Jimmy Hall and Muscle Shoals Revisited will bring the soul hits to Ocean Springs Live

Wet Willie frontman Jimmy Hall will perform hits from the mid-1960s soul songbook when he joins his sister, Donna Hall Foster, to front Muscle Shoals Revisited next month.

The band features original Swamper Jimmy Johnson and Decoys guitarist Kelvin Holley for the second edition of Ocean Springs Live on Saturday, July 2.

The show is free and will be held in Rosetti Park in downtown Ocean Springs.

The Swampers

The Swampers, or Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, were one of the most prolific and revered groups of backing musicians of the 20th century. They were the original house band at FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and then at their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

At its core, the group consisted of Johnson on guitar, David Hood on bass, drummer Roger Hawkins and Barry Beckett on keyboards. Other members included organ player Spooner Oldham.

They were responsible for some of the biggest hits in popular music, having recorded with such notables as Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Bob Seger (who used the Swampers as his recording version of the Silver Bullet Band) and Paul Simon.

“We play a lot of the hits and oldies that we were all involved in,” Johnson said in an interview with the Sun Herald. “That seems to be the thing people want to hear us play is the old stuff.”

The “old stuff” Johnson mentioned includes hits such as “Funk Broadway,” “Mustang Sally” and “Respect” — all of which featured Johnson and the Swampers on the original recordings.

“Jimmy Hall’s sister, Donna, will be with us, and she’s a fantastic singer herself,” he said. “She’ll be doing a lot of the R&B, and we’re really looking forward to it because that’s such a fantastic area.”

Johnson said Jimmy Hall also will be doing duty on lead vocals.

“He’s such a talented guy and a great musician, he can play saxophone and harp,” he said. “He’s the Mick Jagger of this country and if Wet Willie had a few more hit singles, they would have reached that kind of level.”

Recording The Stones

Although Johnson spent years as a backing musician, he is also an accomplished producer, many times even playing on the songs he was producing.

He engineered three songs from the Rolling Stones album “Sticky Fingers”: “Brown Sugar,” “You Gotta Move” and “Wild Horses,” which featured Jim Dickinson on piano.

“The Stones were in Muscle Shoals for three days, and they were staying at the Holiday Inn because that’s all that was there at the time,” Johnson said. “The first song we recorded was ‘Brown Sugar’— I didn’t even know I was going to do the session until about eight hours before we recorded it.”

He said the session was the first for then-Stones guitarist Mick Taylor.

“Brian Jones had died and this was Mick Taylor’s first recording session,” Johnson said. “They finished the songs and flew to play Altamont — that was an infamous concert.”

Revisiting Muscle Shoals

Muscle Shoals is in northwestern Alabama along the Tennessee River. The recording industry in the town had dried up several years ago, but a 2013 documentary on the town’s music scene called “Muscle Shoals” put the area back on the map.

Directed by Greg Camalier, it tells the story of the birth of the Swampers, a term made famous by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the song “Sweet Home Alabama.”

“We were just session players,” Johnson said. “We never really thought about or wanted the spotlight, but the film changed that.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2016 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Jimmy Hall and Muscle Shoals Revisited will bring the soul hits to Ocean Springs Live."