“I just love music — period,” Fred Hall‑Hudson said.

He was seated on a stool in his Gibson Road studio, a small building that was once his grandmother’s house but is now equipped with state‑of‑the‑art recording equipment. There are wires and microphones and a sound booth with shelves stacked with CDs, most of which he produced. There’s not even a hint of an echo in the room, just dead sound, for Fred uses cardboard egg cartons, opened and attached to the walls, to absorb unwanted sound. He got them from the Waffle House years ago when he was a policeman, and they were going to throw them away. They’re not fancy, but they work.

For Fred, who is 56, music comes naturally, and though he played guitar a little he didn’t really get interested until he was in his early 20s. His mother said she could tell he had talent when he was just a toddler, going around the house beating on things as if he were a drummer — but even then he had rhythm.

He graduated from Warren Central in 1972, and though he didn’t take music in school, he sometimes wishes he had — “It might make things easier for me” — yet he knows the notes, and when he hears them he knows where they are on the keyboard. He learned by ear, and he can play guitar, keyboard, percussion and bass — “Everything except wind instruments.”

He feels his major gift in music is arranging or “putting music to words. If it’s poetry, or if it’s lyrics, if somebody just gives me an example of how it came to them, how they want it — slow, fast, a ballad, folk, R&B, country — I can work from there.”

He has arranged a lot of songs for such singers like Carolyn Jackson, who came in third in competition with 500 composers in Alabama, and her winning number was one Fred had arranged for her. Others who have achieved national recognition include gospel singer Geneva Jones, R&B singer Vickie Baker and the Rev. Raymond Smith. He has also recorded locally for Jack Hollingsworth, Willy Willis, Kevin Winters, Victor Gillem and Jimmy Cotton.

One of the most outstanding writers he’s met is a local composer, Gwendolyn Yates, “an artist, a poet, a lyricist with her pen” who has received recognition in gospel circles throughout the country.

Fred began recording just for fun with an inexpensive tape recorder. It sparked his interest, so he went to the library to study sound and find out how waves travel. That was probably over 30 years ago, when he was a Vicksburg policeman.

The studio recordings that he enjoys the most are when someone says he or she has written something and needs music to go with it. Fred asks what style — slow or fast, what instrumentation is needed, will the artists be male or female — and he wants the writer’s ideas.

“Then I go from there,” he said. “I put it together from scratch. It’s like baking a cake. Put it together little by little until you get it the way you want it.”

What results depends on the elements he needs. Though he can do a lot of the music himself, sometimes he needs female vocalists and more males “because naturally I’m going to need some better singers than me.” He might need a sax player or someone on a steel guitar; those are musicians he hires. Sometimes he has a live band, and that takes him back to the old days when “I just had to mic everything up and record it that way.”

Though most recording today is digital, he still uses some analog equipment and loves the beautiful sound he gets with a reel‑to‑reel recorder, “the main medium 20 years ago.” He likes the direct, pure and clean sound. That’s when a mixing board was used for changes and editing. Today’s digital technology makes one lazy, Fred said, because it’s so quick — cut, copy, paste, delete, add. He calls it nondestructive editing, “which means if you erase something you can always go back and put it back. You couldn’t do that with a tape.”

Two people, one a national figure and the other a local man, really got him interested in recording. Les Paul, he was, is the father of multi‑track recording as he was the first person to take a tape machine and put two heads on it. Locally, Cicero LaHatte had a small four‑track recording studio with good equipment, and Fred and other teenagers would go there and make demo tapes, “and I started getting interested.”

The musician who has had the biggest influence on Fred is Stevie Wonder, for almost everything he touched became a hit. He’s gotten to know some of the famous recording artists such as the Five Blind Boys from Alabama and their Mississippi counterparts, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, the Rev. Al Green, Joe Simon and the Jackson Southernaires.

Fred and some friends have their own group, the Heavenly Stars, who perform at churches, in concerts and for benefits in Mississippi and adjoining states. They made their first album in 1981, and it was recorded by the late Frank Williams, founder of the Mississippi Mass Choir.

Fred has his own labels, Expression Music and Southern Star Ministries. He records for both demos and production, but he doesn’t market or promote.

He says he knows his limitations: “I sing a little, but I’m not a great singer.” He sings harmony with the Heavenly Stars, and he believes, “When you sing, or whatever you do, you’ve got to realize there is someone out there who is better. I thank God I realize it.” Sometimes he has been asked to lead singing, and he can sing with a group, but he’s not a soloist. He has to have background music.

“You audition a cappella because they’ll know then if you can sing or not,” he said. “If you can’t sing without music, then you can’t sing.”

Music, he believes, is not only an art but also a gift, “and what I mean by that is you can take vocal lessons, music lessons, but it’s that natural talent God put in you — it’s just there” — and can be developed by learning from others — “but you put it all together to get an identity of your own.”

It’s music — “something about its power” — that brings people together, Fred says, and he appreciates many different kinds, especially “the era of real music” when there were such artists as Laverne Baker and Fats Domino. But he loves all different styles — jazz, classical, country — “even some of the early rap artists.”

Most special to him, however, is gospel, “and if I arrange something, say R&B, you can still hear a little gospel in the way I do it. There aren’t many artists who didn’t get some influence from the church.”

“My roots,” he said, “are gospel.”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.