Jimmy Johnson, the session guitarist and studio engineer who contributed to hundreds of hit records while helping to define the sound of Southern pop and soul music in the 1960s and ’70s, died on Thursday in Florence, Ala. He was 76.

His death, at Northwest Alabama Medical Center, was confirmed by his longtime friend and collaborator David Hood, who said Mr. Johnson had been struggling with kidney failure.

A highly intuitive musician, Mr. Johnson achieved early acclaim in the 1960s as the rhythm guitarist in the house band at the producer Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. His undulating swells and bluesy, staccato fills can be heard on recordings like “Respect,” Aretha Franklin’s first No. 1 pop hit, and Wilson Pickett’s “Funky Broadway” and “Land of 1,000 Dances,” both of which reached the Top 10.

In 1969 Mr. Johnson and three of his associates from FAME — the drummer Roger Hawkins, the keyboardist Barry Beckett and Mr. Hood, the ensemble’s bass player — parted ways with Mr. Hall in a dispute over money. That April they opened their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, in a former coffin warehouse in nearby Sheffield, Ala.