Muscle Shoals

Synopsis: A documentary about Rick Hall who founded a recording studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama,  a small town  on the southern edge of the Tennessee River and came to provide the must-have sound for many of the leading artists of the 1960s and '70s, from Percy Sledge’ and Wilson Pickett to the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Boz Scaggs.

Although it starts with the completely irrelevant and typically onanistic opinings of Bono, first-time filmmaker Greg "Freddy" Camalier’s documentary develops into a worthy exploration of an oft-cited but little understood name in rock music –  Muscle Shoals – well known from the line 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."

Camalier gives us a detailed account of the history of the Muscle Shoals sound: from the original FAME studio founded by Rick Hall to a second incarnation when Hall’s studio band, The Swampers, broke away to start their own their own establishment.  Hall, a fascinating character to say the least, provides much of the story’s depth, particularly for the high-water pre-split period. What happened thereafter and how the two studios co-existed or divvied up Hall’s legacy is not so clear. Nor for that matter, does Camalier manage to explain how this music phenomenon coalesced in such an apparent backwater. There’s a lot of romantic allusion to the singing Tennessee River and its muddy waters but it comes across as self-confirming mythologizing that no end of talking heads like Keith Richards and Stevie Winwood, not to mention the dire Bono, are happy to buy into.

As with so many historical surveys once we pass the well-defined period of the ‘60s and ‘70s things get a tad too ragged.  A montage of album covers, many of artists of whom we have never heard, is less than revealing or even that relevant.  Until then, however,  Camalier  provides an engaging account of how a bunch of very un-rock’n’roll white guys managed to provide the sound for a goodly number of iconic pop and rhythm ‘n’ blues songs from the last great period of 20^th century popular music. 

Like the recent documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, for music buffs, if not others, Muscle Shoals will be essential viewing.

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