Rick Hall

As the owner and chief producer at legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Rick Hall was the General Patton of the music industry in the '60s, assembling an army of talented songwriters, musicians and producers that virtually conquered the world of soul music and gave birth to the so-called Muscle Shoals Sound. Under Hall's meticulous arranging and producing, luminaries such as Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Wilson Pickett made what many consider their career-best recordings at FAME. And with a house rhythm section that included first-class musicians such as David Briggs, Jerry Carrigan, Felton Jarvis and Donnie Fritts (and later Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, Spooner Oldham, Berry Beckett and David Hood), every act in the business wanted to record at FAME.



Yet the comparison to General Patton is not without reason, for Hall's renowned mistreatment of his studio musicians and dictatorial approach to producing eventually pushed artists and labels away from his studio, costing Hall many of the artists and musicians that recorded at FAME in the '60s and early '70s.

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