Jimmy Hughes died on May 20, 2026, at his home in Leighton, Alabama, at the age of 88. The R&B singer whose 1964 recording of “Steal Away” helped put Muscle Shoals on the musical map leaves behind a legacy that runs deeper than his chart positions suggest. FAME Studios, where he made his most enduring music, said it plainly: “His soulful recordings helped put Muscle Shoals on the map and inspired generations of artists to follow.”
Hughes was born in Leighton on February 3, 1938, a cousin of Percy Sledge and a product of the same small Alabama town that would produce some of American music’s most essential voices. He began singing in a gospel quartet called the Singing Clouds while still in high school, and that gospel foundation never fully left his voice, even when he turned to secular R&B.
His first audition for producer Rick Hall at FAME Studios came in 1962, leading to the recording of “I’m Qualified,” co-written by Hall and Quin Ivy. The record didn’t chart, and Hughes returned to his day job at a rubber factory, singing in local clubs on the side. Two years later, he came back with something different.
“Steal Away,” an original composition drawing from the gospel song “Steal Away to Jesus,” was recorded in a single take. Hughes, backed by guitarist Terry Thompson, keyboardist David Briggs, bassist Norbert Putnam, and drummer Jerry Carrigan, cut one of the defining recordings in Southern soul history in one pass. The song rose to number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since been cited as a prototype for soul singers including Johnnie Taylor and Al Green, and a defining document of the Muscle Shoals sound. Rick Hall later said of Hughes: “Just like his idol Sam Cooke, Jimmy Hughes was an extremely handsome young Black man, with a unique and sensational high tenor voice. Nobody could ever hit those high notes Jimmy Hughes could as a singer.”
The album that followed, also titled ‘Steal Away’, featured the first songwriting collaborations between Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, two figures who would go on to shape the sound of an era. Hughes continued recording through the late 1960s, scoring R&B chart entries with “Neighbor, Neighbor,” “Why Not Tonight,” and “I Worship the Ground You Walk On,” before moving to Stax Records in 1968. Frustrated by what he saw as a lack of promotion and tired of being away from his family, he walked away from recording and performing in 1970.
He retrained, took a government job making parts for nuclear power plants in the Tennessee River Valley, and kept his singing confined to his church congregation in Leighton. He lived there quietly for the rest of his life, a true Leighton legend, as his hometown’s official accounts described him after his passing.
“Steal Away” was covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter, Bobbie Gentry, Billy Joe Royal, and Frank Zappa. The song outlived every trend that surrounded it and remains one of the great recordings to come out of the American South.
