In order to get a big new car like Arthur Alexander’s, Jimmy Hughes finally agreed to go into Rick Hall’s Fame Studio after previous efforts failed to get him to expand his Gospel singing with the Singing Clouds. The first collaboration between Rick Hall and Jimmy Hughes produced “I’m Qualified” b/w “My Loving Time” (Guyden 2075), which was released in November, 1962. The same session produced a number of other songs that remained in the Jamie/Guyden archive until now.
Born near Muscles Shoals, Alabama, in Leighton, Alabama, on February 3, 1938, Jimmy Hughes worked for the local Robbins Rubber Company before and during his early musical career. He had hoped to be a baseball player and never considered himself destined to be a singer, even though he performed in several Gospel groups. He was instrumental in putting Rick Hall and his well-named Fame Recording Studio on the map for later hits like Jimmy Hughes’s own “Steal Away,” which came out two years later in 1964 and even later productions of Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding.
Rick Hall himself was just getting started when he corralled Jimmy Hughes into the Fame Studio. The success of “I’m Qualified” did not match “Steal Away” and Jimmy Hughes’s subsequent career, but Guyden Records gave Rick Hall a stop watch as a useful addition to his studio and commemoration of his near-miss on the first try with Jimmy Hughes. Jamie re-released “I’m Qualified” with “My Loving Time” in July 1964 (Jamie 1280) in the wake of the label’s great success with another Southern soul balladeer, Barbara Lynn.
