05/23/2026
Jimmy Hughes, who died at the age of eighty-eight on May 20, helped put Muscle Shoals on the map as a recording center. Arthur Alexander scored the first pop hit recorded there, “You Better Move On,” in 1962. But Jimmy Hughes had the second big pop breakthrough for the north Alabama community nestled on the Tennessee River, and his Top Twenty hit, “Steal Away,” helped set the template for Southern R&B.
Hughes was twenty-four years old when he first came to producer Rick Hall, the owner of newly formed FAME Studio, in 1962. The young singer, who worked by day in the Robbins Rubber factory, had been a tenor in a local gospel quartet, but he was interested in doing something more commercial. He cut two singles for Hall that had no impact. But when Hughes reworked a nineteenth-century gospel number called “Steal Away to Jesus” into a new secular ballad, Hall knew they had something. Hughes sang the rhythmic ballad about his urgent need for a late-night romantic rendezvous with palpable gospel fervor and an undeniable sexual undercurrent.
In his autobiography, Rick Hall wrote, “He sang ‘Steal Away’ with raw, hungry, heart-wrenching passion. . . . When Jimmy’s velvety high tenor voice kicked in and cried the pleading the lyrics, ‘Pleasssee, please steal away . . . ‘ big chill bumps rose on my arms and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.”
Nevertheless, the recording wasn’t an immediate hit. Hall didn’t even release it for nearly two years. But FAME songwriter-musician Dan Penn believed in the song and pushed Hall to release it. Together, Hall and Penn promoted it relentlessly to Black radio stations across the South. It became a Top Twenty pop hit in the summer of 1964.
Hughes followed that hit with more records—“Try Me,” “Neighbor, Neighbor,” “Why Not Tonight”—that showed off his soaring tenor and smooth mastery of soul grooves. The latter two were Top Five hits on the R&B charts, but increasingly he had less impact on the pop charts. In 1968, Hughes shifted to Stax Records’ Volt subsidiary but left the label after two years and middling success. He moved on to a manufacturing job in Alabama.
Still, his powerful recordings have remained in circulation in various anthologies and on streaming services. Hughes is featured prominently in the Museum’s current major exhibition “Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising.” In 2024, he sat down for a video interview with the Museum about his career, portions of which are shown in the exhibit.
