The weather forecast says 60 degrees and sunny for Saturday afternoon, but Railroad Park promises snow and more for its Happy Holidays celebration. It includes tree lighting, carnival games, line dancing and free hot chocolate, with food available for purchase.
The free event runs from 3 to 5 p.m. at the park [map]. For more information, visit the Railroad Park events page.
Christmastime in Birmingham for many TV viewers means only one thing: the annual “Dean and Company Christmas Special.”
Now in its 35th year, this tri-generational affair returns to spread holiday cheer and original humor. Don’t miss “Housewives of the North Pole” and “Christmas Party Train.”
Airtimes:
12:01 a.m. Monday on CW21
1 p.m. Dec. 21 on ABC 33/40
Bright House on demand
The Bottletree Cafe will hold a screening party, with karaoke and photos with Santa, on Saturday. The free event starts at 8 p.m. The venue is located at 3719 Third Ave. S. in Avondale [map].
Video: “Dean and Company Christmas Special 2014” trailer
Auburn to Outback; Birmingham Bowl taps Florida, East Carolina
Alabama celebrates its SEC Championship win over Missouri.
It’s been a crazier-than-usual week for football in Alabama …
• For the 6th consecutive year, a team from the state will be battling for the national championship. No. 1 Alabama (12-1) faces No. 4. Ohio State (12-1) in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day in New Orleans.
The winner faces either No. 2 Oregon (12-1) or No. 3 Florida State (13-0) on Jan. 12 in Dallas.
Alabama beat No. 16 Missouri 42-13 Saturday in Atlanta for its 24th SEC Championship. Hueytown native and persistent troublemaker Jameis Winston led Florida State over No. 12 Georgia Tech 37-35 in the ACC title game.
• No. 19 Auburn (8-4) will head to Tampa, also playing on New Year’s Day, for the Outback Bowl, facing No. 18 Wisconsin (10-3).
• South Alabama (6-6) will play in Montgomery’s inaugural Raycom Media Camellia Bowl on Dec. 20, taking on Bowling Green (7-6).
• In the Naming Sponsorship Still Available Birmingham Bowl on Jan. 3, Florida (6-5) will battle East Carolina (8-4). The Gators are making their first trip to this bowl, while the Pirates lost to South Florida in the first then-called PapaJohns.com Bowl in 2006.
• Mobile’s GoDaddy Bowl will have Arkansas State (7-5) in its fourth consecutive appearance Jan. 4. The Red Wolves won two out of three times and will face Toledo (8-4), last in the bowl in 2005 beating Texas-El Paso.
• UAB will not go bowling. The Blazers finished 6-6, with slim hopes of a bowl bid turned even slimmer by Tuesday’s announcement that the program was kaput.
• The 66th annual Reese’s Senior Bowl takes place Jan. 24 in Mobile. The South leads the series over the North 29-26-3.
The following chapter is an excerpt from Birmingham author Carla Jean Whitley’s “Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music” [aff. link]. She is managing editor of Birmingham magazine, a freelance writer and a journalism instructor at the University of Alabama and Samford University, plus a good friend.
In this excerpt, Whitley shares how the Rolling Stones snuck in a recording session in Muscle Shoals in between stops on its 1969 U.S. concert tour.
• • •
The Rolling Stones
“I know I’ve dreamed you a sin and a lie I have my freedom, but I don’t have much time Faith has been broken, tears must be cried Let’s do some living after we die Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”
— “Wild Horses,” Rolling Stones
They really weren’t supposed to be there.
The Rolling Stones pulled in to Sheffield, Ala., on Dec. 2, 1969. Two nights earlier, they had wrapped a thrilling performance in West Palm Beach, Fla.
The band had a few days of downtime before their next big show, the soon-to-be-legendary Altamont performance in Los Angeles. The free show drew 300,000 fans to Altamont Speedway, and it was the site of four births and four deaths, including a stabbing death committed by a member of Hells Angels just in front of the stage. But before they went on to make rock ’n’ roll history on Altamont Speedway, the band hoped to sneak in a little recording time.
There was a problem, though: Union complications and back taxes meant the Rolling Stones weren’t actually supposed to be on a working vacation. Not that it stopped anyone. Part of the appeal of recording in the Shoals, after all, was its out-of-the-way location, and the Stones had been assured their visit could be kept secret. A band could show up with British accents and flamboyant style and still go unrecognized.
