Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, lies on the south bank of the Tennessee River, around 20 miles from the state line. Nashville and Memphis are a couple of hours away by car in different directions; so is Birmingham. So why would anyone want to go to Muscle Shoals? It’s just over 16 square miles in total and has a population of under 15,000, which goes up to 200,000 if you include the city of Florence across the river and other surrounding towns. Despite these unimpressive statistics, its musical legacy is equal to any big city, having been home to a small group of musicians who helped define soul, R&B and rock n’ roll from the 1960s to the present day.
Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier’s excellent 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals delves deep into the area’s rich musical history and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. In particular, the film chronicles Rick Hall’s FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, founded by Hall’s former rhythm section, the Swampers, immortalized in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers / And they’ve been known to pick a song or two”). Between the two of them, they have produced or played on some of the most famous songs ever recorded.
Hall serves as the film’s hero and villain, sage and fool. With his single-minded determination and theatrical mustache, he reminds one of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. He’s prone to speaking in cliches, saying things like “I was going to kick some ass and take some names” and “I was shitting in high cotton.” Behind his bluster though is a life of sadness and trauma it’s a miracle he survived. Hall grew up in abject poverty, lost his brother in a horrific accident, his mother abandoned him to become a prostitute and he lost his first wife in an automobile accident 18 months after they were married. Professionally, he’s been fired, left behind and dropped by studios, musicians and labels alike, each time picking himself back up and finding greater success. “I think rejection played a big role in my life because I thrived on it,” he tells us at one point. “I wanted to prove the world was wrong and I was right.”
Hall’s gravity is balanced by the affable Swampers, a collection of greying and doughy good ole’ boys who are part of the Holy Trinity of ‘60s soul rhythm sections, alongside Motown’s Funk Brothers and Booker T. & The M.G.’s. “You just didn’t expect them to be as funky or as greasy as they were,” says Aretha Franklin, whom they backed on such career making hits as “Respect” and “Chain of Fools.” That the group who played on some of the biggest R&B hits of the 1960s – including landmark sides by Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge and Etta James – were a bunch of unassuming small town whiteboys would be a recurring source of confusion and comedy. As guitarist Jimmy Johnson recalls, “Paul Simon called Stax Records, talked to (co-owner) Al Bell and said, ‘Hey man, I want those same black players that played on (the Staple Singers) ‘I’ll Take You There.’ He said, ‘That can happen but these guys are mighty pale’.”
Muscle Shoals musical history goes back before white Europeans arrived in the early 1800s. We learn that the indigenous Yuchi Indians called the Tennessee River, “the singing river.” W.C. Handy was from the area and his work writing, transcribing and publishing blues songs greatly expanded the genre’s reach, earning him the nickname “The Father of the Blues.” Running parallel to the studios’ history is the birth of Southern rock; Duane Allman was a session guitarist at FAME and Lynyrd Skynyrd were signed to a production deal with Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. The legacy continues to this day with the Drive-By Truckers, whose Patterson Hood is the son of Swamper David Hood, and Jason Isbell, neither of whom appear in the film, and The Civil Wars’ John Paul White, who does.
Rich in detail, beautifully shot and featuring testimony from a gaggle of famous rock stars, Muscle Shoals is a music nerd’s delight and offers an engaging history lesson for those unfamiliar with the music that originated there. At its heart is a very human story about simple people from a small town who never let success go to their heads or change them. If Hall was the “workaholic” of the bunch, driven by his self-professed bitterness, he never lost sight of the music, pushing artists to unlock their greatness. While the Swampers could have toured the world, they preferred the pleasures of home. “You look back and you see the discography,” says Johnson, “we’re as amazed as anybody.”
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.
