![]() Then there are the musicians themselves - guitarist Jimmy Johnson, drummer Roger Hawkins, bassist David Hood, pianist Barry Beckett and keyboardist Spooner Oldham - who modestly and often eloquently remember the glory days of the Muscle Shoals music scene.īut the narrative at times gets disjointed and ventures into tangents that take the film off course. FAME Studios was the vision of Rick Hall, a musician and songwriter who grew up in abject poverty and dreamed of owning his own studio. The film is at its best when it focuses on the core of the unlikely story: how a group of white males helped define the sound of black Southern soul music. ![]() And later, when the Swampers opened up their own place, Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, everyone from the Rolling Stones to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Paul Simon to Bob Dylan to Bob Seger recorded there.Ī new documentary film, “Muscle Shoals,” delves deep into the mystique of the Muscle Shoals sound with an impressive number of “A-list” stars: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Gregg Allman, Bono, Steve Winwood and Alicia Keys. That’s where Redding recorded and came to be the figurehead of the Southern soul music movement that challenged Motown Records for dominance on the charts.Īnd, finally, there was Muscle Shoals, home of FAME Studios and the famed studio band the Swampers, who played on the hits of Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. Then there was Memphis, home to Stax Records and the landmark studio band Booker T. And there’s really no logical explanation of how that sleepy city somehow became part of a triad of musical epicenters in the 1960s and ‘70s that came to define Southern music.įirst, there was Macon in the remote center of Georgia, a city that somehow spawned Little Richard and then James Brown and then Otis Redding and then the Allman Brothers Band - all artists who either created or helped define new genres of popular music. ![]() Muscle Shoals takes up but a speck on a road map of the northwestern corner of Alabama, with a population that hovers around 13,000. Outside Muscle Shoals Sound Studios: (from left) Roger Hawkins, Barry Beckett, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, Carol Buckins, Steve Melton, Diane Butler, Pearce Pettus and Bobby Heathcote. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |