the Forks of Cypress, the house of James Jackson. The second panel is of The University of North Alabama. The flowing waters of the Tennessee River are painted on the third panel, while the fourth panel shows a front porch scene. Stevenson designed the first phase’s final panel, which shows a Renaissance woman playing the fiddle, in order to express how “music is the heart beat of the area.” In the following year Stevenson, Campbell, and Riner completed the second phase of the mural, which consisted of two panels. The sixth panel’s design consisted of arrowheads, pottery, and feathers, and acted as an homage to the region’s Native American culture. The last panel shows a man and his dog walking along the water banks. Overall, the mural’s artwork represents five components of Florence—local history, education, music, the Tennessee River, and Native American culture.
Jesse Brock, University of North Alabama
Text: Jennifer Edwards, “Muralis Interruptus in Florence,” Times Daily,July 7, 2013.
Theatre; Arts; Culture; Music; Florence, AL
According to Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, an opera house operated in Florence during the late 1880s and permanently closed its doors during the early twentieth century. Between 1894 and 1905 the venue was known as Turner Opera House. During the years of operation, the opera house had numerous managers, such as John B. McClure. Many national recognized actors and artists, such as the Conklings, Mr. John Thompson, Mr. Rowland D. Williams, and General John B. Gordon, put on dramas, comedies, and musical concerts. In addition, local talent from the Shoals put on shows and events. For example, actors from Florence and Sheffield put on the opera “H. M. S. Pinafore” on January 24, 1896. On regular occasions the proceeds of events went towards local charities, such as the construction of Confederate Monument and City Infirmary.
Text: “Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps,” Florence Lauderdale Public Library, Local History Room Collection, folder “Opera House,” Florence, Alabama. “Opera House. Two Good Attractions for February 22nd, and March 15th,” Florence Herald, February 1, 1984, Florence Lauderdale Public Library, Florence, Alabama, Local History Room Collection, folder “Opera House,” Florence, Alabama. “H. M. S. Pinafore. In the Opera House Friday, January 24th,” Florence Times, January 11, 1896, Florence Lauderdale Public Library, Local History Room Collection, folder “Opera House,” Florence, Alabama. “Gen. Gordon’s Lectures,” Florence Standard-Journal, May 6, 1898, Florence Lauderdale Public Library, Local History Room Collection, folder “Opera House,” Florence, Alabama. Images: Flyer for a 1895 play at the Florence Opera House, Nolen Collection, “Florence area 1880s-1920s: Photos,” Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.
Theatre; Arts; University of North Alabama; Florence, AL
On March 2, 2012, the University of North Alabama (UNA) in Florence, Alabama, conducted a grand ceremony for the George Lindsey Theatre. The university broke ground for the theatre exactly a year earlier in March of 2011. One individual in the crowd during the grand ceremony was George Smith Lindsey, the individual who the theatre was named after. Lindsey attended Florence State Teachers College (now present day University of North Alabama) during the late 1940s. At Florence State Lindsey excelled both on the football field and in the theatre. After graduating in 1952 with a Bachelor Degree in second education and physical education and serving in the Air Force, Lindsey attended the prestigious New York theatre school—the American Theatre Wing—in the late 1950s. Shortly thereafter, he earned the infamous role as Goober Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show” during the 1960s and later caused many Americans to laugh with his comedy sketches on the show “Hee Haw.” Therefore, the University of North Alabama decided to name the newly constructed theatre after one of its most acclaimed alumnus. The theatre is located on the southwest corner of UNA’s campus on the Irvine Street. In all the theatre consists of over eight thousand square feet and is the “Shoal’s are premier theatre space.” Offices, conference rooms, classrooms, and the Borgnine Performance Hall are in the George Lindsey theatre. The Borgnine Performance Hall is a black box theatre (black walls and flat floor), that provides UNA students with versatile performance space. In addition, the theatre is equipped with state-of-the-art theatrical equipment. The total cost for the construction of the George Lindsey Theatre was two million dollars.
Text: University of North Alabama, “UNA to Host Grand Ceremony for Black Box Theatre March 2,” in folder “University Architecture: Fine Arts Center—George Lindsey/Ernest Borgnine Performance Hall,” University Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. University of North Alabama, “George Lindsey-Biography, University of North Alabama, https://www.una.edu/library/collections/george-lindsey---biography.html (accessed May 1, 2015). Michelle Rupe Eubanks, “Theater to be Named for George Lindsey,” in folder “University Architecture: Fine Arts Center—George Lindsey/Ernest Borgnine Performance Hall,” University Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.
Music; Culture; Florence, AL; Muscle Shoals, AL
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (years generally known as the “recording years”), the success of FAME Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, brought national attention to the region. Musicians such as the Swampers, Joe Tex, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, The Osmonds, Duane Allman have cut hits at the legendary studio ran by Rick Hall. However, the studio did not originate in Muscle Shoals. Instead, the recording studio was founded in downtown Florence, Alabama, at the intersection of Tennessee St. and Seminary Street. Influenced by the success of the hit song “A Fallen Star” recorded by the Florence recording studio known as Tune Records in 1957, Rick Hall, Billy Sherrill, and Tom Stafford decided to collaborated together and establish the Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, or FAME. The location of the original FAME recording studio was in the second floor suit above the Florence City Drugstore. To make the rooms have the vibe as a recording studio, egg cartons were placed on the walls for soundproofing. During the early years, the recording studio brought in talented local musicians such as Dan Penn. However, Hall believed that he, Sherrill, and Stafford needed to put more hours into recording and producing songs. His intense approach to the music industry did not settle well with his partners. As a result, in 1960 the partnership between the three ended. Hall was given the rights to the FAME name and FAME publishing company and would go on to establish the nationally acknowledged FAME Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals. Stafford continued to operate the studio above the City Drug Store, which became Spar Music Studio. At Spar Music, local musicians such as Donnie Fritts, Spooner Oldham, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, and Roger Hawkins joined together on daily basis to play music. However, Spar Music Studio did not produce a hit record and closed its doors during the early 1960s. A historical marker is the only symbol left for the birthplace of FAME because the building ceases to exist.
Text: Greg Carmalier, Muscle Shoals: The Incredible True Story of a Small Town with a Big Sound, DVD, Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2014. Christopher S. Fuqua, Music Fell on Alabama (Huntsville: Honeysuckle Imprint, 1991), 14-19.
Between the 1950s and 1980s the success of Shoals recording studios, such as FAME Recording Studio and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, earned the Shoals region’s music industry national attention. Artists such as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and Aretha Franklin recorded top charting hits at Shoals studios. During the twentieth-first century the Shoals music industry has continued to thrive. One reason for this is due to the success of Single Lock Records in Florence, whose name derives from the Wilson Dam, which at time of construction was the largest single lock dam in the world. Established in 2013 by John Paul White (The Civil Wars), Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes and The Bear), and Will Trapp (a Shoals native and financial advisor), Single Lock Records is an indie label that focuses on local talent. Bands and musicians that have signed with Single Lock Records are The Bear, Belle Adair, St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Dylan LeBlanc, and Donnie Fritts. The record label uses Sun Drop Studios in Florence and hosts concerts at their small venue located at 116 East Mobile Street, Florence, Alabama.
Text: Greg Carmalier, Muscle Shoals: The Incredible True Story of a Small Town with a Big Sound, DVD, Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2014. Single Lock Records,” Alabama Chanin Journal, May 28, 2013, http://alabamachanin.com/journal/2013/05/single-lock-records/ (accessed May 1, 2015). Single Lock Records, “About Us,” Single Lock Records, http://www.singlelock.com/ (accessed May 1, 2015).
The shape-note notation was an American pedagogical tool designed to increase the music education of the average citizen who did not have the financial resources or time to learn the traditional round note notation. New Englanders William Smith and William Little patented the shape-note notation in 1796 and published The Easy Instructor, the first shape-note tunebook, in 1801. Smith and Little used four geometrical shapes to symbolize individual music notes on the staff instead of the traditional round note heads. Smith and Little’s use of syllables to designate and sing pitches is called solmization. The four-syllable solmization system in The Easy Instructor allotted a right sided triangle to indicate the note fa, an oval symbolized sol, a square was assigned for la, and a diamond represented mi. Smith and Little initially created the system as a response to the widespread musical illiteracy among America’s common folk. The effects of this music illiteracy were most evident in Protestant church services during the eighteenth century, when congregations practiced a singing technique called “lining out.” Lining out, also known as “call and response,” involved a minister singing the words of a song as he saw fit, and the congregation repeating the words and melody. While lining out enabled them to sing, it did not require participants to be literate in music and many believed that it produced poor quality music. For instance, in 1721, music reformer Thomas Walter characterized call and response music as “hideous and disorderly … beyond expression bad … miserably tortured, and twisted, and quavered … a horrid Medley of confused and disorderly Noise.” Not long after The Easy Instructor was published in 1801, other music composers acknowledged the shape-note notation’s pedagogical effectiveness in teaching music literacy. Many composers adopted the rudimental introduction and the system to notate songs. Over thirty-eight four shape-note tunebooks were composed between the years 1801 and 1855, many due to the Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening spawned hundreds of new hymnals. Since camp revivals relied upon communal singing, shape-note tunebooks provided a means for the congregations to participate in hymn singing. Some religious denominations, such as the Primitive Baptists and the Churches of Christ, realized the effectiveness of shape-notes, and, as a result, adopted shape-note notation in worship hymnals for years following the Second Great Awakening. From 1801 to the 1830s, the shape-note system was taught in singing schools established in urban and rural communities in both the North and South. These singing schools, taught by individuals considered to be vocal masters taught the schools, usually lasted from one to two weeks and relied on shape-note tunebooks to teach attendees the fundamentals of music. After the completion of singing school, many pupils went on to establish communal monthly shape-note singing events, normally lasting a few hours during the afternoon. In addition to these monthly meetings, shape-note singers started to organize state wide conventions that met anywhere from two to three days and targeted a wider geographical area than monthly local singings. Overall, these singing schools, communal singings, and conventions during the nineteenth century spread knowledge of shape-notes in American culture. With the popularity of tunebooks and singing schools came new developments. Some shape-note composers believed that Smith and Little’s four-note system could be improved. One Pennsylvania composer, Jesse B. Aikin, believed all seven notes in the music scale should be taught with shape-notes. In 1846, Aikin’s tunebook The Christian Minstrel, continued to use Smith’s and Little’s geometrical shapes for the notes fa, sol, la, and mi; but he implemented new shapes for the notes do, re, and ti. Aikin “used an equiangular triangle for Doe, a wine glass for Ray, and a fan for See.” Three elements played a factor in why the South far more than the North, enthusiastically embraced, shape-notes during the nineteenth century. First, they were linked with the democracy of music itself. Second, during the Second Great Awakening the singing of hymns unified Southern people in revivals. Last, with the demand for tunebooks during the Awakening, tens of thousands of shape-note tunebooks in the South during the nineteenth century. From the end of the Civil War until the turn of the century, Southerners strove to redevelop their culture and identity. Shape-notes were vital elements in both religious and secular settings during this time period in the South. By the late nineteenth century, many Primitive Baptists, Free Will Baptists, and Churches of Christ in the South adopted shape-notes in worship hymnals. Few musical genres in America have escaped the influence of shape-notes, especially in the South. Many southern gospel, country, and bluegrass musicians learned how to read music and gained the ability to harmonize their voice after studying shape-note tunebooks and attending singing schools. The spread of shape-notes as a result of the southern gospel movement greatly influenced both country and bluegrass music. As children, members of the Carter Family, the Delmore Brothers, and the Louvin Brothers, all three considered key innovators of country music during the twentieth century, attended singing school where they sang music from shape-note singing schools. Also at singing schools, the families learned how vocally harmonize with one another, which helped their music become hit records. Also, Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, developed his high pitched singing voice that is considered to be a distinctively bluegrass sound, while attending singing schools as a child in Kentucky. A twenty-first century country duo from the Shoals, the Secret Sisters, personally acknowledged that their vocal harmonies were deeply rooted in the Church of Christ worshiping services from shape-note hymnals. In all, the notation entered into American culture during the nineteenth century and continues to affect both religious and secular music. The shape-note notation is the root of American music and is the first American music innovation to influence Europe’s music culture.
Text: David Taddle. “Solmization, Scale, and Key in Nineteenth-Century Four-Shape Tunebooks: Theory and Practice.” American Music 1 (Spring, 1996). Joyce Irwin,.“The Theology of ‘Regular Singing.” The New England Quarterly 51, no. 2 (June, 1978). Irving Lowens and Allen P. Britton. “’The Easy Instructor’ (1798-1831): A History and Bibliography of the First Shape Note Tune Book.” Journal of Research in Music Education 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1953). The University of Mississippi Music Department, “The Old Way of Singing,” The University of Mississippi, http://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/oldway.html (accessed on September 9, 2014). Richard Dalzell, “American Shape Notes: Background, Development, Practice and Present Status,” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1978. The Center for Church Music: Songs and Hymns, “Lowell Mason,” http://www.songsandhymns.org/people/detail/lowell-mason (accessed on November 22, 2014). Marian J. Hatchett. A Companion to the New Harp of Columbia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Nathan Hatch.The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Neil V. Rosenberg. Bluegrass: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. The Secret Sisters, interviewed by Skip Matheny, Nashville, TN, 2012, http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/09/drinks-with-the-secret-sisters/ (accessed February 3, 2015). George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and ‘Buckwheat Notes’. Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Folklore Association, Inc., 1964 Images: George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and ‘Buckwheat Notes’ (Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Folklore Association, Inc., 1964): 15. Douglas Harrison, Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 5.
