Courtesy Everett Collection

A Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan influencing folk singer, heralded country picker, Southern R&B cult-fave and rainmaking songwriter comprise Alabama Music Hall of Fame’s 2018 inductees.

Odetta, Mac McAnally, Eddie Hinton and Walt Aldridge will be inducted into the hall during a Feb. 3 awards show and banquet at Florence’s Marriott Shoals Conference Center Ballroom.

Chuck Leavell, a 2016 inductee and renown keyboardist for the Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, will perform at the event. The Muscle Shoals All-Stars, a combo which in the past has featured Swampers bassist David Hood and guitarist Jimmy Johnson, will be the house band for the evening.

Aldridge, who's penned scores of country hits for artists like Ronnie Milsap and Barbara Mandrell, and McAnally, a longtime Jimmy Buffett sideman known for his instrumental and songwriting prowess, will also perform. Country star Jamey Johnson and bluesy season-five “American Idol” winner Taylor Hicks are scheduled to appear as well. Odetta and Hinton are deceased.

The Alabama Music Hall of Fame inducts new honorees every two years.

While 2018 inductees might not wield quite the name recognition as the previous class (which in addition to Leavell boasted Grateful Dead singer Donna Jean Godchaux-McKay, Allman Brothers producer Johnny Sandlin, Southern rockers Wet Willie and Muscle Shoals Horns), their musical contributions and influence run deep and wide.

The induction banquet is a major hall fundraiser. For more information or to sponsor a table at the event, call the AMHOF at 256-381-4417. Alabama Public Television will videotape that evening, for a spring 2018 broadcast.

Here’s a closer look at the 2018 Alabama Music Hall of Fame inductees.

By Matt Wake | mwake@al.com

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Odetta

Born in Birmingham (grew up in Los Angeles)

Folk, jazz, blues, even opera … it’s all in Odetta’s earth-sky music. Possessing a resonant and cathartic singing style, Odetta was known for her striking 1950s recordings like “Take This Hammer,” “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands” and, with dashing singer/actor Harry Belafonte, "There's a Hole in the Bucket." A 1963 live performance of defiant gospel “Oh, Freedom” provided a signature moment and launched her as a Civil Rights movement maestro. No less than Martin Luther King, Jr. dubbed Odetta “The Queen of American Folk Music." Young musicians who’d become ’60s rock and folk stars were drawn to her emotive 1956 solo album “Sings Ballads and Blues.” (Bob Dylan said the LP inspired him to trade his electric guitar and amp in for an acoustic instrument.) The 1970 disc "Odetta Sings" found her delivering strutting R&B versions of songs by the likes of Elton John, Paul McCartney and Rolling Stones, as well as her own compositions. Odetta remained a musical force in her life's winter, winning a Grammy for 1999 album “Blues Everywhere I Go,” receiving Kennedy Center, National Medal of the Arts and Library of Congress Honors. In 2008 at age 77 she toured while singing from a wheelchair and hoped to perform at President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Unfortunately she never reached that final horizon, dying Dec. 2, 2008 and later memorialized at a New York service at which she the likes of Pete Seeger and Maya Angelou honored her.

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Eddie Hinton

Raised in Tuscaloosa (born in Jacksonville, Fla.)

As a go-to Muscle Shoals session musician, Eddie Hinton applied his slippery, aching guitar to hit records by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Joe Tex, Percy Sledge, Staples Singers and The Box Tops, among others. Hinton was also a formidable singer. His downhome howl caused Atlanta Records exec and producer Jerry Wexler to call him "the White Otis Redding." (He also recorded guitar with Redding.) Hinton also wrote or co-wrote notable songs including "Cover Me," "It's All Wrong But It's Alright," "Breakfast in Bed," "Everybody Needs Love," "Just A Little Bit Salty" and "The Train I'm On." According to a 2009 Swampland article by Dick Cooper, "When Duane Allman left Muscle Shoals, to form the Allman Brothers Band, he asked Hinton to join him, but Eddie chose to remain in Muscle Shoals and pursue his studio career." Hinton released a fine, solo country-funk album "Very Extremely Dangerous" in 1978 on Capricorn Records, the imprint home to the Allmans and other Southern rock standouts. A troubled soul, Hinton died at age 51 in 1995. However, he remains an influence on modern bands like Drive-By Truckers and St. Paul & The Broken Bones - and a favorite of knowledgeable record-store clerks and crate-diggers everywhere.

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Walt Aldridge

Florence native

The numbers are astounding: more than 20 gold and platinum records, no less than 56 country top-40 hits including several number ones. A protégé of Fame Studios’ Rick Hall, Walt Aldridge worked as a recording engineer before finding his path as a songwriter, notching number-one hits with Milsap’s "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me" in 1981, Mandrell’s “'Till You're Gone” and Earl Thomas Conley "Holding Her and Loving You" in 1982, Travis Tritt’s "Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde" in 2000 and Heartland’s "I Loved Her First" in 2006. As an engineer, his credits include work with Wilson Pickett, Alabama, Clarence Carter, Jerry Reed and Marty Stuart. Other Aldridge penned hits: Conway Twitty’s “Single Thing In Mind”, Reba McEntire’s “The Fear of Being Alone” and Tim McGraw’s “Some Things Never Change.” His Alabama Music Hall of Fame nod follows another major 2017 honor, induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

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Mac McAnally

Born in Red Bay

Mac McAnally is the Michael Jordan of roots-music instrumentalists. Actually, he’s better than that – this year McAnally received his ninth CMA Musician of the Year Award, while Jordan only won a paltry six MVP Awards during his NBA career. From 2008 to 2015, McAnally won eight consecutive Musician of the Year awards, and his nine total now ties him with guitar icon Chet Atkins. In addition to Atkins, McAnally drew from Beatles, Ry Cooder and James Taylor records to create his own nimble, heartfelt style. Before the awards or his long tenure in Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band, in the late-70s McAnally notched a Billboard top 40 hit with soft-rock ditty “It’s a Crazy World.” McAnally also found success as a co-writer on Alabama’s 1981 classic “Old Flame.” In the early-90s, he scored as a solo artist (1990 single “Back Where I Come From”) and producer (Sawyer Brown’s chart-fertile 1992 LP “The Dirt Road”). Country superstar Kenny Chesney covered McAnally’s 1990 "Down the Road" tune for a 2008 chart-topper, with guest vocals from the McAnally. Mac's Alabama Music Hall of Fame moment arrives 10 years after his induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

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(Brittany Howard) Wade Payne/Invision/AP (Wilson Pickett, Hank Williams) Courtesy Everett Collection

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