From there he took that money and built this building. Well, part of this building, because this building has been added onto 2-3 times. But he built this building and the first session in this building was with Jimmy Hughes. They did "Steal Away," and that paid for the other half of the building. (Laughs) His first two records were big hits. From


Duane Allman and Rick Hall at FAME.


so they would come up here and there was a guy named James Joyner who had a little, well it wasn't a studio, he had a tape machine and they would come up here and do little demos with him. They took their songs to Nashville and started getting a few cuts here and there. My dad had a Brenda Lee cut, a George Jones cut, a Roy Orbison cut , and they started a publishing com- pany called Fame Publishing. That stood for Flo- rence Alabama Music Enterprises. Tom Stafford was in that with them. Tom's


Dad owned some buildings, I think there was a movie theatre right around the corner from where those buildings were he owned. They started a little studio in one of those buildings right above the corner drugstore, and the room that they were using used to be a pediatrists office and they had been making fake arms and legs in there before, so there were lots of those things laying around. But they started there, and after a couple of years they had had a little success, but not much. Billy left and went to Nashville to run Sam Phillips’ studio. Tom got out too and they kind of fired my Dad actually. But he kept the name and moved across the river to Wilson Dam highway and built a studio and started to do basi- cally the same thing by himself and gathered some musicians around himself, Peanut Mont- gomery, Jerry Carrigan, David Briggs, and some of those people and then he came across Arthur Alexander. Arthur came over and could not play an instrument but he sang a song and snapped his fingers. One of the songs he sang was "You Better Move On," and he told Arthur he thought it was a hit and they cut it and sure enough it was.


there on it exploded and Chess started bringing people over. Leonard Chess and my Dad got in close with Bill Lowery who sent him The Tams and sent him James and Bobbie Purify, and then of course Jerry Wexler came into the picture, a little bit later down the line. Quinn Ivey started a studio here called Quinabee and he was a writer for my Dad. He was really bus,y and he called my Dad and said “I know how busy you are and with all these gospel groups that are coming in, and you may not have time for everything, and I won- dered if you would mind if I opened a little studio and got your excess business.?” He didn't mind at all, and let them use the rhythm section he had whenever they were not busy. So they went down there and Dan Penn


came over here one day and said "You know Rick, they are over there messing around and I think they might have cut them a hit." Dad said to keep him informed. A few weeks later he called and said that if they did not screw it up they probably had a big hit on their hands. Quinn called and said they had cut it on a Sears and Roebuck record cutter, and came down and played it for him. It was Percy Sledge singing "When A Man Loves a Woman." Wexler had said "if you ever had anything that was a hit to send it to me," and they did. He called and said, "Are you sure this is a hit.?" They told himyes, and they said to go


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