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We’ve never heard them like this before.

Many music fans know The Swampers, aka the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section - aka bassist David Hood, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, drummer Roger Hawkins and keyboardist Barry Beckett - for their soulful simpatico, playing on timeless recordings by Aretha Franklin, Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, John Prine, Etta James, Paul Simon, Bob Seger, etc.

They made a career of supporting other artists.

But on the new album “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers,” out Jan. 19 via Malaco Records, these genius session musicians are finally out-front. The album features 14 instrumental tracks by The Swampers, most of which were recorded during the ’70s at The Swampers’ storied funky little Sheffield studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, where even the address, 3614 Jackson Highway, is now iconic.

The result is something like The Swampers version of Booker T. & The M.G.s record. Or a Meters record. But instead of through a Memphis or New Orleans prism, “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers” is filtered through their own unique North Alabama vibe.

By Matt Wake | mwake@al.com

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Photo Bob Gathany/bgathany@al.com

“We decided in about 1972 or 1973 about the time we had been working with Traffic we wanted to do an album,” Hood says. Traffic in this case referring to the successful British jam-band featuring Steve Winwood. “We had made a few attempts at different times in the past and our earlier attempts had been different artists to come in and sing on these things. We got Steve Winwood to come in and sing on a couple tracks and several other artists. When we finished that album it just sounded like us backing all these different people. So, we decided we were going to be a serious studio band like Booker T. & The M.G.s or somebody and really try to do an instrumental album without singers or anything. It was kind of a trip for us because we had always worked in support of other people and other people’s songs.”

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File photo by David Hood by Dick Cooper

“Swampers,” now the opening track on “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers,” was the ensemble’s first attempt at doing just that. Stylistically, the tune is nifty, tight R&B accented with snazzy Clavinet and brass. It’s an excellent entry point for the listener, followed on the LP by “Muscle Shoals Malmo Express,” a driving cut with greasy slide guitar, organ and piano. The Swampers are best known for Southern soul and classic-rock sounds. And while there are ample servings of those on the album, it’s fascinating to hear them stretch out way beyond that. “Whiplash” wiggles through Latino and second-line rhythms and even a synth breakdown that sounds straight out of the ’80s TV show “Night Rider.” “Pete’s Song,” composed by and featuring guitarist Pete Carr, is gritty, with a touch of prog. The nine-minute-plus track titled “Muscle Shoals” opens with tribal percussion before unfurling into free-jazz spaghetti. For those who thought The Swampers’ range only extended from “Mustang Sally” to “Respect,” it’s revelatory listening.

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Playing on Traffic’s 1973 “Shootout At The Fantasy Factory” album truly opened musical doors for The Swampers, who grew up on Chuck Berry, the blues, Motown and the like. Beckett, Hawkins and Hood would also tour with the group, and can be heard on Traffic’s resulting live album “On The Road,” on which Johnson is credited for mixing. “That was really neat for us to leave the studio, doing three minute songs behind all these different artists and going and playing with a band like Traffic that was like a jazz-rock situation doing 20-minute songs,” Hood says. “And that is reflected in the two (‘Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers’) songs, ‘Don’t Bug Me Johnson’ and ‘Muscle Shoals’ because they started off as these long rambling jams and they just kind of floated from one to the other, and it was really recorded that way. It was not really intentional. It’s just what happened." The title of the slinky, Beckett-penned “Don’t Bug Me Johnson” shows a sense of humor: It’s what the keyboardist would quip to the guitarist when he was trying to focus on something at the studio.

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Island Records founder and producer Chris Blackwell, the man who brought superstars like Bob Marley and U2 to the world, paid for the original ’70s Swampers instrumental album sessions, but never released the recordings, Hood says. The Swampers continued to record their own material. That is when they could squeeze in the time, as Muscle Shoals Sound was famously busy recording the likes of Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, etc. “We might have a Thursday and a Friday off one week or some little piece of time and we’d jump in there and do that,” Hood says. “And it was hard to do because we were working with everybody. Studio time was really at a premium.”

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File photo of Dick Cooper

Local journalist and photographer Dick Cooper began working for Muscle Shoals Sound in the late-70s, as Beckett’s production assistant. Cooper, a noted Muscle Shoals music historian and insider, penned a history of The Swampers and Muscle Shoals music for the “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers” CD release. (Malaco is also releasing the album via iTunes and other digital platforms, but as of yet there are no plans for vinyl.) Cooper recalls hearing snippets of these instrumental Swampers tunes during his days working at the studio. “It really gives an insight into them as creators of music that is more in their particular style,” Cooper says. “Because they played so many styles (on other artists’ sessions), whatever the day’s need was they played it, you know? But this is their style versus whatever the artist happened to be on the record. It’s more like a signature thing. And it’s playful.”

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File photo of Jimmy Johnson and Will McFarlane

Cooper is particularly fond of aptly named cut “Backporch Soul” and sprawling, gospel-tinged album closer “Sunday Morning R&B,” two of four songs on the LP recorded during the ’90s at Muscle Shoals Sounds’ less famous but larger Alabama Avenue location as background music for a Swedish deejay’s Southern-themed radio show. “Muscle Shoals Malmo Express” and “Eddie’s Place” are the other two cuts here from that era. Songs recorded after the initial batch of early Swampers originals also featured contributions from musicians such as keyboardists Clayton Ivey and Randy McCormick and guitarist Will McFarlane.

