Marie Lewey

MARIE LEWEY

Marie Tomlinson Lewey came to Muscle Shoals from her hometown of Jackson, Alabama, hoping to launch a solo career as a country music singer, and has since become one of the Shoals area’s premier session vocalists. She was still a teenager when, at the invitation of her friend Lenny LeBlanc, she did her first session at FAME with producer Rick Hall.

“I believe there was someone, as there usually is, who couldn’t be there that day. Somebody got sick, you know. So I might have been the substitute. And I think Lenny convinced Rick that it would be okay.”

After partnering with Barbara Wyrick and Suzy Storm at Wishbone Recording Studio, she teamed up with Cindy Richardson Walker and Ava Aldridge. This trio performed for many years as part of the stage band at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame induction banquets, supporting such music legends as Glenn Frey, Lionel Richie, Tammy Wynette and Kris Kristofferson.

During the 1980s, she reunited with Wyrick and Storm to tour with Ronnie Milsap, appearing with him on The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and hundreds of stages across the world.

“Barbara and Suzy and I were coming from a style of music that Milsap’s other background singers had not… But he was always on the cutting edge of new sounds. And he pulled a lot out of Muscle Shoals. When we got on the bus with him, we were handing him demos from all over town. And he cut a lot of them.”

Today, Marie works as an account executive for Big River Broadcasting, the parent company of Shoals radio station WQLT, and serves as an instructor at Florence Academy of Fine Arts. She also continues to be in high demand as a session vocalist, and has worked in recent years with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Robert Cline Jr., and others.