The Episcopalian movement in America began in the late 1700’s and spread into northwest Alabama during the 1800s. The oldest Episcopalian parish in the area is Trinity Episcopal Church in Florence, Alabama. In the 1820s the early congregation met at school houses, hotels, and private homes. It was not until the arrival of South Carolina Reverend Thomas Cook in the Shoals did a plan for constructing a church building emerge. Cook helped raise nearly fifteen thousand dollars for the construction of a building. As a result, the first church structure was completed in 1838. This edifice was located on a lot donated by local resident James Jackson, and sat on the corner of College and Cedar Streets in Florence. Seven years later in 1845, the first Bishop of Alabama, Reverend Hamner Cobbs, concentrated Trinity Episcopal Church. Trinity Episcopal Church closed during the Civil War. In fact, all Episcopal churches in the state of Alabama closed during the war by Federal authorities because the ministers were ordered to omit prayer for the President Abraham Lincoln. Nearly thirty years after reopening its doors to the public, in 1893 a fire caused for the church to burn down. One of the few items salvaged was the church’s bell, which is in the present day church’s belfry. Following the fire, Florence resident Mrs. William Hardin gave the congregation a lot of land on the corner of Pine and Tuscaloosa Street downtown Florence. On this land, a new brick structure was completed in 1894. Five years later, Bishop Richard Wilmer consecrated the new church building on June 12, 1898. The brick structure is one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in Lauderdale County. The building consist of a carved wood altar, chancel furnishings, and beautiful stained glass windows. Some of the renovations include the Parish House’s construction in 1929 and the additions of an education building and a Mullen Hall in 1967.
Text: Oscar D. Lewis, “Trinity Episcopal is One of City’s First,” in folder McDonald Collection: Church Information Collection-Vol. 8: Other Denominations-Episcopal, Churches 8.2,” Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. Jill Knight Garrett, A History of Lauderdale County, Alabama, 145-146.
The First Presbyterian Church of Florence is the oldest continually operating congregation in Florence, Alabama. Early Presbyterian settlers of Florence bought land lot 84 from the Cypress Land Company in 1818 for a total of $1,600 and built a wooden structure that acted as the church. During the early years of existence, prominent members of the Florence community claimed to be members of the church. For instance, Ferdinand Sannoner (the town’s land surveyor) and John Coffee (War of 1812 Veteran and a founder of Florence) both financed the construction and were members of the church. In 1824 the congregation replaced the wooden structure with a brick building. This new building consisted of a gallery for slaves and designated pews for children. Also during the early years in Florence, the First Presbyterian Church housed other denominational worships due to the structure being the only church building in town. William Mitchell served as the church’s pastor from 1851 to 1872. One of the most interesting stories of Florence history derives from Mitchell’s actions in First Presbyterian Church during the Civil War. Union troops occupied Florence on numerous occasion during the war, which was the case on July 27, 1862. On this summer day, Rev. Mitchell entered the pulpit and faced a congregation filled with Florence citizens and Union troops. Before his sermon Mitchell prayed for the well-being of the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and the success of the Confederate army. After Mitchell’s prayer Col. John Harlan arrested Mitchell and sent the reverend to the Union prison camp in Alton, Illinois, for six months. Mitchell later returned to Florence and continued preaching at First Presbyterian Church. Despite the Civil War and Reconstruction, the First Presbyterian Church never moved from its original location. However, since the 1890s there have been numerous renovations and expansions. The most recent being in 1971 when a three story classroom, an office, and a fellowship hall were added to the church. Today, in addition to proving worship services, the church houses wedding venues and many Florence community organizations use the building as a meeting place.
Text: Carolyn Barske. Images of America: Florence (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 96. Jill Knight Garrett, A History of Lauderdale County, Alabama, 145. Bill McDonald, “Mitchell Best Known for Prayer,” Times Daily, January 4, 2001, in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Iformation Collection-Vol. 8: Other Denominations-Presbyterian, Churches 8.4,” Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. First Presbyterian Church, “Our History,” http://www.fpcflorence.org/our-history.html (accessed May 1, 2015).
Wood Avenue Church of Christ is one of the oldest Churches of Christ in Lauderdale County. The Church of Christ denomination emerged out of the American Restoration Movement, a movement to reestablish America’s Christianity on the teachings of the New Testament and lasted from 1801 to 1906. Restoration followers were known as Stoneites and Campbellites, named after the two prominent leaders of the movement, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. Congregations set up by followers of Campbell called themselves Disciples of Christ, while those established by Stoneites were called Churches of Christ. The beliefs of the Restoration Movement made their way into the Shoals during the 1820s and 1830s through efforts of Restoration ministers, who ultimately shaped the religious culture in the region. The first two Restoration ministers to enter the Shoals were Ephraim D. Moore and James Evans Matthews. However, the Restoration Movement in the Shoals did not take place without opposition. Baptists and Presbyterians entered the Shoals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and did not approve of the activists’ efforts. For example, in 1830 the Muscle Shoals Baptist Association printed a resolution that defined the Restoration Movement as a “divine operation of the Holy Spirit either disavowed or so obscurely avowed, as to amount to disavowal. We see experimental religion ridiculed and reprobated.” In addition to the vocal opposition from various denominations, in his article “History of the Church of Christ in Northwest Alabama, 1866-1880,” Shoals region historian Wayne Kilpatrick argued that the Civil War ultimately hindered the Restoration Movement in the Shoals region. Kilpatrick claimed that many churches in the Shoals, including Restoration congregations, experienced a drop in membership during the war, which Kilpatrick defined as the “silent years” of the Restoration Movement. Nevertheless, following the end of the war, Churches of Christ started to organize. One of the earliest Churches of Christ in Lauderdale County, Popular Street Church of Christ, organized in 1886 and T. B. Larimore (the founder of Mars Hill Bible School) was a congregant. For the first four years, the congregation met in personal homes until a building was built in 1890 on Popular Street in Florence. The church was at this location eighty years, until on March 1, 1970, when the church relocated to the current location on Wood Avenue. After the relocation, the congregation decided to change the name of the church from Popular Street Church of Christ to Wood Avenue Church of Christ. The Gothic designed brick structure that acts as the current church today was designed and built by local master mason, the Putman brothers.
Text: Wayne Kilpatrick, “History of the Church of Christ in Northwest Alabama, 1823-1861,” Journal of Muscle Shoals History Vol. XI (Tennessee Valley Historical Society, 1986): 36. Wayne Kilpatrick, “ History of the Church of Christ in Lauderdale County, 1866-1880,” The Journal of Muscle Shoals History Vol. XI (Tennessee Valley Historical Society, 1986): 67-85.
Goodsprings Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Along with thirty-five members, Reverend Felix Johnson organized Goodsprings Cumberland Presbyterian in Rogersville, Alabama, on September 18, 1839. During its history the church’s congregation has had to deal with two historical events—the Civil War and the Great Depression. During the Civil War, in April of 1861, some members broke off and established a new church in Center Star, Alabama. The members that continued to attend Goodsprings Cumberland Presbyterian rebuilt their church and relocated just north of Huntsville Road. In the 1930s the church had to relocate a second time due to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s construction of Wheeler Dam. One of President Roosevelt’s New Deal alphabetic organization, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) provided electricity to rural Southern regions. However, in order to provide electricity, TVA constructed dams, which caused many people to lose their property. The Goodsprings Cumberland Presbyterian congregation was a victim of this. The congregation decided to sue TVA and according to church minutes records dating February 8, 1937, the congregation won the court case. The minutes reveal that the “suit was decided in our favour and have collected $1350.” The congregation used this money to build the current structure.
Text: The Elgin Book Committee, History of Elgin Crossroads & Nearby (Walden, Tennessee: Waldenhouse, 2003), 294-295. Image: The Elgin Book Committee, History of Elgin Crossroads & Nearby (Walden, Tennessee: Waldenhouse, 2003), 294-295.
First United Methodist Church is one of Florence’s oldest congregations. The congregation’s first meeting took place in a log home on September 8, 1822, and consisted of eight people. The log home was the property of the congregation’s first minister, Reverend John Cox, and was located on West Tuscaloosa Street. Also, worship services were conducted in Florence resident Thomas Farmer’s home. Some of the early charter members of the church were Reverend Cox, his wife Frances, their three children (Thomas, James, and Mary), John Kerr, newspaper editor Dr. Shadrack Nye, and Joseph Paddleford. In 1823 a Methodist circuit rider named Nathaniel R. Jarret was appointed the minister of the congregation. However, it was not until 1826 when the congregation had the funds to build a church building. The first church building, a 24 x 30 foot structure, was built on the intersecting corner of West Tombigbee and Locust Streets. After the congregation required land located on the corner of East Tuscaloosa and North Seminary Streets from the Cypress Land Company in 1827, the congregation placed the church building on logs and rolled it to the new site, where the current church stands today. The first addition to the building came in 1834, when a sanctuary that could hold five hundred people was added. This made the church the largest meeting place in Florence. According to records, there were forty-six total congregation members in 1834. Out of those forty-six, three were colored. The next major renovation to the church took place in the early 1900s. Around 1905, a new brick structure was built on the site, however this burned in a fire in 1920. Two years later the members of the church had erected a new building on top of the ashes. The sanctuary was not completed until 1924, and during those four years the congregation conducted worship services at the old Coffee High School. During the Great Depression the church experienced hardships due to its mortgage. The congregation could not afford to pay the mortgage for the church during the times of financial constraints and the building was on the brink of closing down and being sold off. However, local Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropists Louis Rosenbaum negotiated with the National Bank of New York for a loan and wrote a personal check, which together managed to stop the selling of the church. The church kept its doors open during the Depression years and continues to be a meeting place of worship in Florence. Today, the brick structure includes a seven million dollar expansion that provides ministry to all ages and acts as a children’s nursery.
Text: “The First United Methodist Church, Florence, Alabama-A Brief History,” in Bill McDonald Collection, Box 36, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. Jill Knight Garrett, A History of Lauderdale County, Alabama, 142. Carolyn Barske, Images of America: Florence (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 100.
Prior to 1898 the Catholic population in Florence, Alabama, traveled to Tuscumbia’s Our Sacred Heart. The pastor of Our Sacred Heart, Father Bassen, characterized Florence as a mission of the Catholic Church. As a result, St. Joseph Catholic Church was established in 1898 in Florence. Before the congregation had the funds to build a structure, they conducted mass in the home of Joe Beckman. During the 1880s, Mrs. Lena Peters donated property on Laughton Heights for the congregation to build a little framed church, which was erected in 1889 and also served as a school. The church’s construction was done by St. Florian resident Mr. Stumpe. The first pastor of Saint Joseph Catholic Church was Reverend Gamblert Brunner (an original member of Sain Bernard Abby in Cullman,Alabama), who served at St. Josephs from 1889 to 1907. During his time as pastor, Brunner constructed a rectory that served as the pastor’s home until the 1970s. Bishop Edward Allen dedicated the church on June 8, 1902. Throughout its history, the church has had numerous pastors and renovations. Three during the 1930s were Rev. Henry Watson, Father Alfred Trottman, and Father Anselm Spitzer. During the years of World War II, Father Isidore Fussnecker made efforts to reach out to the black population in the area. In the late 1950s Father Paul Koehler became the pastor of the church. Koehler implemented renovations to the church. For instance, he added additional wings to the school, a Parish hall, and a modern convent. The greatest renovations happened during the 1970s. The old church, considered too small, was demolished and a new church erected in 1974. The new church building is made of brick and consists of a tower, a statue of Saint Joseph the Worker, and a huge cross. Today, the church is one of the chief religious and educational centers for Catholics in northwest Alabama.
Text: Rose Gibbons Lovett, excerpt from Catholic Church in the Deep South (The Diocese, 1980), in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information-Vol. 7: Other Denomination-Catholic, Churches 7.2,” Box 37, Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. “A Brief History of St. Joseph’s Parish Florence, Alabama,” in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information-Vol. 7: Other Denomination-Catholic, Churches 7.2,” Box 37, Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.
Established in 1872, St. Michael’s Catholic Church was the first Catholic Church in Lauderdale County. The church was organized in St. Florian, Alabama, a community founded by German Catholic settlers. A prominent Catholic minister in the southwest region of Tennessee, Reverend J. House, bought over two thousand acres of land in north Alabama. It was on this land that St. Florian was founded and the Catholic Church was erected. Consisting of a large frame, the first church was completed in 1872 on the south side of Military Road and was pastored by the German priest Father Michael Merz until 1876. Merz’ sister, Annie, attended St. Michael’s Catholic Church and became the first teacher at the church’s sponsored school. Due to the town’s cultural background, the school regularly taught classes in German. In 1878 the congregation relocated the church across the Military road, at which is still the current location. Due to growth in attendance the congregation needed a larger church, so the construction process to erect a new church structure began in 1914. From 1914 to 1918, parishioners voluntarily contributed to the erection of the new church. Stones from Shoals Creek were carried to the construction site and a local Shoals stone mason, Casper Haeger, laid the foundation. Also, members of the congregation cut down trees in wooded areas and took them to the local sawmill owned by Ed Rasch. Today, one of the most astonishing sights at the church is the nineteen stained glass windows--twelve large and seven small. These windows, made in Munich, Germany, were purchased in 1924 as a memorial for the early settlers of St. Florian.
Text: Jill Garrett, “First Catholic Church in County,” in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information-Vol. 7: Other Denomination-Catholic, Churches 7.2,” Box 37, Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. “Church Started in 1872,” in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information-Vol. 7: Other Denomination-Catholic, Churches 7.2,” Box 37, Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.
The Mars Hill Church of Christ, established in 1871, is one of twenty-nine Churches of Christ in Florence. The Church of Christ denomination emerged out of the American Restoration Movement, a movement to reestablish America’s Christianity on the teachings of the New Testament, which lasted from 1801 to 1906. Restoration followers were known as Stoneites and Campbellites, named after the two prominent leaders of the movement, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. Congregations set up by followers of Campbell called themselves Disciples of Christ, while those established by Stoneites were called Churches of Christ. The beliefs of the Restoration Movement made their way into the Shoals during the 1820s and 1830s through efforts of Restoration ministers, who ultimately shaped the religious culture in the region. The first two Restoration ministers to enter the Shoals were Ephraim D. Moore and James Evans Matthews. Moore, born in North Carolina in 1782, converted after he read and heard about Alexander Campbell’s teachings. Moore settled near Florence, Alabama, in 1823 and established the first Restoration church in the Shoals, known as the Republican Congregation. However, three years after its founding the congregation still had only ten members. In 1826, James Matthews, a Kentucky Christian minister, moved to Florence and helped Moore spread the movement. In the fall of 1827, Moore wrote to Barton Stone of the success he and Matthews had in growing converts in the Shoals region. Recounting a week-long camp which resulted in forty Shoals’ residents professing their faith in Christ, Moore reassured Stone that “the good work is moving on in almost every direction.” However, the Restoration Movement in the Shoals did not take place without opposition. Baptists and Presbyterians entered the Shoals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and did not approve of the activists’ efforts. For example, in 1830 the Muscle Shoals Baptist Association printed a resolution that defined the Restoration Movement as a “divine operation of the Holy Spirit either disavowed or so obscurely avowed, as to amount to disavowal. We see experimental religion ridiculed and reprobated.” The resolution criticized the efforts of Stone and Campbell’s disciples as “effort(s) by man to pull down the old order of faith and practice taught by our Lord and His apostles, and establish on their ruins a new order.” After converting to a Restoration church, William Henry Wharton of Tuscumbia was “discarded…opposed, calumniated, misrepresented, abused, denied entrance into houses consecrated to the worship of the only living and true God” because of his support for Reformation ideology. In addition to the vocal opposition from various denominations, in his article “History of the Church of Christ in Northwest Alabama, 1866-1880,” Shoals historian Wayne Kilpatrick argued that the Civil War ultimately hindered the Restoration Movement in the Shoals region. Kilpatrick claimed that many churches in the Shoals, including Restoration congregations, experienced a drop in membership during the war, which Kilpatrick defined as the “silent years” of the Restoration Movement. Nevertheless, the silent years in the Shoals ended with the arrival of Theophilus Brown Larimore in 1868. T. B. Larimore was born on July 10, 1843, in Jefferson County, Tennessee, where he grew up fatherless and in poverty. Despite these challenges, Larimore enrolled in Mossey Creek Baptist College (present day Carson Newman University), a theological institution, at the age of sixteen. During his time at in college he did not experience a spiritual conversion. As a result of his lack of personal experience with religion while in college, when the war began Larimore enlisted in the Confederate army and served as a scout in the Company B of the 5th Tennessee Cavalry. After serving in the war, Larimore became a member of a Restoration church in 1864, and thereafter, the church became the center of his life. Shortly after becoming a member of a Restoration church, he taught theology at Franklin College in Nashville, Tennessee, for two years, and accepted a position as a teacher at Mountain Home Academy, a Restoration institution located in Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1868. Larimore’s early efforts to expand the Restoration Movement in the northwest region of Alabama, however, did not succeed. For example, as Larimore remembered, the congregation at Hopewell Church located in Lauderdale County, “let me try to preach once, and were so well pleased with that ‘sarmint’ that they let me off—suddenly!” Also in 1868, Larimore married Julia Esther Gresham, who had inherited twenty-nine acres in Lauderdale County from her family. On this land, Larimore established Mars Hill Church of Christ. Larimore and others purchased land for a new building and in 1904 a new structure was built. The congregation continued to worship in this building until the current building was completed in 1969. In addition to Larimore, some prominent ministers of Mars Hill Church of Christ were Paul Simon, Robert Walker, and Kenneth Davis.
Text: Wayne Kilpatrick, “History of the Church of Christ in Northwest Alabama, 1823-1861,” The Journal of Muscle Shoals History Vol. xi (1986), 32-34. Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger Vol.2, no. 1, 16-17. Kilpatrick, “History of the Church of Christ in Northwest Alabama, 1823-1861,” 36. Wayne Kilpatrick, “ History of the Church of Christ in Lauderdale County, 1866-1880,” The Journal of Muscle Shoals History Vol. xi (1986), 67-85. Lee Freeman, “A Brief Study of the Life of Elder Theophilus Brown Larimore “, in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information Collection: Other Denomination-Church of Christ,” Box 37, Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. Frank Richey, “T. B. Larimore—The Preacher,” The Alabama Restoration Journal Vol. 4, no. 2 (April, 2010), 3. Bill McDonald, “Story of Mars Hill’s first lady,” Time Daily, October 12, 2003, in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information Collection: Other Denomination-Church of Christ,” Box 37, Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. Mars Hill Church of Christ, “A Brief History,” Mars Hill Church of Christ, http://marshillcc.org/a-breif-history.html (accessed May 1, 2015).
The Center Star Methodist Church congregation is the oldest Methodist congregation in Lauderdale County. Throughout its history the congregation has moved over five times. Its origins began in 1818, when the Methodist Richland Circuit of Giles County, Tennessee, extended across the Tennessee line into Lauderdale County, Alabama. One resident who lived in Lauderdale County at the time, Reverend Wesley Smith, wrote in a letter: “About the year 1819, my family moved from Tennessee to Lauderdale County, Alabama, and settled on Blue Water Creek. We had not been there long until the ‘circuit-rider’ found his cabin and soon made it a preaching place. I well remember the old cabin with dirt floor and two split-long benches that were used to seat the little congregation of backwoods worshipers.” Two early preachers were G. D. Taylor and J. Boucher. In 1823 the name of this congregation became Driskell Chapel Methodist Church, named after its Reverend Ambrose F. Driskell. Also during 1823, the congregation met in the old Trousdale home in Center Star, Alabama. The congregation kept the name, Driskell Chapel Methodist Church until 1893. During 1893 the congregation relocated approximately one mile east, where the church sits today. When it moved, the church changed its name to Center Star Methodist.
Text: “Center Star Methodist Church,” Tennessee Valley Historical Society, Journal of Muscle Shoals History Vol. X (1983): 147. Jill Knight Garrett, A History of Lauderdale County, Alabama, 144
On May 22, 1852, the Liberty Baptist Church congregation organized the oldest existing Baptist congregation in Lauderdale County. In fact, it was the only Baptist church erected in the county until the First Baptist Church of Florence was built over thirty years later in 1888. According to church records, during its first few years the church’s membership was approximately fifty people. These members constructed a white wooden sanctuary in which the congregation held service until the 1890s. The original wooden building had two doors—one for the men and one for the women. Also, the seating in the sanctuary was segregated by sexes. In the same year as its charter (1852), the congregation became a part of the Indian Creek Association and started Baptist missions in the surrounding area. During the beginning of the Civil War the church had a total of one hundred and twenty-eight members. However, due to the war, services were discontinued from 1863 to 1865. Shortly following the war, the first Sunday School was organized in 1877. The present day church building was constructed in 1892 when the congregation built a brick structure to take the place of the original wooden building.
Text: Lorene Frederick, “Church History Actually History of Community: Liberty Baptist Pastor Compiles Interesting Record of Both Church and The District,” Florence Times, April 22, 1960, located in in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information Collection-Vol. 7: Other Denominations-Baptist, Churches 7.1” Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama
Established during the 1830s, the Canaan United Methodist Church is the oldest Methodist congregation in Lauderdale County. Land for the church’s building and cemetery were given by an early settler in the county named Edmond Noel. Established for the rural planters on the bend of the Tennessee River, a tall framed building was constructed. Prior to the Civil War, slaves attended serves with their masters and sat in a designated gallery. The church itself played a role during the Civil War. During the war, soldiers under Union general James Wilson camped nearby and in 1865 Union troops bunked in the church. There was a skirmish between Union and Confederate troops at nearby Gravelly Springs Cemetery, and also a small skirmish took place on the grounds of the church. As a result, bullet holes once peppered the congregation’s pews. However, renovations in the 1970s remodeled the slave gallery and replaced the pews.
Text: William Lindsey McDonald, “Methodist Building in the Area,” in folder “McDonald Collection: The Church Register (Canaan)(Methodist Episcopal), Churches 10.1,” Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. “Canaan Methodist Church,”Tennessee Valley Historical Society, Journal of Muscle Shoals Vol. X, 1983: 91-92. Image: “Canaan Methodist Church,”Tennessee Valley Historical Society, Journal of Muscle Shoals Vol. X, 1983: 91-92.
Methodist settlers first entered the northwest region of Alabama during the early 1800s during the Second Great Awakening. The lot of land that Tabernacle Methodist Church sits on was used for religious camp meetings during the Second Great Awakening. The church itself was not erected until the 1830s. An exact of construction date is unknown. The building’s original design was that of a simple log structure. One of the first ministers at Tabernacle Methodist Church was Reverend Henry Hill, who passed away in 1850. The church burned down twice prior to 1869. After the second fire, the congregation built the church building that still stands today. Prominent citizens of Lauderdale County, such as Henry A. Killen, helped furnish and finance the church. Also, in 1874 George Kennedy, who owned the property that the church was located on, gave the congregation legal title to the land. The church building today does not host weekly worship services. Instead, it is used for funerals and memorial services for those buried in the Tabernacle Cemetery.
Text: Jill Knight Garret, A History of Lauderdale County, Alabama, 140. Tennessee Valley Historical Society, “Tabernacle Methodist Church,” Journal of Muscle Shoals History Vol. X (1983), 146.
Early Baptists settlers in Waterloo, Alabama, met in a two-story log meeting house. This building was erected in 1845. The structure was 40 x 60 feet. During the week, children in the Waterloo community attended school in the church’s main floor, while the upper floor acted as a fraternal lodge. However, the church building was destroyed during the Civil War. Under the command of General James Harrison Wilson, the Union Cavalry dismantled the Baptists church. One Waterloo citizen, John W. Till, recalled that he “saw a part of the soldiers of a Michigan Regiment tearing down the church” and they used the materials from the church and “built out of them their quarters.” As a result of the destruction of the church, during the 1870s and 1880s the church’s congregation had to hold services in various homes in the Waterloo community. In 1904, the congregation’s minister, Reverend W. J. Webb, testified that the church building was completely destroyed and probably worth only one thousand dollars. As a result, the Trustees of the Church decided to sue the United States for a total of one thousand dollars for the account of damages by the Union forces. The court rewarded the congregation with six hundred and fifteen dollars. Today, the congregation continues to thrive.
Text: William Lindsey McDonald, “The Waterloo Baptist Church and The Missionary,” located in in folder “McDonald Collection: Church Information Collection-Vol. 7: Other Denominations-Baptist, Churches 7.1” Bill McDonald Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. Tennessee Valley Historical Society, Journal Of Muscle Shoals Vol. X (1983), 86.
One of the most talented wood craftsman in northwest Alabama is Robin Wade. His furniture studio in Lexington, Alabama, produces organic “American” wood furniture. Wade attended the University of North Alabama as a young man, and started his wood furniture business during the mid-2000s at the age of forty-nine. His approach to furniture making is not based on money, but instead “is a celebration of nature.” Wade’s process is unique. All of the wood that Wade uses is local Alabama wood that has fallen because of either natural causes or human intervention. His crew is on standby to pick up trees and logs and once the wood has been brought back to the shop it goes through a slow studio process, which can take up to three years. Wade allows for the wood to keep its natural beauty. He frequently donates pieces of wood to local businesses and organizations in the Florence area. For example, the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, Frank Lloyd Wright Rosenbaum House, Florence Lauderdale Public Library, and the Florence-Lauderdale Tourism Office building all have a donated piece of wood furniture.
Text: Bobby Bozeman, “Local Craftsman Turn Discarded Wood into Works of Art, Functional Furniture,” Times Daily, August 11, 2013. Robin Wade Furnture, “Welcome,” http://robinwadefurniture.com/#welcome-to-rwf (accessed May 1, 2015). Robin Wade Furniture, “About Us,” http://robinwadefurniture.com/about-us/#about-rw (accessed May 1, 2015). Robin Wade Furniture, “Our Store,” http://robinwadefurniture.com/ourstore/ (accessed May 1, 2015).
Florence, Alabama, established on March 12, 1818, is nicknamed the “Renaissance City.” It is named after Florence, Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance (a time period in which a cultural movement in the arts, religion, science, and politics emerged, began during the fourteenth century). The connection between Florence, Alabama, and the Renaissance time period is through Ferdinand Sannoner. In 1818, Sannoner, an Italian surveyor from Florence, Italy, first surveyed the newly established Alabama land. Therefore, in recognition of Sannoner’s early work with the town, when time came to decide on the city’s name, Florence was chosen. The citizens of Florence, Alabama, acknowledge their city’s ties to the Renaissance and celebrate its heritage in an annual festival—the Alabama Renaissance Faire. Beginning in 1987, the city of Florence, Alabama, has hosted the Alabama Renaissance Faire in October. The event takes place at Wilson Park, located in downtown Florence, and host between thirty and forty thousand attendees. The Southeast Tourist Society in Atlanta, Georgia, listed the event as one of the top twenty fall events in the Southeast region of the United States and it is one the largest non-profit Renaissance Faires in the country. The Faire is an all-volunteer event. Those in the Florence, Alabama community that want to help plan the Faire are put on a committee called the Roundtable. There are no requirements to be placed on the Roundtable and meetings are once a month from January to September. Out of the Roundtable, eighteen individuals are voted onto the Faire’s Board of Directors. The Renaissance event begins on the third weekend in October. During this weekend, a meal is set to a themed Renaissance time period and is attended by two hundred guests who purchase a twenty-five dollar ticket. This meal is known as the Renaissance Feast. Exactly a week after the Feast, the Renaissance Faire begins. During the faire, many of the volunteer workers and public attendees are dressed up in Renaissance attire. Throughout the entire two-day festival, Renaissance themed arts and events take place such as dances, sword fighting, costume workshops, sonnet writing contests, theatrical plays, and musical concerts.
Text: Billy Warren, “Alabama Renaissance Faire,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2486 (accessed May 1, 2015). Bobby Bozeman, “Feast Marks Start of Renaissance Celebration,” Times Daily, September 30, 2014. Bobby Bozeman, “Something Old is New Again: Alabama Renaissance Faire to Celebrate History this Weekend,” Times Daily, October 24, 2014.
Music; Festival; Culture; African American History; Lauderdale County, AL; Handy, W.C.
William Christopher Handy, born in Florence, Alabama, on November 16, 1873 and is considered to be the “Father of the Blues.” His musical legacy is a prime part of the music culture in the Shoals region, especially in his home town of Florence. To celebrate Handy’s role in America’s blues music, the W. C. Handy Music Festival was organized by the non-profit organization called Music Preservation Society, Inc. The Music Preservation Society, Inc. established in 1982 in order to “preserve, present, and promote the musical heritage of Northwest Alabama.” While the organization puts on numerous events throughout the year, the W. C. Handy Music Festival each July is the most prominent. The music festival has been recognized as a top twenty summer event by the Southeast Tourism Society. The first Handy Music festival, organized in 1982 by the Music Preservation Society, lasted for a summer weekend and musician Dizzy Gillespie headlined. Over the past decades, the annual festival has evolved into a ten day event that consists of over two hundred musical shows and concerts. The music showcases music in Florence and the surrounding cities in various parks, restaurants, libraries, museums, sidewalks, and lawns. Some of the musicians and bands that have headlined the festival throughout the years are The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Drive By Truckers, Clarence Carter, Percy Sledge, Donnie Fritts, Bonnie Bramlett, and Roy Ayers. The funding for the festival comes from grants, sponsorships, donations, and sales from festival memorabilia. Numerous corporations and businesses that team up with the Music Preservation Society and help sponsor the annual music festival are: Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa, Florence/Lauderdale Tourism, Lauderdale County Commission, University of North Alabama, Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Text: Music Preservation Society, Inc., “About US,” http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org/about.htm (accessed May 1, 2015). Music Preservation Society, Inc., “History of the Festival,” http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org/history.htm (accessed May 1, 2015). Music Preservation Society, Inc., “Our 2014 Sponsors,” http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org/sponsors.htm (accessed May 1, 2015).
Theatre; Arts; Culture; Florence, AL; Lauderdale County, AL
The Shoals Theatre, located in historic downtown Florence, Alabama at 123 North Seminary Street, first opened in 1948. At the time of its grand opening, the art deco style theatre was one of the finest in the Southeast. It originally sat 1,350 people and was one of four theatres in the world to have slide back chairs. On October 21, 1948, the first movie shown in the Shoals Theatre was That Lady in Ermine. Tickets for children cost ten cents and an adult ticket was forty-five cents. However, due to economic hardships the theatre closed on March 13, 1980. The last Hollywood film shown in the theatre was American Gigolo. Twelve years later in 1992 a California man by the name of Jackson Canup purchased the Alabama theatre. He spent nearly $200,000 on renovations, but was forced to sell the theatre after financial difficulties two years later. In 1996 the Shoals Association of Ministers took over the operations and was awarded two grants from the Alabama Historical Commission for restoration projects. In the 2000s, the Shoals Community Theatre Association purchased the theatre and currently puts on plays, movies, operas, comedies, ballets, and symphonies in the historic venue.
Text: Charles Van Bibber, “Shoals Theatre,” Cinema Treasure, in folder “Buildings—Shoals Theater,” Florence Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama. Bernie Delinski, “Historic Shoals Theatre under New Ownership,” in folder “Buildings—Shoals Theater,” Florence Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.
2005.36.104: John A. Jones to Sister, 1859 May 27
1859; Greenville, SC; Grandma; Health; John A. Jones; Lou; Family Affairs; Family Life; Family Matters; Family Visitation; Marriage
4 handwritten pages, this letter is torn in the center and the author wrote vertically over the first page of the letter when concluding. This letter, while difficult to read, chronicles the general affairs of the family, including recent visitations and suggestions for marriage partners for Lou.
P.M.B. Young Collection, Bartow History Museum
Montgomery, Montgomery County, Jazz, Blues, Swing Music, Radio, WWII, Television Shows, Alabama Music Hall of Fame
Nat "King" Cole (March 17. 1919 - February 15, 1965) Born Nathaniel Adams Coles, on March 17, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama, crooner Nat Cole was known for his smooth, soft baritone and easygoing nature. When Nat was four years old, his father, Edward Coles, a Baptist minister, moved the family north to Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Perlina, who played the organ in her husband’s church, was one of his musical influences. As Chicago was a magnet for jazz musicians, Nat was also influenced by such artists as Louis Armstrong, and Earl “Fatha” Hines, who he would sneak out of his house to go listen to at the various clubs around the city. Dropping out of high school before graduation, Nat first played piano for his brother’s group, Eddie Cole’s Solid Swingers. Settling in Los Angeles after a national tour that he was part off failed, Nat joined with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Price in the late 1930s to form the King Cole trio, as Nat had acquired the moniker “King,” due in part to the Mother Goose nursery rhyme, ‘Old King Cole,” as well as a nod to his musical prowess. Originally, the group focused on instrumental tunes, with Nat offering vocals on occasion. Legend has it that Nat’s singing career took off when a drunken patron insisted that he sing “Sweet Lorraine.” While this story has been discounted, mainly by Cole himself, he nevertheless didn’t discourage it. Nat’s explanation of his transformation in simpler terms, stating, “I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.” By 1943, with the help of appearances on such radio shows as Swing Soiree, the Chesterfield Supper Club, and Kraft Music Hall, The King Cole Trio had scored their first major hit with Nat’s own composition, Straighten Up and Fly Right.” Later hits like “The Christmas Song” (1946), “Route 66” (1946), “Nature Boy” (1948, and “Mona Lisa” (1950), solidified Nat’s place as a solo act and moved him away from his jazz roots with The King Cole Trio. In 1956, Nat made history by becoming the first African American to host a show on American television, The Nat “King” Cole Show on NBC. The show lasted for just over a year, ending when the show’s producers were unable to find a national sponsor, due in part to reluctance to advance a show hosted by, and featuring, African American entertainers. Although not overtly vocal regarding the civil rights battle going on in America in the 1950s and 1960s, Nat was an advocate for equality, contributing money to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and bringing lawsuits against hotels that hired him to entertain, but refused to serve him. Nat’s career kept moving forward, as he combined his singing with a fledgling acting career, the highlight being the role of W.C. Handy in 1958’s “St. Louis Blues”, based on the life of Handy. It was around this time that Nat ventured into another new genre, Latin music, recording three albums exclusively in Spanish and Portuguese from 1958 to 1962. In December of 1964, after having experienced back pain and weight loss over the previous few months, Nat was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. A heavy smoker for most of his life, Nat continued to work in spite of the diagnosis and pain, releasing his final album L-O-V-E, as well as filming his last movie, “Cat Ballou,” starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. Nat succumbed to lung cancer on February 15, 1965. Nat’s popularity has remained strong long after his death, aided in part by his daughter Natalie’s recording of her father’s 1951 hit, “Unforgettable,” which combined new vocal from Natalie with those of her father’s. Posthumously, Nat has been enshrined in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame (1985), the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame (1993), the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (1997), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2000), and the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame (2013), as well as being featured on a United States postage stamp in 1994. Long after his passing, Nat’s sound is still influencing new generations of singers and finding new listeners. Watch & Listen: "Nat King Cole - Unforgettable" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_JRGjc1To "Nat King Cole - When I Fall In Love (From Movie - Istanbul 1957)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8lNgdpVakY "Memphis Blues Scene from 'St. Louis Blues' (1958)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvd76QiRs-4 "Nat Cole and early family interview" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_oXfIwSXIc "Nat 'King' Cole Interview" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3F5N3PSKik
John Griffin, University of North Alabama
Epstein, Daniel Mark. Nat King Cole. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999 Santelli, Robert. The Big Book of Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia. New York: Penguin Books, 1993 “Nat ‘King’ Cole.” http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1552. Accessed November 29, 2016. Gilliland, John. Show 22 - Smack Dab in the Middle on Route 66: A skinny dip in the easy listening mainstream. [Part 1]. UNT Digital Library. http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19775/. Accessed November 29, 2016. All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Huntsville, Madison County, Country music, Grand Ole Opry, Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Radio, Redstone Arsenal
Ernie Ashworth (December 15, 1928 - March 2, 2009) Even though he had written songs for some of country music’s biggest stars, and that he himself had scored two top 10 hits, it wasn’t until after he had scored his one and only number-one single that Ernie Ashworth finally left his job working in the guided missile program at Redstone Arsenal in his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. His life before, and after, was just as varied as his day and night jobs in 1963. Born December 15, 1928, Ernest Bert Ashworth began his career in music singing and playing guitar on local radio station WBHP-AM, from 1948 to 1949, when he moved to Nashville, Tennessee to continue his career in radio. It was there that he was signed by Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose Music as a songwriter, writing songs recorded by such artists as Jimmy Dickens, Johnny Horton, and Carl Smith. However, after not making his mark as a singer, Ernie left Nashville in 1957 and returned to Huntsville, where he landed a job working at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal. It wasn’t until 1960 that Wesley Rose, who hadn’t given up on Ernie, arranged a recording contract for Ernie with Decca Records. Scoring three top-20 hits in two years, Ernie moved on to Hickory Records, a subsidiary owned by Acuff-Rose Music, which is where he found his greatest success as a performer. After a Top Five hit with “Everybody But Me” and a Top Ten hit with, “I Take The Chance” in 1962, Ernie found his success in 1963 with “Talk Back Trembling Lips,” his lone number-one song, which stayed on the country charts for 42 weeks. This success led to Ernie being invited to join the Grand Ole Opry as a member in 1964. While he continued to score more records that charted, none came close to the success of his signature song, although he continued to tour and perform on the Opry stage. It was then that Ernie’s career came full circle, as he once again found himself in the radio business, this time as an owner, with stations in Flomaton, Alabama, Ardmore, Tennessee, and Gallatin, Tennessee. In 1999, Ernie, who was always a popular figure overseas, scored a number-one hit on the UK Independent Chart with “Lonely Only Bar.” Ernie was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Ernie Ashworth died on March 2, 2009, in Hartsville, Tennessee following heart surgery, leaving behind a life in music few can match. Watch and Listen: "Talk Back Trembling Lips" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtCB6fftSwA "Ernie Ashworth Talks 'Talk Back Trembling Lips'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddgmQBMu4x0 "The D.J. Cried" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpdt4Hrp2Lg "Everybody But Me" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDlz0hKdB_M
