Sometimes you don’t realize how much your senses absorb when you’re growing up, but you find out later how those experiences shaped you.Russell Gulley grew up on Southern gospel and shape note music. His mother was very conscious of how much music and art can enrich lives. Russell sought a career in rock and roll, but later paid his mother’s gift forward by bringing the arts to communities and schools.Russell is the 2024 recipient of the Alabama Arts Impact Award, given at the Celebration of Alabama Arts, May 16 at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery.He spoke with me recently about the unlikely arc of his career, starting with his time growing up in Fort Payne.“Back when I was growing up,” Russell says, “musicians were kind of looked down on as being not very responsible people with bad habits. So that was the last thing that my mother wanted for me, to become a musician. “The only way I was able to get a guitar was if my brother and I promised to play in church,” Russell continues. “Ironically, the pastor banned me from playing, because he said I wasn’t playing to worship God. I was playing to have a good time, which is probably true. But right after that, I was hired by a gospel group and I worked with them for several years, recording two albums. That was my introduction to the recording business.”It was the opinion of Leon Rhodes, music producer and guitar player for Ernest Tubb, that motivated Russell further. “He told my boss and me that he thought I was a pretty good bass player, that I could make it in Nashville if I wanted to move up there,” Russell recalls. “That was the inspiration I needed. If Leon Rhodes says I’m good enough, I must be good enough.”Then, like many other young men of the time, Russell was drafted to fight in Vietnam. When he returned, he’d been divorced from his first wife. With nothing tying him to any certain place, he moved to Nashville and signed with an agent. There, he played bass for various artists of the era, such as Ronnie Dove and Ray Peterson (“Tell Laura I Love Her”).Meanwhile, his brother Dennis’ band, Cross, was playing and making demos in Muscle Shoals. Producer Jimmy Johnson asked the band, ‘Which one of you guys wrote these songs?’ They told him, “We didn’t. Russell Gulley wrote them.”“So the next thing I knew, I got a phone call and was invited to Muscle Shoals,” says Russell. “Apparently, I passed the audition and they signed me to the publishing company as a writer. “The kind of music that I was writing was not soul music,” he continues. “I didn’t write stuff like ‘When a Man Loves a Woman.’ I was writing stuff more like Frank Zappa and maybe some of the British acts. Lynyrd Skynyrd was just taking off, and Jimmy had worked with Skynyrd just before they changed companies. I think he was looking for another band to kind of follow in Skynyrd’s footsteps. In fact, during my interview, he played some of the original demos by Skynyrd. I’d never heard playback that loud. Jimmy looked at me and asked, ‘You think you’re as good as they are?’ Well, how could I say no if I wanted to pass the audition? So I looked at him and said, ‘You damn right I’m that good.’ Anyway, we got signed.”Russell, his brother Dennis, drummer Ronnie Vance, guitarist Britt Meacham, and keyboardist Tommy Patterson were dubbed Jackson Highway after the street address of the studio. In the mid to late 70s, Jackson Highway decided to market itself heavily in Chattanooga. Radio play was picking up, and listeners started to request their single. Muscle Shoals Studios called and said they had landed Jackson Highway a deal with Capitol Records. Capitol and Muscle Shoals Studios formed a joint venture to sign the band. Jackson Highway was building a fan base and touring with rockers such as Ted Nugent, UFO, and Triumph. They were set to play the Omni in Atlanta, what might have been “the big gig” to take them to the next level. But arrangements changed and they ended up playing a smaller venue.Jackson Highway returned to Muscle Shoals, and the day they were to perform a showcase for Capitol to renew their contract, Russell’s father passed away. “If there was anybody in this world that ever stood by me from the time I played gospel music to the time I went to Muscle Shoals and all of it, that was my dad. I could not stay in Muscle Shoals,” Russell says. He and Dennis went home to help with the funeral arrangements and be with family.Without an appearance at the showcase, Jackson Highway’s contract was discontinued. He apologized to his bandmates because he felt he caused the Capitol contract to lapse, but he did what he had to do.After losing his record deal, he returned to Nashville and began doing sideman gigs, playing with artists such as Gary Buck, who’d played on the Grand Ole Opry. The touring schedule left him with six months of the year where he didn’t play anywhere.In ...
