In December 1969 the Rolling Stones spent three calm days at a small studio in Sheffield, Alabama, and left with Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, and You Gotta Move. Two days later came Altamont.
A Pirep featured story · KMSL Northwest Alabama Regional, Muscle Shoals, AL
In 1969 the Rolling Stones were the biggest rock band in the world and the year had already cost them. Brian Jones was out of the band in June and drowned in his swimming pool on July 3. As their American tour wound down that fall, Jagger and Richards wanted something specific: to record in the South whose records they had been studying since they were teenagers.
They chose a room that was eight months old. That April, four session men who had been the core of the house band at FAME Studios, Barry Beckett on keys, Roger Hawkins on drums, David Hood on bass, and Jimmy Johnson on guitar, incorporated their own studio on April Fools' Day 1969, a date Johnson said they laughed about later. Their rhythm tracks had powered hits for Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Etta James. The room was a former casket factory at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield with burlap on the walls, and the four would be immortalized a few years later in Sweet Home Alabama as the Swampers.
The Stones arrived on December 2, 1969: Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, and Mick Taylor, who had replaced Jones that July. Three nights, three songs. You Gotta Move, the Mississippi Fred McDowell cover, first; Brown Sugar on December 3; and on the final evening Wild Horses, which Richards brought in as little more than a chorus and the band finished on the spot, Jimmy Johnson engineering. Richards called it one of the easiest and rockingest sessions they had ever done. The Maysles brothers' 16mm crew was in the room; the famous footage of the band listening to the Wild Horses playback comes from these nights.
Then they packed the tapes, told no one, and flew to San Francisco. Two days later, on December 6, came Altamont, where a fan was killed in front of the stage while the band played, and where Brown Sugar, two days old, had its first live performance. The calm and the storm sit two days apart, and the film Gimme Shelter holds both. All three Alabama songs anchored Sticky Fingers in April 1971.
The Swampers moved to a larger room down the road in the late 1970s, and 3614 passed through other hands until the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation bought it back in 2013, restored it to its 1969 configuration, and reopened it as a museum and working studio. KMSL Northwest Alabama Regional sits three nautical miles east; land there and you are minutes from the room.