Ernie Ashworth official website http://www.ernieashworth.com/ Accessed November 1, 2016 Ernie Ashworth: Alabama Music Hall of Fame http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/2008/ernie-ashworth/ Accessed November 1, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Killen, Lauderdale County, Rock music, Elvis Presley, FAME Music Studio, Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Arthur Alexander, Rick Hall, Alabama Music Hall of Fame, CMA Awards
David Briggs (March 16, 1943 - ) David Briggs has had a career that can best be described as impressive, topped off by working with Elvis Presley as his studio keyboardist, and later going out on tour with the King. But lest one think that he would rest on his laurels, David delved into new avenues of the music business, with success at every turn. David Paul Briggs was born March 16, 1943, in the small town of Killen, Alabama, located less than 20 miles from Muscle Shoals and its, at the time, nascent music industry. Music was an early part of Briggs’ life, and he took part in his first recording session at the ripe old age of 14. Soon, he was working with Jerry Carrigan, Terry Thompson, and Norbert Putnam, becoming a part of the original rhythm section for Rick Hall’s FAME Music Studio in their original studios in Florence, Alabama, and at the present studio, in Muscle Shoals. It was here that Briggs was able to work with such artists as Arthur Alexander (“You Better Move On”), Jimmy Hughes (“Steal Away”), and Tommy Roe (“Everybody”). In 1964, Briggs left the Shoals area, moving to Nashville. It was here that David happened to be in the right place at the right time. While recording his gospel album, “How Great Thou Art,” Elvis Presley asked David to fill in on keyboard as Floyd Cramer was running late. Impressed with David’s style and versatility, Elvis had him stay and play organ, even after Cramer had resumed his duties on the piano. It was a collaboration that would last until just before Presley’s death in 1977, and included Briggs joining Elvis in his 1975 Las Vegas engagement, and later, all his concert dates from 1976 through February, 1977. It was also during the time that he met Presley that David and fellow FAME rhythm section member Norbert Putnam opened Quadrafonic Studios in Nashville, recording with some of the biggest names in music, among them Neil Young, Joan Baez, Jimmy Buffet and the Jackson Five. Briggs sold his part of the studio in 1976 and later opened House of David Studios in an early 20th-century house located on Music Row. Briggs even retrofitted the house with a secret passageway from the basement garage to a tracking room just for Elvis in order that he could come and go without being mobbed by fans, a convenience Presley was not able to take advantage of before he died. In addition to his studio work, Briggs has served as musical director on the CMA Awards shows, and recorded commercials for such clients as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coors, and Chevrolet. David Briggs was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1999. Watch & Listen: "Conversations on Elvis - Norbert Putnam, Chip Young & David Briggs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O26y8jqzS-0 "Arthur Alexander - 'You Better Move On' , David Briggs-piano, Terry Thompson-guitar, Forest Riley-acoustic guitar, Norbert Putnam-bass, Jerry Carrigan-drums" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmh6hDo2_8 "Jimmy Hughes - Steal Away, David Briggs-piano, Terry Thompson-guitar, Norbert Putnam-bass, Jerry Carrigan-drums" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwESSxBVTuw "Everybody - Tommy Roe, featuring Nobert Putman-bass, David Briggs-piano, Bobby West-guitar, and Jerry Carrigan-drums." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OesKimDbcA
David Briggs: Alabama Music Hall of Fame http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/1999/david-briggs/, Accessed November 20, 2016 House of David website http://www.houseofdavidstudios.com/, Accessed November 20, 2016 Interview, David Briggs http://www.elvispresleymusic.com.au/articles/tcb-band-david-briggs.html. Accessed November 20, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Dothan, Houston County, Eufaula, Barbour County, Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Rock music, Southern rock music, Classics IV, Atlanta Rhythm Section,
Buddy Buie (January 23, 1941 - July 18, 2015) Buddy Buie may not be a name that most folks recognize, but his impact on the music scene of the 1960s to the 1990s is one that transcends name recognition. As a songwriter, producer, and concert promoter, Buddy had a hand in showcasing the talents of such artists as Roy Orbison, Wynonna Judd, B.J. Thomas, The Classics IV, and, most of all, The Atlanta Rhythm Section. Born January 23, 1941, in the small town of Marianna, Florida, Perry Carlton Buie (pronounced Boo-ee) moved with his family to the town of Dothan, Alabama when he was still a child. After dropping out of Auburn University, Buddy moved north to New York City to focus on a career in music, but soon settled back in the south in Atlanta, Georgia, where he resided for much of his music career. In the early 1960s, Buddy became the road manager for Roy Orbison. A few years later, he became the producer for the Classics IV, whose guitarist, J.R. Cobb, became a frequent songwriting partner with Buddy. While based in Atlanta, Buddy spent his songwriting time in a small fishing trailer that he had in Eufaula, Alabama. It was during this period that Buddy and Cobb wrote such hits as “Stormy,” “Spooky,” and “Traces.” While the success that he had with the Classics IV set him on steady ground, it was his founding of the group Atlanta Rhythm Section that best-defined Buddy’s influence and success on the music scene. In 1970, Buddy had opened a recording studio in Atlanta. Combining members of the Classics IV and the Candymen, Atlanta Rhythm section established themselves as a Southern Rock band in the realm of the Allman Brothers Band and Lynryd Skynryd. Buddy managed and produced many of their albums, and co-wrote their hit “So Into You,” along with keyboardist Dean Daughtry and Robert Nix. The 1980s and 1990s, while not as productive as the years with Atlanta Rhythm Section, Buddy, along with Cobb, was still actively writing, his most significant hit being Wynonna Judd’s “Rock Bottom”, which hit #2 on the country charts in 1992. In 2003, Buddy retired to Eufaula, his inspiration for so many of his hits. Buddy was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1984, and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2010. Buddy Buie passed away after suffering a heart attack on July 18, 2015, leaving behind a lasting influence on pop and southern rock music that still resonates to this day. Watch and Listen: "Stormy" Classics IV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Sua_QTDs0 "Spooky" Classics IV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpo9KZYJ4sA "Traces" Classics IV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyxpQO0YYQo "So Into You" Atlanta Rhythm Section https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmJWRLwQq7w "Rock Bottom" Wynonna Judd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrFfRQsBqd0
Buddy Buie: Alabama Music Hall of Fame http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/2011/buddy-buie/ Accessed October 31, 2016 Buddy Buie obituary, al.com http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/07/hall_of_fame_songwriter_buddy.html Accessed October 31, 2016 Buddy Buie obituary, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/perry-buddy-buie-songwriter-and-producer-dies-at-74/2015/07/23/b3f62650-30c7-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html?utm_term=.0609191a1b97 Accessed October 31, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Montgomery, Montgomery County, FAME Studios, Candi Staton, Rick Hall, Alabama School for the Blind, Alabama State College, Rock music, R&B music, Blues music, Soul music, Grammy Awards
Clarence Carter (January 14, 1936 - ) The best way to describe Clarence Carter’s style is that he is a soul and blues preacher of love, most specifically, the cheating kind. Carter’s vocals, at times soaring and at times down in the gutter, combined with a mischievous chuckle that threatens to reveal more that it should, makes him a truly unique individual in the blues and soul world. Clarence Carter was born on January 14, 1936, in Montgomery, Alabama. Blind at birth, Clarence was a student at Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama, and later matriculated at Alabama State College (now University) in Montgomery, earning a degree in music. Teaming with a fellow ASC student, Calvin Scott, who was also blind, they formed the singing duo of Clarence & Calvin, later renamed the C & C Boys. Recording first for Fairlane Records, then Duke Records, their recordings failed to have much success. In 1965, they traveled to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record at FAME Studios with owner/producer Rick Hall. The song “Step By Step” caught the ear of executives with Atlantic Records, who signed the duo and released the song as a single. While it, too, generated little buzz, “Step By Step” saw the beginning of a collaboration between Carter and Hall which would prove to be most successful. Shortly after the release of “Step By Step,” Scott was seriously injured in an auto accident, effectively ending the duo of Carter and Scott. Clarence continued as a solo act, recording albums for Hall’s Fame label at FAME Studios. 1967 saw Clarence release, “Tell Daddy,” his first hit, reaching #35 on the R&B chart. The song was recorded a year later, as “Tell Mama,” by Etta James, and was her biggest pop hit. The success of the song led to Clarence signing with Atlantic Records, and resulted in a string of hits, starting with “Slip Away” (#2-R&B, 1968), “Too Weak to Fight” (#3-R&B, 1968), and “Patches” (#2-R&B, 1970). By the mid-1970s, with disco coming on the scene, Clarence’s career began to take a downward turn. It wasn’t until the 1985 that he began what can be considered a comeback, signing with Ichiban Records based in Atlanta, Georgia, and releasing the album “Dr. C.C.,” which features the risqué single, “Strokin’.” Leaving Ichiban Records for his own label, Cee Gee Entertainment, Clarence has continued to record and release albums well into the 2010’s. Presented with the Governor’s Achievement Award for Popular Music in 1989 by the governor of Alabama and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Clarence was inducted into the Hall in 2003. Watch and Listen: "Strokin'" WARNING: NSFW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7gMkiOPSeA&list=PLstq9cm8cocC0tV5XzenPYX_AWupLMVsK "Back Door Santa" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0NoalRsk5w&list=PLstq9cm8cocC0tV5XzenPYX_AWupLMVsK&index=2 "Slip Away" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWYORXq_-f0&list=PLstq9cm8cocC0tV5XzenPYX_AWupLMVsK&index=3 "Patches" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-84fn58GTV0
“Clarence Carter” http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/2003/clarence-carter/ Accessed December 1, 2016 “Soul Blue Music – Clarence Carter” http://www.soulbluesmusic.com/clarencecarter.htm Accessed December 1, 2016 “FAME Studios history” http://www.fame2.com/our-history/ Accessed December 1, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Fairfield, Jefferson County, Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, Jazz music, Bass (instrument), Big Band music, Ike Cole Trio, Ramsey Lewis Trio, Count Basie
Cleveland "Cleve" Eaton (August 31, 1939 - ) In his long career in music, it is difficult to find a genre or an entertainer or act that Cleve Eaton has either not recorded or toured with. The man dubbed “the Count’s Bassist” because of his long association with Count Basie and his orchestra, Eaton has also worked with such artists as jazz pianist Ike Cole (Nat’s brother), pop artist Minnie Riperton, R&B group The Dells, as well as Julie London, Sammie David, Jr., Herbie Hancock, and The Temptations…and that just touches the surface. Born in Fairfield, Alabama on August 31, 1939, Cleveland Eaton grew up in a house full of musical influence. Between the ages of five to fifteen, Cleve mastered the piano, saxophone, trumpet, and tuba. But it was the string bass with captured Cleve’s interest and, as they say, the rest is history. After earning a degree in music at Tennessee A & I State University, Cleve first connected with Ike Cole in Chicago, become a part of his trio. In 1965, Cleve began a decade-long stint with the Ramsey Lewis Trio, playing bass on such albums as “Wade In The Water” (1966), “Goin’ Latin” (1967), and the number one jazz album “Sun Goddess” (1975). While the Ramsey Lewis Trio was where Cleve made his mark on the national scene, it was his 17-year association with The Count Basie Orchestra that cemented his spot as the preeminent bassist of his time. Eaton’s work with Basie began just two weeks after he left Lewis in a salary dispute. Cleve can be heard on such albums as “Kansas City Shout” (1980), “88 Basie Street” (1983), which won the 1984 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band, and on Basie’s last album, “Fancy Pants” (1983). Eaton continued his association with The Count Basie Orchestra after Basie’s death in 1984, including on “Big Boss Band” (1990), by George Benson, which featured the Basie orchestra. During this time, Cleve was also heading his own project, Cleve Eaton and Co., which evolved, in 2004, into Cleve Eaton and the Alabama All-Stars. Cleveland Eaton was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979, and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Watch and Listen: "Count Basie, Cleve Eaton" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YHEWFdhEMc "Cleveland Eaton in Concert" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtVJtxxChaw "Count Basie - Booty's Blues" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct_tBKgQAxw "Cleve Eaton - Slippin' Into Darkenss" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMb1b7A2O6s
