Music of Alabama
[2] Muscle Shoals, Alabama is renowned worldwide as one of the epicenters of the music industry, having been the birthplace of a number of classic recordings.
Notable artists have included Aretha Franklin, Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr, Roy Orbison, and countless others have recorded there.
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame (AJHoF) is located in Birmingham, housed in the historic Carver Theatre.
In 1966, Rick Hall helped license Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman", produced by Quin Ivy, to Atlantic Records, which then led to a regular arrangement under which Atlantic would send musicians to Hall's Muscle Shoals studio to record.
The Birmingham area has had more than its fair share of American Idol contestants do well, including second season winner Ruben Studdard (who played football for Alabama A&M University).
WC Handy, often referred to as the "father of the blues", was born and raised in Florence, Alabama, which since 1982 holds an annual WC Handy Music Festival "to preserve, present, and promote the musical heritage of Northwest Alabama".
Piedmont and country blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter Ed Bell was born near Fort Deposit.
Though born in Frayser, a community in North Memphis, Tennessee, Johnny Shines, Blues singer and guitarist, moved to Holt, Alabama, in Tuscaloosa County, in 1969, where he lived until he died.
Alabama has a rich jazz heritage, being the birthplace of such greats as Erskine Hawkins, Nat King Cole, Cleveland Eaton, James Reese Europe, Cootie Williams, William Manuel Johnson, Urbie Green, Ward Swingle, Cow Cow Davenport, members of Take 6 and many more.
In the 1930s and 40s, college dance bands, such as the Alabama Cavaliers, the Auburn Knights and the Bama State Collegians played an important role in the history of jazz in the South.
Ward Swingle, world-famous multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz vocal composer and pianist, hails from Mobile.
It is the hometown of numerous influential jazz musicians, including bassist Cleveland Eaton, pianist and vocalist Ray Reach, guitarist Johnny Smith, trumpeter and bandleader Erskine Hawkins, trumpeter and arranger Tommy Stewart, trumpeter Nelson Williams, composer Hugh Martin, arranger Sammy Lowe, bandleader Sun Ra, vibraphonist and bandleader Lionel Hampton, singer and guitarist Odetta, John Propst (pianist for Pete Fountain and Boots Randolph) and many more.
From former "Bluegrass Boys" Rual Yarbrough and Jake Landers, mandolin virtuoso Hershel Sizemore, fiddling legend Al Lester and the incomparable Claire Lynch, to modern day country-star-turned-bluegrass artist Marty Raybon, the list goes on and on.
Other notable residents include Jimmy Buffett, though born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, grew up in the Mobile area.
