Muscle Shoals (2013)

[Frayed Knot]

The turbulent times and absolute magic of a little music studio set amongst the cotton fields of Alabama

In Muscle Shoals they've got the Swampers
and they've been known to pick a song or two ...




Gregg Allman
Arthur Alexander
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
Aretha Franklin
Jimmy Cliff
Percy Sledge
Wilson Pickett
Alicia Keyes
et al

[Edgy MD]

Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono. He's so omnipresent that he's the forest you miss for the trees.

I mostly liked. They really seemed to stay away from the race questions, and suddenly they dove right in. But I'm not sure they tackled the race angle as deeply as they might've.

Fascinating thing to realize that a trip through Fame Studios was a step toward sophistication for the likes of Percy Sledge. But for Wilson Pickett, it seemed, it was the exact opposite. You got the idea that going down south to a studio amid the cotton fields was for him frightening --- something akin to getting sold down the river by Atlantic. To hear him and Rick Hall tell it, it was like he was afraid from the time he landed that he wouldn't be getting out.

They may have played the spiritual/animism side of the story too much. On the other hand, it mostly worked. I would have liked a little more about the technical side of what made those records work. How did Hall place his mics? What sort of reverb was his signature?

I really liked learning that Pickett's "Hey Jude" recording was Duane Allman's idea, and the Swampers' notion that that session with Allman on slide was the birth of southern rock. I was very surprised to hear that Aretha only got one side ("I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)") out of her sessions at Fame and then the Swampers followed her up to New York and played a bunch of her other Atlantic classicks. Gun to my head, I'd've sworn that the bulk of her hits were cut in Alabama.

But really, even when they left Fame, this was the story of Rick Hall. That guy had enough tragedy in his life to make Roy Orbison blush, but he built his little kingdom down there despite it all, and it's a chapter in the rock 'n' roll story that stands side by side with Phil Spector's or Berry Gordy's or Ahmet Ertugen's or the Chess Brothers or anybody's.

So yeah, most of my quibbles were... more! More technical information. More wrestling with the racial dynamic. More recounts from the seventies period, when Muscle Shoals stopped producing soul that rocked, and started producing rock with soul. There are seven musical Osmonds and they couldn't talk to one of them?!

Nice ending with Alicia Keyes and Swampers cutting the Dylan song.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono.

He was demonstrating good sense and taste. Because, really now, someone else says "the Muscle Shoals sound", and the first thing I think of is Bono. What a fucking attention whore he turned out to be. Hasn't the world had enough of Bono pontificating? And what the hell does Bono have to do with Muscle Shoals anyway? Less Bono. More of Duane Allman wailing on the the back end of Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude.

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[Frayed Knot]

Not that I intentionally left Bono out of the little roster up top (just wanted to throw some names out really) but I guess the success of U-2's 'Angel of Harlem', along with the front man's big mouth/ego, tends to tab him as the go-to guy when talking about how American soul influenced European kids. And while that viewpoint certainly merits inclusion in a docu like this, it's not like he brings anything to the discussion that Mick & Keith--with their more era-appropriate views and, oh yeah, actual monster cuts recorded there vibe--couldn't and didn't add.

I too would have liked to see/hear more of the southern rock era.

[Edgy MD]

Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono. He was demonstrating good sense and taste. Because, really now, someone else says "the Muscle Shoals sound", and the first thing I think of is Bono. What a fucking attention whore he turned out to be. Hasn't the world had enough of Bono pontificating? And what the hell does Bono have to do with Muscle Shoals anyway? Less Bono. More of Duane Allman wailing on the the back end of Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude.

But how do you really feel?

The quick zip through the seventies left one thing unclear to me: Were all those monsters recorded at the Swampers' studio while Fame faded? Or were they both churning out hits?