“Cleveland Eaton – Alabama Music Hall of Fame” http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/2008/cleveland-eaton/ Accessed December 1, 2016 “Cleveland Eaton Official Website” http://clevelandeatonmusic.com/home/ Accessed December 1, 2016 “Cleve Eaton Interview – The Birmingham Times 2/5/15” http://www.birminghamtimes.com/2015/02/the-cleve-eaton-story-god-is-in-control/ Accessed December 1, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Montgomery, Montgomery County, Stax Records, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Jerry Wexler, Blues music, R&B music, Soul music,
Eddie Floyd (June 27, 1937 - ) The “Memphis sound” that mixed Southern soul with R&B, jazz, with a little country and gospel thrown in, was an important and influential sound in the 1960s. Led by such singers as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett, none was more influential to the sound coming out of the Stax recording studios than singer-songwriter Eddie Floyd. Edward Lee Floyd was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on June 25, 1937. Six weeks later, his family moved to Detroit, Michigan. As a youth, Eddie often migrated between Michigan and Alabama. His exposure to both Southern soul and blues, and to the burgeoning R&B sound that would grow into the Motown sound of the 1960s, no doubt influenced both his singing and songwriting. In 1955, Eddie co-founded The Falcons, an R&B group considered to be the musical godfather to such later Motown groups asThe Temptations and The Four Tops. The group had a top twenty hit with “You’re So Fine” in 1959. A year later, Wilson Pickett joined the group and, with him, they recorded “I Found a Love” in 1960, backed by the singing group the Primettes, who would later change their name to the Supremes. In 1963, Pickett left the group and The Falcons disbanded. In 1965, Eddie moved to Memphis to work at Stax Records as a songwriter and producer. While at Stax, Eddie wrote “Comfort Me” for Carla Thomas, the title song of her album which peaked at #11 on the R&B chart in 1965. In 1966, Eddie co-wrote “Knock On Wood” with guitarist Steve Cropper, a member of Stax’s house band, Booker T. and the M.G.’s, and was originally intended to be recorded by Otis Redding. However, record executive Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, the distributor for Stax, convinced the president of Stax to release Eddie’s demo version instead. Wexler’s instincts proved to be correct, as “Knock On Wood” sold over a million singles and reached #28 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as spending a week at #1 on the Soul Singles chart. His recording career reborn, Eddie became Stax’s most dependable hitmaker, releasing “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do),” which Eddie also co-wrote with Booker T. Jones and Alvertis Isabell (Al Bell), reached #2 on Billboard’s R&B chart in 1968, and “Raise Your Hand,” another Eddie Floyd co-composition, reached #11 on Billboard’s Black Singles chart in 1967. Both songs, along with “Knock On Wood” have been covered by various artists over the years. Eddie’s singing career, however, didn’t diminish his songwriting career. Frequently teaming up with Cropper, Booker T., or both, to pen such hits as Sam & Dave’s “You Don’t Know What You Mean To Me” (#20 R&B – 1968), Otis Redding’s “I Love You More Than Words Can Say” (#30 R&B – 1967), and Floyd and Cropper’s biggest hit, Wilson Pickett’s “634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)” (#1 Black Singles – 1966), a song that has been covered by Otis Redding, Trace Adkins, and Bruce Springsteen, among other. Eddie and Wilson also performed the song in the 1998 movie, “Blues Brothers 2000.” When Stax closed its doors due to financial difficulties in 1975, Eddie’s career faltered for the remainder of the decade. The 1980s and 1990s saw a revival of Eddie’s career, as he toured with former Stax labelmates Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn as the Blue Brothers Band, as well sitting in with Bill Wyman’s (of The Rolling Stones) group Rhythm Kings on several tour dates. In 2008, Eddie rejoined the revived Stax Records label, releasing “Eddie Loves You So” in 2008, “At Christmas Time” in 2012, and “Down By the Sea” in 2013. In 2003, Eddie was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Watch and Listen: "Knock on Wood - Eddie Floyd" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kceiks__PsE "I've Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do) - Eddie Floyd" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJYRH7JhHW0 "California Girl - Eddie Floyd" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfAj2UU1ej4 "634-5789 - Wilson Pickett" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2apquxKKQ&list=PLvC2ishH1j7R11CyBdFTDFw8dGelCM5vF "634-5789 - Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Blues Brothers 2000" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY-t_lJ6GHE
Eddie Floyd: Alabama Music Hall of Fame http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/2003/eddie-floyd/ Accessed November 29, 2016 Eddie Floyd Official Website http://eddiefloyd.com/ Accessed November 29, 2016 Eddie Floyd bio allmusic.com http://www.allmusic.com/artist/eddie-floyd-mn0000168958/ Accessed November 29, 2016 Soulsville, USA: The Story of STAX Records https://books.google.com/books?id=XLdsRwpZ9oYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=soulsville&sig=ACfU3U0srTq7YeEyniP8y-FMSFpArxeB8w#v=onepage&q=soulsville&f=false/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Eddie Floyd historyofrock.com http://www.history-of-rock.com/eddie_floyd.htm/ Accessed December 5, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Florence, Lauderdale County, FAME Studios, Rick Hall, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Sheffield, Elvis Presley, Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, Percy Sledge, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Alabama Music Hall of Fame
Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay (August 22, 1947 - ) If anyone can lay claim to having lived a life that was marked by being in the right place at the right, Donna Jean Godchaux (pronounced “God-show) can. From growing up in the Florence/Muscle Shoals, Alabama area while the Muscle Shoals recording scene was exploding, to moving to San Francisco where she met her first husband Keith Godchaux, as well as Jerry Garcia, Donna’s life is one of opportunities taken. Born Donna Jean Thatcher on August 22, 1947, in Florence, Alabama, Donna spent her childhood years on the banks of the Tennessee River, attending Sheffield High School, where she was a cheerleader. Music has always been a passion with Donna. As she points out, “I was singing from pretty much as soon as I could talk.” That love of music eventually took her to the various recording studios that had begun to populate the Muscle Shoals area. After graduating from high school in 1965, Donna began singing with her best friend Jeanie Greene in a group that they eventually called Southern Comfort. Jeanie’s husband Marlin was a music producer, working with Rick Hall’s FAME Studios. In 1966, Donna and Jeanie sang backup on Percy Sledge’s megahit “When a Man Loves a Woman,” which Marlin produced for FAME before producing a rerecording at Norala Studios in Sheffield, Alabama. The song spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and four weeks on the Billboard R&B singles chart. In 1969, she and Jeanie hit solid gold again when they sang back-up on Elvis Presley’s number one hit, “Suspicious Minds.” Other albums on which she sang backing vocals include “3614 Jackson Highway” by Cher (1969), on which she also appeared on the album cover, “Boz Scaggs” (1969) by Boz Scaggs (both albums recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio), and “From Elvis in Memphis” (1969), by Elvis Presley, which featured the top five hit “In The Ghetto,” penned by country artist Mac Davis. In 1970, Donna decided it was time for a change of scenery and moved to the San Francisco area. It was here that she met and married Keith Godchaux, a keyboardist playing various clubs and bars in the Bay area. In 1971, the couple introduced themselves the Jerry Garcia, a founding member of the Grateful Dead. From that meeting, Keith was asked to join the band, with Donna joining the group in 1972, singing back-up and occasional lead vocal. The Godchauxs remained with the Grateful Dead until 1979, when they left to try other avenues of music on their own with the band The Heart of Gold. Just a little over a year after leaving, Keith died of injuries sustained in an automobile accident. It was during this time that Donna took a break from music. She remarried, and in the mid-1990s, she and her husband David MacKay, also a musician, moved back to Donna’s home in northwest Alabama, eventually settling in the town of Killen, just a few miles east of Florence, where it all began for her. It was at this time that Donna’s desire to return to music began to take hold, and she began to write songs once again, as well as forming the Donna Jean Godchaux Band with Jeff Mattson in 2009, which also features David MacKay on bass. In addition, Donna has appeared at various venues and concerts with many of her former Dead bandmates, including Bob Weir and Mickey Hart. Donna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as a member of the Grateful Dead, and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2016. Watch and Listen: "Keith & Donna - Sweet Baby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxKuCLL4Vro "Scarlet Begonias - Grateful Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgPLFYNEL1A "When a Man Loves a Woman - Percy Sledge" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lp7FtJXp7k "Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxOBOhRECoo "Interview - Donna Meeting Garcia, Grateful Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1RzbN-NBTo "Interview - Donna Meeting Elvis" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8WddfHcR0
“Donna Jean MacKay interview, 3/28/1998” http://www.levity.com/gans/Donna.980328.html/ Accessed December 2, 2016 “Donna Jean Godchaux interview, 2/24/2016” http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/02/donna_jean_godchaux_alabama_mu.html/ Accessed December 2, 2016 “Donna Jean Godchaux Band with Jeff Mattson official website” http://donnajeangodchauxband.info/index.html/ Accessed December 2, 2016 “Hall of fame another stop on Godchaux Mackay's long strange trip” http://www.timesdaily.com/life/hall-of-fame-another-stop-on-godchaux-mackay-s-long/article_f9186616-c058-5771-a530-3521cd97fd3d.html/ Accessed December 2, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
Birmningham, Jefferson County, Big Band music, trumpet, Alabama State Teachers College,Fess Whatley, Ensley, Tuxedo Junction, Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, Alabama Music Hall of Fame Watch and Listen: "After Hours" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CYQ6YZHMEE "Tuxedo Junction" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFeFaZoj2QY "Tippin' In" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWc0ObIJydc
Erskine Hawkins (July 26, 1914 - November 11, 1993) When philanthropists donate money to various organizations, schools and charities, most often the result is either a building named in in their honor, or a scholarship, or even a seat on a board of directors. Alabama industrialist Erskine Ramsay took this one step further, by opening savings accounts for families who would name their newborn sons after him. And while most of children did not achieve any amount of celebrity, one did, as a bandleader and trumpeter whose contemporaries included Louis Armstrong. Erskine Ramsay Hawkins was born on July 26, 1914, in Birmingham, Alabama. Erskine early on demonstrated musical proficiency. As a student at the Tuggle Institute, a private African-American boys school in Birmingham, Erskine learned to play the drums, trombone and saxophone. But it was the trumpet that would eventually elevate Hawkins to the heights he eventually reached. Under the tutelage of famed director J.T. “Fess” Whatley, Erskine not only learned how to master the trumpet, but how to read music, as well. After graduating from Tuggle, Hawkins attended the Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery, Alabama, on an athletic scholarship. Soon, Erskine was spending more time on the stage than on the ballfield. Leading first, the ‘Bama State Revelers, then the ‘Bama State Collegians, Erskine started to show the ability to reach notes on the trumpet thought too high to reach. This ability later led his being called “The Twentieth Century Gabriel.” As the band became more and more popular, causing the group, all students at the college, to miss more classes than they attended, they all soon left school to pursue their musical careers full-time. Leaving Alabama, “Erskine Hawkins and his ‘Bama State Collegians” soon found themselves as one of the house bands at the famed Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Famed as the place where the “Lindy Hop” was developed, the Savoy was one of the premier venues for music during and after the Harlem Renaissance. It was here that Erskine and the band, now simply called “Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra” signed with RCA Victor and began cutting records on their Bluebird label. It was also here that Erskine co-wrote what would become his signature song, “Tuxedo Junction.” The title of the songs refers to an area in the Ensley neighborhood of Erskine’s hometown of Birmingham. Tuxedo Park was an area where the lines of the Wylam and Pratt City streetcars crossed, and where a jazz and dance club was located, hence, “Tuxedo Junction.” While Hawkins’ version reached #7 on the National Hit Parade in 1939, it is Glenn Miller’s #1 1940 rendition that most are familiar with. While Erskine penned other songs, like “Don’t Cry Baby” (#11 – Pop, 1943) “After Hours” (#3 R&B – 1946) and “Tippin’ In” (#1 R&B -1945) which were hits, “Tuxedo Junction” is his most famous. Often, when playing the Savoy, the band would sign off with that song to keep the crowds dancing as the next band came to the stage. By the 1950s, the Savoy had closed and Erskine, due to rising costs, had downsized his orchestra, although he would reunite the orchestra on special occasions. During the 1960s, he was a frequent player at the Embers Club in New York City, and, from 1967 to 1993, was the bandleader in the nightclub in The Concord Resort Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, New York, located in the Catskills of New York, about two hours upstate from New York City. Among the many honors that Erskine Hawkins received during his lifetime is an honorary doctorate in music from Alabama State Teachers College in 1947, was one of the first inductees into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1978, and a Lifework Award and induction into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1989. Also, the park that inspired the name of Tuxedo Junction was renamed Erskine Hawkins Park in his honor. On November 11, 1993, Erskine Hawkins passed away in Willingboro, New Jersey.
