Steal Away (Jimmy Hughes song)
First single recorded at FAME Studios, a 1964 R&B hit.
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"Steal Away" is a 1964 R&B hit and Top 40 crossover song written and recorded by Jimmy Hughes. It was the first single recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Original version
Jimmy Hughes, a native of Leighton, Alabama, had sung in church choirs since age eight. By 1962, the 24-year-old worked at a rubber plant in Muscle Shoals and performed with a gospel group at Colbert County venues and on Tuscumbia radio station WZZA. Inspired by local singer Arthur Alexander's Top 30 hit "You Better Move On", Hughes auditioned for Alexander's producer Rick Hall at Hall's Wilson Dam Highway studio. After two unsuccessful singles, Hall suggested Hughes write his own song.
Hughes reworked the hymn "Steal Away" into a secular cheating song, composing lines during night shifts at the factory over two weeks. Hall had Hughes record a demo in 1962 but hesitated to release it, fearing backlash over a black man singing about infidelity. Two years later, Hall had Hughes record the full version at the newly established FAME Studios on East Avalon Avenue. The session used the same musicians who backed Arthur Alexander: guitarist Terry Thompson, keyboardist David Briggs, bassist Norbert Putnam, and drummer Jerry Carrigan.
Hughes sang his vocal in one take, backed by a chorale—an effect borrowed from Bonnie Guitar's 1959 single "Candy Apple Red"—and backing vocalists Darlene Eddleman and Jerry Eddleman.
Remakes
Johnnie Taylor's 1970 remake of "Steal Away" became a No. 3 R&B hit and crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 37, with particular success in the Bay Area, Memphis, and Nashville; in Canada it reached No. 36. A live rendition from a September 23, 1972 taping at a Los Angeles nightclub appeared on the 2007 album "Johnnie Taylor - Live At The Summit Club". Ted Taylor's 1976 remake reached No. 64 on the R&B chart; the track was recorded at Sound City studio in Shreveport, Louisiana, produced by Wardell Quezergue, and appeared on the album "Ted Taylor 1976".
Rick Hall, producer of the original, helmed four subsequent remakes. Three were at FAME Studios: Etta James's version on her 1968 album "Tell Mama" (B-side of her 1969 single "Almost Persuaded"), Clarence Carter's on his 1969 album "The Dynamic Clarence Carter" (Carter's 1968 million-seller "Slip Away", also a Hall production at FAME, is considered a scion of "Steal Away"), and Terri Gibbs's on her 1983 album "Over Easy". Hall's fourth remake, by Bobbie Gentry, was recorded at the Music Mill a few blocks east on East Avalon Avenue, not at FAME; issued as a single in February 1978 (Gentry's last), it first appeared on an album on the 1990 compilation "Bobbie Gentry - Greatest Hits".
Billy Joe Royal's 1965 remake served as the B-side of his Top Twenty hit "I Knew You When" and appeared on his album "Down in the Boondocks"; his manager Bill Lowery had been largely responsible for the success of the Jimmy Hughes original. The Drifters, whose "Under the Boardwalk" kept Hughes's original from the top of the R&B chart in 1964, released their own single of "Steal Away" in 1969, which failed to chart.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Steal Away (Jimmy Hughes song) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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