Sharleen Spiteri finds magic in Muscle Shoals

Muscle Shoals was an unlikely staging post for rock and Ramp;B royalty in the 1960s and 70s. The Swampers were a crack team of studio musicians whose rich, funky Southern grooves infused classics like Aretha Franklin’s Respect. Local radio station WLAY was unusual for playing music by both white and black artists. The colour-blind approach was duplicated in the local recording studios.

Muscle Shoals sound was a product of geography, says former curator of Alabama’s Music Hall of Fame, George Lair. At their peak, the Muscle Shoals players were largely anonymous but music obsessives knew all about them. Among those obsessives, all the way over in Balloch, Scotland, was Sharleen Spiteri, the future singer of rock band Texas. We all knew the story of when Aretha went to Muscle Shoals and she thought she was going to record with these old blues guys; then she turned up and it was this group of geeky white blokes," she says.

Aretha Franklin recorded I Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Love You) at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. FAME is considered the greatest recording studio in the world. Aretha says she is ’like a peacock’ when she gets to record at the studio. Classic Texas songs like Halo, Say What You Want and I Don’t Want A Lover are purified in the swampy waters of the Tennessee River.

Spiteri says the tracks were laid down almost spontaneously in the summer of 2022. It was me sitting on the piano stool next to Spooner, tapping out the timing on his leg" The opening track, Halo, is stripped of its pop sheen and presented as a hymn to the dead. The song is about the loss of a loved one, and how we try to find our way back to each other. The album is out now, and is available on iTunes, Amazon and CD.

Bands rarely record live to tape any more, with most albums pieced together on laptops. As a result, storied recording studios like Muscle Shoals and FAME are either closing or finding new ways to survive. It’s so tight now," says Spiteri. You can’t go to your record company and say, ‘We’re going to hire a 72-piece orchestra’" Texas were fortunate, in that they made their names during the CD era, selling almost two million copies of their 1997 album White On Blonde in the UK alone.

They left the major label ecosystem almost two decades ago, and now release music in partnership with the more artist-friendly independent label Pias. Spiteri has been a rock star ever since she gave up hairdressing to form Texas almost 40 years ago. Their latest album may revisit old ground, courtesy of a pilgrimage to hallowed turf. But it sounds like a band revitalised, and Spiteri can’t wait to get back on stage.

34;You have to put on your big boy pants and pull it off,’ he says. You can’t be thinking, ‘Hey, let me see how I’m feeling tonight. That’s not how it works.