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Because they played so seamlessly and unselfishly, The Swampers are mostly viewed as a musical whole. But that whole wouldn't have been the same without these four individuals. Johnson had a knack for uplifting a song with just a single guitar lick, a little percussive chink sound, at the right time and place. In addition to being a rhythm machine, Hawkins was innovative. For example, on the great Paul Simon tune "Kodachrome," that loping drum track isn't a drum at all, but Hawkins beating on a tape box filled with paper. Hood's fluid bassline on Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There" is his signature moment, capturing the essence of his beautiful feel on the instrument. Beckett was a powerful keyboardist with a deft left hand. "It would take a man that size to make a piano sing that loud," Cooper says. "And it's just like all the guys he didn't overplay at any point in time, he let the artist shine through."

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Malaco Records founder and chairman Tommy Couch Sr. has known Hood and Johnson long before they were known as Swampers. A Shoals native, Couch attended Tuscumbia’s Deshler High School around the time Johnson was at Sheffield High, and in the early-60s would book bands Johnson and Hood were in, like The Del Rays, at Ole Miss fraternity parties. “They’d get paid $250 and pay you 10 percent, and $25 back then was a lot of money so I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that,” Couch says. After starting as a booking agency, Malaco evolved into a Jackson, Miss.-based studio and label, and would go on to record smash R&B singles like King Floyd’s “Groove Me” and Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff,” songs that still show up in pop-culture to this day. Singer Z.Z. Hill’s 1982 “Down Home” album is probably the most financially successful album Malaco ever issued, surpassing 500,000 units sold and containing the tune “Down Home Blues,” which became a roadhouse standard.

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“A lot of artists, we’d quietly sell 200,000 or 300,000 copies of,” Couch says. “That was very profitable for us, but the majors it didn’t quite ring their bell enough for them to be interested and some of these artists were previously signed, like Johnny Taylor, to big labels and didn’t have anywhere to go.” Around the mid-80s, Malaco purchased Muscle Shoals Sound’s Alabama Avenue studio and publishing for a low seven-figure number. (In the 2000s, Malaco sold the studio.)

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Malaco’s Muscle Shoals Sound publishing holdings included masters the studio owned, including unreleased Swampers instrumentals that now comprise “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers.” The album’s title, of course, references the famous “Sweet Home Alabama” lyric in which Southern rock stars Lynyrd Skynyrd gave them a shout-out. A few years ago, The Swampers allowed the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, in which they’re honored as inductees, to sell a CD of their early instrumentals in the museum’s gift shop, as a fundraiser. However, that collection did not contain the four ’90s Swedish radio tracks. The new Malaco release is the first time any of the material has been widely available.

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“It is a great opportunity and kind of a historical moment,” Couch says. “We had heard that they had made some instrumental things that had never really been out. And that’s kind of how it started. We just thought it would be good to not just let it sit in a box somewhere and be lost forever, to put it out.” According to Couch, there are enough still unreleased Swampers tracks for an entire other Malaco release. That could potentially include material from the aforementioned early Swampers recordings with guest vocalists like Winwood.

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File photo by Dick Cooper

All the basic tracks for “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers” were written and recorded live in the studio, with embellishments like synthesizer and horns overdubbed. While the recordings haven’t been altered for this release, some song titles have changed. The blaxploitation sounding “Cruisin’ Jackson Highway” was originally titled “The Pimp,” while “MSS Down By The River” had a working title of “Chris Cross,” because The Swampers thought it sounded like something by the singer Christopher Cross, known for early-80s yacht-pop hits like “Sailing” and “Ride Like The Wind.”

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Courtesy Malaco Records

Hood still has the mismatched Fender amp and speaker cabinet he recorded many of his historic sessions with, including this archival Swampers album. But alas his 1961 Fender Jazz Bass was stolen on the early-70s Traffic tour, along with other instruments including a Stratocaster that Eric Clapton had given Winwood, outside a Traffic gig at New York’s Academy of Music. Hood still has the boots he wore on that tour though. With the “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers” release approaching, the bassist dug out his diaries and calendars dating back to the ’60s, stored in three cardboard boxes at his Shoals home, to refresh his memory of recording this material. No luck finding the very-1975 patterned shirt he’s wearing on the CD cover art photo, which depicts Beckett, Hawkins, Hood and Johnson outside 3614 Jackson Hwy. “Seeing this package with our picture on the front, it took a long time for this to happen,” Hood says. “And I’m pleased that it finally did because I was always proud of it. We really spent a lot of time on this and then for it to never come out, you put it in the back of your mind for a while but then get reminded of it and think, ‘Wow I really hope somebody can hear that someday.’”

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It's bittersweet for Hood to listen again to the lovely playing of Beckett, who died in 2009. "Barry was brilliant. He became a producer his last several years but his keyboard work was just so outstanding. I never fail to be amazed at what he did. Because for one thing I can remember when he first came here and we said, 'Barry you need to sound more black. You're not black enough.' [Laughs] And we got him to go listen to some Ray Charles records and by the time his tenure with us was done he could sound like anybody in the world."

Two weeks ago, the surviving original Swampers were all in the same place for the first time in at least five years. Hood, Johnson and Hawkins rode together to FAME Studios mastermind Rick Hall’s funeral, in a black limousine rented to accommodate Hawkins’ decreased mobility not to put-on celebrity airs. “Going to Rick’s funeral was a solemn time, but I was really happy for all of us to be together again,” Hood says. That day, the three friends, reunited by the death of the man who helped start their careers, cried together. They laughed together too.

A release party for the “Muscle Shoals Has Got The Swampers” CD will be held 4 – 6 p.m. Jan. 19 at Muscle Shoals Sound, 3614 Jackson Hwy., Sheffield. The event will feature a free, 5 p.m. question and answer session with David Hood and “other music notables,” according to a press release. Signed CDs will be on sale for $20 and T-shirts designed by Hood and Jimmy Johnson will also be available. A special 4:30 p.m. studio tour will be offered for $10. For more information call 256-978-5151.

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