After all, Muscle Shoals Studio was a nearly unknown entity. The owners had a little backing and plenty of talent, but there was only one hit to the fledgling business’ credit: R.B. Greaves “Take a Letter, Maria.” Cher’s “3614 Jackson Highway,” the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section’s first attempt at working with a well-known artist under the auspices of its own studio, was a commercial nonstarter.
But the Rolling Stones, newly signed to Jerry Wexler’s Atlantic, were something else. The British invasion had been dominating American airwaves, and the Stones’ most recent album, “Let It Bleed,” was an emotional release that elevated the band from its previous work (and briefly knocked the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” out of the top spot on British charts).
With the Beatles on the cusp of releasing their final album, the Rolling Stones were arguably the best band in the world. And the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section was prepared. Jimmy Johnson was at the ready with the studio’s Scully eight-track machine primed to roll tape whenever the band was set. That’s exactly what occurred during the Stones’ 3-day residency at Muscle Shoals Sound. The band spent the majority of its time in the studio, playing out its kinks before launching into new material.
“The Stones came in, and they were a little rusty at first because they hadn’t been practicing on account of the tour,” Johnson recounted to BMI in 2009.
So the band would spend the first several hours of work on any particular song ironing things out, and Johnson would be poised. On Night One, they recorded “You Gotta Move,” a cover of a Mississippi Fred McDowell song. A review in Rolling Stone magazine would later cite this track as an album highlight, especially because of Mick Taylor’s electric slide guitar and [Keith] Richards’ acoustic guitar and harmonies.
The band and session musicians spent most of Day Two ironing out wrinkles in their sound before settling in for the second evening’s task. This time, as tape began rolling, the now famous strains of “Brown Sugar” filled the former casket factory. The Chuck Berry-inspired song clocked in at 490 on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 500 Songs Ever Recorded.
In that list, the magazine wrote, “Here the Stones lay waste to a battery of taboo topics — slavery, sadomasochism, interracial sex — and still manage to be catchy as hell. The song got its start at a session at Muscle Shoals studios: [Mick] Jagger scrawled three verses on a stenographer’s pad, and Richards followed with an impossibly raunchy riff. Add some exultant punctuations (“Yeah! Yeah! Woo-o-o!”) and you have a Stones concert staple.”
Day Three was equally — if not more — successful. At one point, Keith Richards began ruminating over what would become the song “Wild Horses.” His son had been born 4 months earlier, which made being on the road difficult. After Richards jotted down the chorus in the studio’s small bathroom, Jagger polished the lyrics. He left only one line of Richards’ original work, but it sticks with listeners: “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”
Between Richards’ inspiration and Jagger’s finesse, the Rolling Stones walked away with what would go on to become one of the band’s signature songs. Richards added a guitar riff, and “Wild Horses” was born.
Richards heard Jim Dickinson, a Memphis studio musician whose sons Cody and Luther are now two-thirds of the North Mississippi AllStars, noodling around on an old piano in the building as the band worked up the song. After Richards commented, Jagger declared Dickinson should play on the song — and so he did.
“I got on ‘Wild Horses’ because Ian Stewart, their regular piano player, wouldn’t play minor chords,” Dickinson later recalled. “In the meantime, they wouldn’t be saying anything to me, but I knew I had to get the very best performance when it happened,” Johnson said in the BMI interview.
“After a few takes of ‘Wild Horses,’ Jagger just looks up at me and says, ‘Is that it?’ — like I’m the producer or something! But I knew when they had it — and I just told ’em to come out and hear it back.”
Sure enough, the song went to No. 28 on charts, and “Brown Sugar” hit No. 1. Andrew O’Hehir wrote on Salon.com that the songs represented a new sound for the Stones — and one they never again created. Rolling Stone ranked the song No. 334 in its list of the 500 Best Songs of All Time.
“Richards wrote this acoustic ballad about leaving his wife Anita and young son Marlon as the Stones prepared for their first American tour in 3 years. Stones sidekick Ian Stewart refused to play the minor chords required, so Memphis musical maverick Jim Dickinson filled in on upright piano at the Muscle Shoals, Ala., recording session for ‘Sticky Fingers,’ ” the magazine wrote.