Alabama Music Hall of Fame: Erskine Hawkins http://www.alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/1989/erskine-hawkins/ Accessed December 4, 2016 Erskine Hawkins http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1365/ Accessed December 4, 2016 Erskine Hawkins http://www.allmusic.com/artist/erskine-hawkins-his-orchestra-mn0000206380/biography/ Accessed December 4, 2016 Erskine Hawkins http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/music-popular-and-jazz-biographies/erskine-hawkins/ Accessed December 4, 2016 Obituary: Erskine Hawkins http://articles.latimes.com/1993-11-14/news/mn-56807_1_tuxedo-junction/ Accessed December 4, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Florence, Lauderdale County, Hank Williams, Tree International, Dolly Parton, Curley Putnam, Country music, Pop music, R&B music, Alabama Music Hall of Fame
Buddy Killen (November 13, 1932 - November 1, 2006) There are countless musicians, singers and entertainers in the world that, for lack of that big break, never reach the pinnacle, in spite of the fact that they may have just as much, if not more, talent than others who become household names. Chances are that someone with the talent of Elvis Presley would have somehow reached some level of notoriety, but what remains unknown is if this would have been possible without the big break he received from Buddy Killen, who pitched him his first million-selling single, “Heartbreak Hotel." William Doyce Killen was born on November 13, 1932, in the hometown of W.C. Handy, Florence, Alabama. Growing up poor in the American South during this time was a way of life for many families and Buddy’s was no exception. As a child and into his teen years, music was his escape. His first band, the Hillbilly Pals, was formed during his childhood. The Dixie Ramblers, his second, performed on local radio. The day after graduating from high school, Buddy was offered the chance to play bass for a pair of comedians on the Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, Tennessee. Buddy never hesitated, moving to Nashville, where he soon found himself playing and traveling with such Opry stars as Hank Williams, George Morgan, Ray Price and Jim Reeves, becoming acquainted with many of the people who ran country music scene behind the stage curtain. One of those people proved to be Buddy’s big break in 1953. Jack Stapp was running his publishing company, Tree International, on his own. As Buddy tells it, “I was doing demos for Tree at $10 a session, and Jack would come into the studio and ask me to get together with this singer or that writer. It went well and Jack asked me if I would come to work for him. The job would pay $35 a week and I said yes. I began picking up songs and getting them recorded. We didn’t have an office. I would carry a tape recorder around begging for songs. It was a sheer case of determination.” That determination paid off for Buddy, as he would be made a partner in Tree, eventually rising to president, and eventually, when Stapp passed away in 1980, sole owner. Along the way, he helped several artists reap the reward of their own sheer determination, starting with Elvis Presley in 1956. Another who benefited from Killen’s confidence was 14-year-old Dolly Parton, who Killen signed to a recording contract in 1960. Roger Miller, too, was a beneficiary of Buddy’s ability to spot talent, both writing and performing. Miller would go on to write hit songs for Ray Price, Jim Reeves, and Bill Anderson. Buddy also continued to write songs himself, including the #1 hit “I May Never Get to Heaven” (Conway Twitty – 1979), as well as Ronnie McDowell's #4 hit "Watchin' Girls Go By," released in 1981. In all, Buddy had 19 Top-40 hits that appeared on Billboards Country, Pop, R&B and A/C charts between 1961 and 1986. In 1989, after almost ten years at the helm of Tree International Publishing, Buddy sold the company to CBS/Sony for a reported $30-40 million. In 1993, his autobiography, “By the Seat of My Pants: My Life in Country Music,” was published by Simon & Schuster. Along the way, Buddy picked up many accolades and awards, including being a member of the first class of inductees to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985, along with Nat “King” Cole, Hank Williams, and W.C. Handy. Buddy Killen passed away on November 1, 2006. Watch and Listen: "Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4euyTDhFnk "I May Never Get to Heaven - Conway Twitty" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47D2omht1BI "Watchin' Girls Go By - Ronnie McDowell" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ychMkvLV87w "Ain't Gonna Bump No More - Joe Tex" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56tBm7nJ1QM
Buddy Killen; Alabama Music Hall of Fame http://www.alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/1985/buddy-killen/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Buddy Killen http://www.allmusic.com/artist/buddy-killen-mn0000640267/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Buddy Killen obituary http://www.cmt.com/news/1544585/nashville-music-pioneer-buddy-killen-dies/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Buddy Killen obituary http://www.nashvillepost.com/home/article/20400528/buddy-killen-passes-away-at-73/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Killen, Buddy, and Carter, Tom. “By the Seat of My Pants: My Life in Country Music.” New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Center Star, Lauderdale County, FAME Studios, Rick Hall, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Dan Penn, R&B music, Soul music, Rock and Roll Hall of fame, Alabama Music Hall of Fame
Spooner Oldham (June 14, 1943 - ) The writing credits of Spooner Oldham read like a jukebox selection. From Percy Sledge to Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett to Janis Joplin, Spooner is at the heart of what has come to be called “The Muscle Shoals Sound.” Born June 14, 1943, in Center Star, Alabama, a community so small it hasn’t been listed on the U.S. census rolls since 1880, Dewey Lindon Oldham, Jr., comes from a family with a musical background. His father played in a band when Spooner was young child, and, per Spooner, he would just “sit over in the corner and watch them,” as his father and bandmates would practice out on the porch. It was also as a child when Spooner “accidently” acquired his nickname. Reaching for pan on the stove, he was left blind in his right eye when it was injured by a spoon. Following in his father’s footsteps, he began playing piano for local bands while in high school. After graduation, Spooner briefly attended the University of North Alabama in Florence, but dropped out soon after realizing he was skipping more classes than he attended, preferring to Rick Hall’s FAME Studios to learn his trade against that of an official classroom. It was there that Spooner started on his journey to becoming one of the premier sidemen in music. In this role, Spooner played keyboards on some of the most successful songs to come out of, first FAME Studios, then Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. Songs like Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” (1966), Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” (1966), and Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You” (1967), all saw Spooner on keyboard. Spooner also played on Franklin’s signature song, “Respect” (1967), recording at Atlantic Records Studio in New York City in 1967. Shortly afterwards, Spooner headed west to Memphis, where he connected with a songwriting partner he had met while at FAME, Dan Penn. Together they had written the James & Bobby Purify hit, “I’m Your Puppet” (1966), while both were still at FAME. Reconnecting in Memphis, the duo continued to churn out songs, including those recorded by The Box Tops (“Cry Like a Baby”-1968) and Percy Sledge (“It Tears Me Up”-1967). The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, in April of 1968, was a turning point for Spooner. The once-open racial atmosphere of R&B and soul, where all that mattered was your skill with music, took a hit with King’s murder, especially in the South, leading Spooner to make the move to Los Angeles, where things were somewhat like they used to be. The next decade saw Spooner recording with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young. Relocating once more, this time to Nashville, Spooner toured extensively with Young and with Bob Dylan, with whom he had worked on Dylan’s 1980 gospel album, “Saved.” 1984 saw one of Spooner’s older songs become a hit on the country charts when Steve Wariner recorded “Lonely Women Make Good Lovers,” which went all the way up to number four. In the 1990s, Spooner returned home to Alabama, settling down in Rogersville, just up Highway 72 from Center Star. Returning to his roots hasn’t slowed Spooner down, as he has gone out on tour with his writing partner Dan Penn several times, as well as going out on the road with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on their 2006 “Freedom of Speech” tour, and with the Drive-By Truckers, the Athens, Georgia-based band co-founded by Patterson Hood, the son of Spooner’s former Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section partner, David Hood. For his contributions to the music industry, Spooner Oldham was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2008, the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in 2009, where he was inducted by Paul Shaffer, sidekick to David Letterman on both his late-night talk shows, and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2014. Watch and Listen: "I'm Your Puppet - Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nnLE-aBoPQ "Paul Schafer Inducts Spooner Oldham into R&R Hall of Fame" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGQiPUTu3z4 Spooner Oldham R&R Hall of Fame Speech" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP8B24ap0m8 "RESPECT - Aretha Franklin" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzPXozDgvYs "Two In The Morning - Spooner Oldham" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tehBrFqX1iw
Spooner Oldham Biography http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2510/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Spooner Oldham discography http://www.allmusic.com/artist/spooner-oldham-mn0000155405/discography/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Dan Penn-Spooner Oldham interview http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music-good-ol-boys-in-the-hood-1123527.html Accessed December 2, 2016 Spooner Oldham bio - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/spooner-oldham/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Dan Penn-Spooner Oldham interview http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/pennoldham.html/ December 2, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Phil Campbell, Franklin County, Country music, R&B music, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Charlie Rich, Grand Ole Opry, Musicians Hall of fame, Country Music Hall of Fame, Alabama Music Hall of Fame
Billy Sherrill (November 5, 1936 - August 4, 2015) If at any point during the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s you listened to a song by George Jones, Tammy Wynette, or Charlie Rich, chances are very good that song was either written, produced, or both, by Billy Sherrill. As just a songwriter alone, his influence is considerable. But when combined with his production prowess and his ability to find new talent and guide them towards music that fit their style of singing, Billy reaches legendary status in not just the country music world, but music in general and internationally. Billy Norris Sherrill was born on November 5, 1936, in the small rural town of Phil Campbell, Alabama. His father was an evangelist who Billy would often accompany on his revival tours, playing piano for the services. After playing with various jazz and blues bands in the South in his late teens to early twenties, Billy moved to Nashville in 1962, where he took on the job of managing the Nashville studios of Sam Phillips’ Sun Records. When Phillips sold those studios in 1963, Billy moved over as a producer to Epic Records, a division of Columbia Records, which, at the time, was recording mainly country artists out of its Nashville studios. Since Billy, despite having grown up in the south, had little exposure professionally to the country sound (his main areas of expertise being blues, jazz, and rock and roll), the sound that he did produce was a hybrid of country and pop, a forerunner of the “countrypolitan” sound that would soon move country music from a regional to a national and worldwide audience. It was also here at Epic that Billy became a major player in the country music scene. His first success was with David Houston, who recorded “Livin’ in a House Full of Love,” written by Billy and Glenn Sutton, in 1965. The song reached #3 on Billboard’s country chart in that same year. Houston’s next single, “Almost Persuaded,” also penned by Sherrill and Sutton, spent 9 weeks at #1 on the country charts in 1966, winning the Grammy for Best Country & Western song in 1967, the first of two that Billy would win as songwriter. It was at around this time that Billy met the singer with whom he would be most closely associated with, Tammy Wynette. Billy signed the former hairdresser to Epic after she auditioned for him, and changed her stage name from Wynette Byrd to Tammy Wynette, thinking it would be a better move for her career. From that time, she became Billy’s student and a recording artist for whom he would write some of her biggest songs, including “You’re Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad,” “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” and her signature song, “Stand By Your Man.” In 1969, Wynette married George Jones, which led to a partnership between not only she and Jones, but also Billy and George. Producing such songs as “The Ceremony” (1972, written by Sherrill), “We’re Gonna Hold On” (1973), and “Golden Ring” (1976), Jones and Sherrill continued their collaboration long after George and Tammy divorced in 1975. In fact, while much of his commercial success came with Wynette, Billy’s relationship with Jones was the one that lasted the longest. Billy produced what would become Jones' signature song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” It was Jones’ first number one hit in over six years, and is the one credited with reviving a career that had begun to flounder due to issues related to his behavior and performances. During this same time period, Billy also worked with the third member of what could be called his “Blessed Triumvirate,” Charlie Rich. With songs such as “Behind Closed Doors” and “The Most Beautiful Girl,” (1973), co-written by Sherrill, a lifelong collaboration was born. While not always commercially successful, the music that Charlie Rich produced under Billy is considered to be The Silver Fox's best. The pinnacle of the partnership was when Sherrill won the 1975 Grammy for Best Country Song with Charlie Rich’s recording of “A Very Special Love Song.” The list of additional artists for whom Billy produced or wrote is a veritable Who’s Who of Music. At one time or another, Billy worked with Barbara Mandrell, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Andy Williams, Ray Conniff, and Elvis Costello. In 1980, Billy was named vice-president and executive producer of CBS/Nashville, retiring a few years later. Among the many awards and accolades afforded are countless CMA and AMA awards, and enshrinement in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1984), the Alabama Music Hall of Fame (1995), the Musicians Hall of Fame (2008), and the Country Music Hall of Fame (2010). Billy Sherrill died on August 4, 2015. Watch & Listen: "Stand By Your Man - Tammy Wynette" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwBirf4BWew "He Stopped Loving Her Today - George Jones" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubKUP8c0FHE "The Most Beautiful Girl - Charlie Rich" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhqbESuc2v8 "Rules of the Game - Billy Sherrill" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF5fofS_6Rk "Like Makin' Love - Billy Sherrill" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AWFYLnIzIU
AMHOF http://www.alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/1995/billy-sherrill/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Billy Sherrill http://www.allmusic.com/artist/billy-sherrill-mn0000079180/biography/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Songs http://www.musicvf.com/songs.php?page=artist&artist=Billy+Sherrill&tab=songaswriterchartstab/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Billy Sherrill Dies http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2015/08/04/breaking-legendary-producer-billy-sherrill-dies/31110363/ Accessed December 2, 2016 Country Music HOF http://countrymusichalloffame.org/Inductees/InducteeDetail/billy-sherrill/ Accessed December 2, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Hanceville, Cullman County, FAME Studios, Rick Hall, Clarence Carter, R&B music, Soul music, Gospel music, Alabama Music Hall of Fame
Candi Staton (March 13, 1940 - ) For many within the African-American community, the line between gospel and soul music is a thin one. A rhythm that pushes the music along, soaring vocals that inspire and lift the crowds out of their seats, freedom within the soul and within the music, all serve to drive both genres forward. No singer better represents this simultaneous confluence and divergence than soul and gospel artist Candi Staton. Born on March 13, 1940, in Hanceville, Alabama, Canzetta Maria Staton initially was involved in the gospel music scene from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Before she was a teenager, Candi began attending the Jewell Christian Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. It was there that she and her sister, who also attended Jewell, were part of a group called the Jewell Gospel Trio. Recording several records that did little commercially, the trio toured the gospel circuit, singing along with such gospels greats as Mahalia Jackson and C.L. Franklin. By the end of the 1950s, Candy had left the group and returned home to Alabama, where she married, had four children, and then divorced her husband. It was in 1968 that, while working at a club in Birmingham, Alabama, she met Clarence Carter, who was recording for Atlantic Records at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Carter asked her to go on tour with him, but Candi was still married at the time. A year later, Clarence asked once again. Now divorced, she agreed. Over the course of the year, she and Clarence fell in love and were married in 1970. Her new husband also brought her to the attention of Rick Hall. With FAME Records, Candi recorded three albums. While the albums themselves were not huge sellers, they did produce four songs that reached Billboard’s R&B Top Ten charts, including a cover of Tammy Wynette’s hit, “Stand BY Your Man,” which reached #4 in 1971. In 1974, Candi, who had divorced Carter the year before, started recording for Warner Brothers, still working under the production skills of Rick Hall. Of working with Hall, Candi says that, “Rick would come to me and ask my opinion ‘Hey, do you think you can do this’. We didn’t have an arranger to come in and say ‘I’m gonna take this song and arrange it for Candi’. All of us had our opinions how the music should go, so we tried different things. If it didn’t work, we tried something else. Some day we worked on a song all day, and all night.” Her first album for Warner, “Candi,” produced the #6 R&B hit, “As Long As He Takes Care of Home.” It was her next album, "Young Hearts Run Free," that produced her sole #1 hit when the title track was released in 1976. Working with a new producer, David Crawford, and in a marriage that had turned abusive, Candi opened up to Crawford over the course of several conversations about her life. In response, he wrote the song as a way to help her give voice to her situation. Subsequent albums and singles proved to be less successful, and by 1981, disillusioned with the secular music industry, Candi had returned to her gospel roots. Married to her fourth husband, former Ashford & Simpson drummer John Sussewell, together they founded their own label, Beracah Ministries. Her return to gospel found her renewed and experiencing success once again. When the idea of returning to the world of soul music, Candi was initially reluctant. It was a conversation with her pastor sometime in the 1990s that changed her mind, in which he said, “Candi, those songs that you did in the 70s and in the 80s, they’re not bad songs. They’re good songs. Some of them you couldn’t sing because of the way you live now. Young Hearts Run Free wasn’t bad; Stand by Your Man – those songs are classics. Those songs were blessed. They raised your children, they bought you a home. Rethink it. You could go out and bless people again with those songs." Since then Candi has continued to release new material, while still revisiting her old hits that fans have come to know and love. Candi Staton was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2014, by her old friend, producer and mentor Rick Hall. Watch and Listen: "Young Hearts Run Free" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x2PvC_PybY "He Called Me Baby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txOo9T1jn5Y "Stand By Your Man" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbyStJWvajo "When There's Nothing Left But God" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kWVd5EMRyw "Interview - Candi Staton On Celebrating 40 Years Of Young Hearts Run Free" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPG_25-YctA
Candi Staton official website http://www.candi-staton.com/ Accessed December 6, 2016 Interview 2006 http://www.soulexpress.net/candistaton.htm/ Accessed December 6, 2016 Interview, 2011 http://www.soulexpress.net/deep2_2011.htm#candistaton/ Accessed December 6, 2016 Candi Staton discography http://www.allmusic.com/artist/candi-staton-mn0000542976/biography/ Accessed December 6, 2016 All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted..
