Let’s see if we can track all (i.e., at least a handful of) the prominent women pop vocalists’ excursions down South in the late 1960s and into the new decade:
(1) Entire chapters have been written about Aretha Franklin‘s first (and oh-so-brief) recording session for producer Jerry Wexler that was captured on tape January 24, 1967 at FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and which resulted in Franklin’s extra Atlantic Records debut single, “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You).”
(2) Dusty Springfield (née Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien) kicked things off when she recorded her classic Dusty in Memphis album at Memphis’s American Sound Studios in November 1968.
(3) Cher recorded the critically-acclaimed though commercially under-appreciated album 3614 Jackson Highway (peaked peaked at #160 on the US Billboard 200) at the newly-opened Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in June 1969.
(4) Lulu followed suit, traveling to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in September 1969 to record her New Routes album [celebrated here in 2015] with such musicians as Duane Allman, Cornel Dupree, and Jim Dickinson.
(5) Joan Baez, in 1970, recorded an album in Nashville, One Day at a Time, that boldly – for its time – mixed Willie Nelson and the Stones [celebrated here in 2013] with traditional folk and country songs.
(6) In 1970, Vikki Carr likewise recorded an album in Nashville – Nashville by Carr – that was her last for Liberty Records, who issued two singles – neither of them including the track, “Living On A Prayer, A Hope & A Hand-Me-Down.”
[Pssst: Click on the triangle to hear ”Living on a Prayer, a Hope & a Hand-Me-Down” by Vikki Carr.]
Guitars: Harold Bradley, Pete Wade, Ray Edenton, Pete Drake, Kelso Herston & Jerry Shook
Bass: Junior Huskey, Henry Strzelecki & Norbert Putnam
Piano: Larry Butler & Hargus “Pig” Robbins
Drums: Buddy Harmon
Utility: Charlie McCoy
Voices: Nashville Edition