Despite the Stones’ sometimes colorful reputation, they were professionals in the studio. In his autobiography, Jerry Wexler noted, “As producers, they knew exactly what they wanted and how to get it. Their musicianship really came into play in the studio process. They controlled their craft and ran the whole show with dead-on direction. I was confabulated.”
Nights later, when the Rolling Stones performed at Altamont, Jagger introduced the newly recorded “Brown Sugar.” While the three songs the band taped during those 3 days all became part of “Sticky Fingers,” the Rolling Stones’ first No. 1 album in the United States, “Brown Sugar” remains one of the band’s most enduring songs.
And though the recording session would produce the band’s first stateside smash, it wasn’t as though the Stones were unheard of in Alabama. Even so, as the band lounged in the median of a Tuscumbia highway, watching and waving at passersby, locals seemed to accept them as nothing more than a passing curiosity. Bands weren’t unusual in the Shoals, after all.
But had they been recognized, having the Rolling Stones in town would have been newsworthy indeed. Imagine if the residents had realized who the odd-looking out-of-towners actually were!
• • •
Carla Jean Whitley has two book signings for “Muscle Shoals Sound Studio”: Books-A-Million’s Brook Highland location [map] from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday and its Brookwood Village location [map] from 2 to 4 p.m. Dec. 14.
“Muscle Shoals Sound Studio” (July 2014, History Press)
The Alabama Theatre’s 2014 Holiday Film Series starts next week: 11 days, nine movies and a few cartoons. Plus, the Mighty Wurlitzer will lead the audience in Christmas carols before each screening.
Movies start at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted.
All shows are $8, except “The Polar Express” which is $12 (fund-raiser for Kid One Transport; includes conductor’s hat, candy and photo with Santa). Tickets available online through Ticketmaster and at the door.
The Alabama Theatre is located at 1817 Third Ave. N., downtown [map]. For more information, visit the website or call (205) 252-2262.
White Christmas
Dec. 12 and Dec. 21 (2 p.m. matinee): Fred Astaire said no. Donald O’Connor dropped out because of Q fever (thanks, Francis the Mule!). So we got Danny Kaye. Oh, and Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas” in a movie for the third time, because … Bing.
•
The Polar Express
Dec. 13 (10 a.m. and 2 p.m. matinees): Creepy Tom Hanks is creepy.
Also, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., children can try out the hands-on modes of transportation exhibit outside.
•
It’s a Wonderful Life
Dec. 13 and Dec. 20:Shout out to the commenter who likened UAB’s dismantling to a “Pottersville-type vision.”
•
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Dec. 14 (2 p.m. matinee): Kris Kringle fails to produce his long-form birth certificate, but is saved when the President issues an executive order on illegal immigration.
•
Christmas Vacation
Dec. 15 and Dec. 22, plus Dec. 20 at midnight … and bonus screening on Dec. 23: Kids, National Lampoon totally used to be a thing. First a humor mag, then books, albums, radio shows, plays and movies. Marvel should totally do plays, by the way. “Iron Man 4: The Importance of Being Awesome.”
•
Home Alone
Dec. 16: Two entrepreneurs scrape by in a depressed economy, thwarted at every turn by a bratty, privileged suburban kid who expresses himself through lashing out.
•
Scrooged
Dec. 17: Every Christmas TV episode is either “A Christmas Carol” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” (I guess “The Gift of the Magi” has been retired). This is the best version of the former with Bill Murray.
•
Elf
Dec. 18 … and bonus screening on Dec. 21: The four main food groups — candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup — were based on the actual FDA recommendations at the time in 2003.
•
A Christmas Story
Dec. 19: If you’re gonna watch the 24-hour cable marathon of this movie, you’re gonna need to warm up first.
•
Cartoons
Dec. 20 (2 p.m. matinee): A triple-feature …
“A Charlie Brown Christmas”: Can’t wait to see the big screen CGI remake of this (rolls eyes) …
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”: Bullies are the worst, y’all.
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas”: He dropped football, bowling and rifle.
The Mérida Report1Last week, I went on a Mexican vacation. It included seeing my married friends Jen Barnett and Brett Andrews, who moved there in 2023. They run a company called Expatsi, which helps Americans move abr …
The death of Twitter logs1I share a lot on Twitter, as I have documented in my weekly Twitter logs for 14 years on this site. But that ends today.