Tuscaloosa County, Birmingham, Erskine Hawkins, Cleve Eaton, Sun Ra, Big Band, Jazz, Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Alabama State University
J.T. "Fess" Whatley (c. 1895 - January 12, 1972) If Alabama's musical heritage were to have a conductor, a teacher, that person would have to be J.T. “Fess” Whatley. In his tutelage of musicians, first at The Tuggle Institute in Birmingham, of which he was also a graduate, then Industrial High School in Birmingham, Whatley was influential in the careers of many who went on to play with various bands and orchestras, including those of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong. Born John Lewis Whatley sometime around 1895 in rural Tuscaloosa County, Alabama (his exact date of birth is unknown), Whatley’s father moved the family to Birmingham in 1906 so that John and his brother might be able to attend the Tuggle Institute. Originally conceived to give orphaned African-Americans a place to live and learn, the school was eventually opened to all, as racial segregation closed off many public schools to blacks. John’s time at the school greatly influenced him, not only as a student, but as an educator and musician, so much so that he changed his middle name from Lewis to Tuggle. After graduating from the school in 1913, John became its band director in 1913, a position he held until he left in 1917 to teach at Industrial High School. It was here that John picked up the nickname of “Fess,” which was short for “Professor.” Strict in his discipline, he demanded that his music students learn to read music, believing that music was one of the few avenues of success that was open to African-Americans at the time. A former student of his, jazz drummer and Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame inductee Wilson Driver, said that he demanded this of his students, otherwise they couldn’t play in his band. However, as demanding as this seemed, it was also beneficial to the musicians, as Driver said that “When guys would get to New York, they’d say, ‘You from Birmingham? You one of them Fess Whatley men? Yeah? Okay, you can read.’” Whatley’s influence reached beyond the high school at which he taught, helping to establish the ‘Bama State Collegians band at Alabama State Teachers College (now Alabama State University) in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1929, which is still an active jazz orchestra at ASU. Whatley also was an outspoken opponent to segregation and Jim Crow laws, organizing a local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians union in Birmingham in 1939 because blacks were not allowed to join the union because of segregation. In 1969, Whatley witnessed the integration of the chapter he founded with the white chapter already in existence. Whatley’s belief that music was a path to success has been proven correct over the decades since he began his career in music. Former students of Whatley's include trumpeter and band leader Erskine Hawkins, jazz drummer Wilson Driver, jazz pianist Henry Blount, better known as Sun Ra, Cleveland Eaton, bassist for the Ramsey Lewis Trio and the Count Basie Orchestra, and trumpeter Sammy Lowe, just to name a few. All the aforementioned are members of various jazz, blues, and music halls of fame nationwide. Whatley himself was a charter inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1978, and was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1991, joining his former student Erskine Hawkins (1989) as a member, and later joined by former students Cleveland Eaton (2008) and Sun Ra (2014). J.T. “Fess” Whatley died on January 12, 1972, in Birmingham, Alabama.
J.T. “Fess” Whatley: Alabama Music Hall of Fame http://alamhof.org/inductees/timeline/1991/j-t-fes-whatley/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Alabama Music Office: Whatley bio http://www.alabamamusicoffice.com/artists-a-z/w/1967-whatley-john-t-fess/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Encyclopedia of Alabama: Whatley bio http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3240/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame: Carrie Tuggle http://www.awhf.org/tuggle.html/ Accessed December 5, 2016 Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame website http://www.jazzhall.com/index.htm/ Accessed December 5, 2016 "Fess Whatley's Saxo Society Orchestra" photo http://www.chipstern.com/chip_tribal_wilson.htm/ Accessed December 9, 2016. All images courtesy of Mr. George Lair and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
Courthouses; Tuscumbia, Alabama, Colbert County, Alabama
Colbert County was established in 1867, fourteen years before the courthouse was built. Commissioners met at a local hotel called The Horn House while the probate judge’s office was located on the second floor of a brick building on Main Street in Tuscumbia. On March 7, 1870, an election took place to decide if Cherokee or Tuscumbia would be the permanent county seat. Tuscumbia would go on to win by a vote of 1367 to 794. On December 13, 1880, the county spent $2,000 and bought four lots in downtown Tuscumbia from Colonel J.F. Deshler. These lots would soon provide the location of the Colbert County Courthouse. Construction of the courthouse began on August 22, 1881. The architect chosen was a man named Mr. Edward Laurent of Nashville. Mr. William Dowling of Chattanooga was awarded the contract for the construction of the courthouse. Mr. Hornung was chosen to be the contractor for the laying the stone foundation. In the northern part of town, workers were expected to produce about 500,000 bricks for building material. This two-storied Italianate styled structure was finished by May of 1882 for a cost of $14,750. The building served the county well until a fire gutted the structure on May 14, 1908. With most of the brick walling undamaged, the county created a “special courthouse tax” to fund the reconstruction. This new Neo-Classical Revival styled courthouse was completed in 1909. Since then, a north wing has been added in 1948. Also, a $2,000,000 architecturally compatible west wing was built in 1975.
John Grissom, University of North Alabama
Gamble, Robert. "Colbert County Courthouse Square Historic District." In Historic Muscle Shoals: Buildings and Sites., 43-44. Vol. 10. Florence, Ala.: Tennessee Valley Historical Society, 1983. Graves, Arthur D. Tuscumbia: America's First Frontier Railroad Town. Tuscumbia, Ala.: Tuscumbia Main Street Project [and] Preservation Incentive Project, 1989. 23-24.
1902: Two men riding a three-wheeled hand-operated velocipede (also called a Handcar or draisine) on a railroad track.
Two men riding a three-wheeled hand-operated velocipede (also called a Handcar or draisine) on a railroad track. They are conducting a level survey in Oklahoma's Indian Territory. Early mechanized level party with hand-velocipede. Observer riding ahead. Image ID: theb0741, NOAA's Historic Coast & Geodetic Survey (C&GS) Collection Location: Oklahoma, Indian Territory Photo Date: 1902 Credit: NOAA John Hayford Album
John Hayford Album, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Edited from the image found at: http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/theb0741.htm
NOAA's Historic Coast & Geodetic Survey Collection
2005.36.316: John M. Jones to Thomas F. Jones Jr., 1860
1860; Greenville; South Carolina; Louisa Young; Wedding Invitation
John M. Jones wrote to his cousin to Thomas to express his regret for having to decline an invitation to Thomas and Louisa's wedding, as well as an invitation to be a groomsman. 3 handwritten pages.
Opelika, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Sawmill; Lumber
West Fraser operates a sawmill near Opelika located at 2100 Industrial Blvd., Opelika, AL.
Opelika, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Textiles; Cotton
The first major industry in Lee County and the first textile mill in Opelika. It opened in 1900. Today, it is most well known as the backdrop for the 1979 film "Norma Rae" about a woman who become involved in the Labor Union Activities at the North Carolina textile factory where she works. The Opelika mill had itself unionized only a few years prior to the filming. The old mill is located at 1016 York Ave, Opelika, AL, 36801. The site was abandoned in 2004, but still stands.
Image: "Whistle blows noon Opelika Cotton Mill" http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004004125/PP/
Constructed in 1925, allegedly after Opelika city officials paid the company a significant sum in bribes, the Pepperell Mill would become one of Opelika's most iconic industrial sites. The mill produced cotton textiles under a number of names until its closure in 2008. The site was burnt to the ground during demolition work in 2013. The plant was located at 2401 1st Ave., Opelika, AL.
Image: http://notdarkyet-commentary.blogspot.com/2011/03/moving-toward-common-good-or-slouching.html
Opelika, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Manufacturing; Tires
After opening in 1963, this plant produced automobile tires for the BF Goodrich company. The business was forced to close in 2009 after shifting workforce to non-unionized labor. It was located at 1800 Crawford Rd., Opelika, AL.
Image: http://blog.al.com/businessnews/2009/12/group_seeks_use_for_closed_tir.html
Opelika, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Manufacturing; Personal Fitness
Diversified Products opened in 1963. The company specialized in fitness equipment and is credited with revolutionizing the fitness industry. This business was an important component of America's emerging fitness movement for four decades. Corporate mismanagement and increased competition led to the company's decline and eventual closure in 1998. The image is of Diversified Products senior executives (from left) Ira Silberman, Forrest "Fob" James, and Calvin James. The business was located at 309 Williamson Ave., Opelika, AL.
Image and Description: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-3419
Opelika, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Manufacturing; Magnetic Tape; Audio Equipment
Orradio produced magnetic tape. Major John Herbert Orr founded Orradio in 1949 using information given to him by German scientists during World War II. This business became the first producer of commercially available audio, video, and computer tape. Purchased by Ampex in 1959, the company was repurchased in 1995 and named Quantegy Recording Solutions. Quantegy was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2005 and finally ceased production in 2007.
Image: http://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/RecordersAmpexIrishTape.html
Opelika, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Grist Mill
This grist mill was originally built in 1834 by Sam Carter and Henry Byrd as a sawmill. In 1848 John "Jack" Floyd purchased the property and in 1852 Floyd's Mill Rd (now US 29) was established. During the Civil War, the mill provided supplies to the Confederate government. The milll was destroyed in a flood in 1874, but was rebuilt by John W. and W.H.H. Griffin. In 1907, the eponymous George W. Bean bought the mill. He owned the property until his death in 1952 after which the mill sat unoccupied. During the 1930s, a canning school was set up by the extension service and FDR visited the site in 1939 on his way from Opelika to Warm Springs. Today the mill has been reconstructed as a historical site located at 6247 US 29 N, Opelika, AL.
Image and Text: "The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama"
Auburn, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Grist Mill
James Mitchell purchased 400 acres along Chewacla Creek and built a dam and sawmill in 1837. Mr. Collins bought the mill in 1880, but it was washed away during a flood in 1889 and would not be rebuilt until 1905. J. Milton Whatley bought the property in 1935 and completely restored and renovated the gristmill. In 1964, following a three-day freezing rain, the dam split and ice water sent the mill's iron water wheel down Chewacla Creek, where it rested until the early 1990s. The site of the mill is located at 7687 Lee Rd., Auburn, AL.
Description: "The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama"
Salem, AL; Lee County, AL; Industry; Grist Mill
Built by Rev. Michael Thomas sometime between 1830 and 1835, it was the first mill erected on Little Uchee Creek. Ownership of the mill is unknown until 1909 when G.W. McKinnon deeded the propert known as McKinnon Mill to his wife and children. The mill was sold to Daniel Porter Meadows in 1911 for $2,250 who later deeded it to his son in 1912. The grist mill was in continuous operation until 1971 when it was shut down.