7 Years Ago Today, We Said Goodbye to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Architect Who Backed Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, and Lynyrd Skynyrd

“The mighty Jimmy Johnson has passed,” wrote Alabama singer-songwriter Jason Isbell on this day (September 5) in 2019. “A lot of my favorite music wouldn’t exist without him.”

Isbell was referring to the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios founder and guitarist with celebrated session musicians the Swampers. Seven years ago today, Jimmy Ray Johnson died from kidney failure in Florence, Alabama, at age 76.

Whipping up a Southern-fried blend of R&B, soul, and country music, Johnson backed up everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin, to Bob Seger and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and finally Willie Nelson, Glenn Frey, and Bob Dylan.

He was part of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which bridged the gap between artists and session musicians. Notably, Paul Simon extended a co-producer credit to the group on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.

Johnson’s distinctive guitar licks stand out on timeless classics like “Respect” (Franklin); “When a Man Loves a Woman” (Percy Sledge); and “Old Time Rock and Roll” (Seger).

As a recording engineer, he oversaw the Rolling Stones’ infamous Sticky Fingers” sessions in 1969. Those sessions yielded “Wild Horses,” “Brown Sugar” and “You Gotta Move.”

Jimmy Johnson Stayed Humble

Despite a dazzling resume that spanned four decades, Jimmy Johnson was just fine considering himself a “backup player” rather than the main attraction.

“[We] were honored to be a bunch of southern rednecks who were able to play so many different types of music,” he said in 2014. “Most people thought we were Black musicians, and they could not have given us a higher compliment.”

Today, we’re diving into the life of Jimmy Ray Johnson, born February 4, 1943, in Sheffield, Alabama.

Creating the Muscle Shoals Sound

Now, you might think that someone growing up in the South during the 1950s would draw exclusively from country music. But Jimmy Johnson was always playing the blues.

“I guess you’d say my inspiration was Chuck Berry,” he said in an interview just months before his death. “My parents always tried to get me to play country music and I just didn’t like it that much.”

So he immersed himself in Berry’s music, along with that of his contemporaries like Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley.

By his teenage years, Johnson was booking gigs around his hometown by the time he reached his teenage years.

After a brief stint with the Alabama National Guard, he was the first employee hired by founder Rick Hall after forming FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals in 1961.

There, he learned everything he needed to know about session playing, publishing, and recording from FAME’s first house studio band.

During his time there, Johnson engineered the Percy Sledge classic “When a Man Loves a Woman” in early 1966. The first gold record produced and recorded in Sheffield, the song established Muscle Shoals as the heartbeat of “Southern soul”, which married country music with R&B.

In 1969, with the backing of Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler, Johnson became a co-founder of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

[RELATED: On This Day in 1971, The Rolling Stones Were at No. 1 With a Raunchy Track Inspired by Ike Turner’s Backup Singer]

Over the next decade, everyone from Paul Simon and Bob Dylan to Cher and Jimmy Cliff would record at the studio. Each one of them relied on the Swampers as their backup.

Featured image by Robin Little/Redferns