Roe Erister "Rick" Hall (January 31, 1932 – January 2, 2018) was an American record producer, songwriter, and musician who became known as the owner of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. As the "Father of Muscle Shoals Music", he was influential in recording and promoting both country and soul music, and in helping develop the careers of such musicians as Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Duane Allman and Etta James.
Hall was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985 and also received the John Herbert Orr Pioneer Award. In 2014, he won the Grammy Trustees Award in recognition of his lengthy career. Hall remained active in the music industry with FAME Studios, FAME Records, and FAME Publishing.
Early life
Hall was born into a family of sharecroppers in Forest Grove, Tishomingo County, Mississippi to Herman Hall, a sawmill worker and sharecropper and his wife, Dollie Dimple Daily Hall; he had one sister.
After his mother left home when young Hall was aged 4, he and his sister were raised in rural poverty by his father and grandparents in Franklin County, Alabama. According to The Guardian, Dollie worked in a bordello after leaving the family. His father was a gospel music fan and his uncle gave Rick a mandolin at age 6. Later, he learned to play guitar.
Hall moved to Rockford, Illinois as a teenager, working as an apprentice toolmaker, and began playing in local bar bands. When he was drafted for the Korean War, he declared himself a conscientious objector, joined the honor guard of the Fourth United States Army, and played in a band that also included Faron Young and the fiddler Gordon Terry.
Early career as musician and songwriter
When Hall returned to Alabama he resumed factory life, working for Reynolds Aluminum in Florence. When both his new bride Faye and his father died within a two-week period in 1957, he suffered depression and began drinking regularly. He later began moving around the area playing guitar, mandolin, and fiddle with a local group, Carmol Taylor and the Country Pals, and first met saxophonist Billy Sherrill. The group appeared on a weekly regional radio show at WERH in Hamilton. Subsequently, Hall formed a new R&B group, the Fairlanes, with Billy Sherrill, fronted by the singer Dan Penn, with Hall playing bass. He also began writing songs at that time.
Hall left the Fairlanes to concentrate on becoming a songwriter and record producer. He had his first songwriting successes in the late 1950s, when George Jones recorded his song "Achin', Breakin' Heart", Brenda Lee recorded "She'll Never Know", and Roy Orbison recorded "Sweet and Innocent". In 1960, he started a company based in Florence, Alabama, together with fellow ex-Fairlanes member Billy Sherrill, the future producer of Tammy Wynette's records. They named their company FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) and opened their first primitive studio above a drugstore.
Producer Sam Phillips, originally from Florence, Alabama, was an early mentor. During a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Hall recalled those early days. "We would sit up and talk until 2 o'clock in the morning and Sam would tell me, 'Rick, don't go to Nashville, because they'll eat your soul alive.' I wanted to be like Sam — I wanted to be somebody special."
Success with FAME Studios
In 1959, Hall and Sherrill accepted an offer from Tom Stafford, the owner of a recording studio, to help set up a new music publishing company in the town of Florence, to be known as Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, or FAME. However, in 1960, Sherrill and Stafford dissolved the partnership, leaving Hall with rights to the studio name.
Hall's first success as a producer in a small studio was with one of his first recordings, Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On" in 1961. The commercial success of the record gave Hall the financial resources to establish a new, larger FAME recording studio on Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals. That song became the first gold record in the history of Muscle Shoals; at the time, Hall had licensed it to Dot Records. The song was recorded by others too, including the Rolling Stones in 1964. In that era, his musicians included Norbert Putnam, David Briggs, Peanut Montgomery and Jerry Carrigan.