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disclaimer: The Lady Miz Diva is a soul fiend. Anything having to do
with soul music, particularly from the 1960s and 70s, Motown, Stax,
Atlantic, Chess is audio manna for Our ever-luvvin ears. The prospect
of a documentary about the mighty sound that issued forth from Muscle
Shoals, Alabama could only meet with my favourable gaze. Muscle Shoals’
FAME Studios, the small recording space built circuit by circuit by its
founder, Rick Hall, was the birthplace of signature songs by Otis
Redding, Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Etta James, Joe Tex, The Staple
Singers, and so many others. The surprising thing about both Hall and
his in-house session band of groovers was the fact that they were all
white, creating emblematic tunes for future R&B legends. Their grasp of
soulful harmonies, rhythm, structure and blockbuster collaborations with
black artists defied racial boundaries and expectations at a time when
the tensions that arose from the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement were
at a peak.
The
story of Muscle Shoals begins with Rick Hall, a musician and songwriter
who started his life in deep poverty as a child abandoned by his
mother. Hall’s determination to make something of himself isolates
friends, but doesn’t stop him from creating a recording studio in the
middle of nowhere in full view of a cotton field. His openness to
welcome anyone who wanted to work brought him a gaggle of young session
musicians that included drummer Roger Hawkins, guitarist Jimmy Johnson,
bassist David Hood and organist Spooner Oldham, who would later become
known as The Swampers. Hall also sought out talent wherever he found it
and so discovered an African-American bellhop named Arthur Alexander,
who would write and perform FAME Studios’ first hit, 1961’s “You Better
Move On.” That song not only had an effect across the country, but
resonated in places as far away as England, where blues-loving bands
like the Rolling Stones would eventually record their version. From
there, Hall would produce many new artists and soon the recordings’
tight, snap-beat syncopation and soulful arrangements would capture
notable ears and bring increasingly well-known names to the swampy
locale, seeking that signature sound. The unifying factor among the
variety of visiting artists was their surprise that the Muscle Shoals’
session players were indeed Caucasian and their curiosity at the band’s
innate funkiness. We relive the reinvention of Aretha Franklin from
lushly-produced, torch singing flop, to wailing Queen of Soul as she’s
regarded today with The Swampers’ gospel-tastic fleshing-in of
Franklin’s bare bones composition, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love
You)." We have interviews with Rick Hall’s kindred spirit, the late R&B
wild man, Wilson Pickett, who recorded his most famous songs, “Land of
100 Dances,” “In the Midnight Hour,” “Mustang Sally” and “Funky
Broadway” at FAME. The tempestuous blues icon Etta James recorded her
famous single “Tell Mama” at FAME, but not without a little pushback
over the song’s content; a debate she conceded upon hearing the quality
of the recording. If the opening bars of singer/songwriter Clarence
Carter’s 1970 hit “Patches” didn’t already sufficiently bring on the
sniffles, to discover that Hall had actually written the song about his
deceased father, who raised his children in a shack in the woods with a
dirt floor and no plumbing, is enough to send a body into great,
wracking sobs. As interviews from U2’s Bono, reggae legend Jimmy Cliff
and Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Mick Jagger attest, there was a
magical mixture of talent, inspiration and exuberance that seemed to
rise out of the mud of the Tennessee River to converge on this strange
spot in the Deep South in this relatively short space of time to create
something rare and unique.
All
this goodness should have made Muscle Shoals the perfect documentary
about a more than worthy subject. Alas, there is a thorn: Considering
the Muscle Shoals’ musicians’ groundbreaking, if unintentional racially
progressive statement, there are troubling moments when in the later
part of the film, the Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd is featured, and
featured, and featured. More time is spent on the group than is spent
on any of the black acts, or even the Rolling Stones. Guitarist Jimmy
Johnson produced their early demos, but none of the other Swamper
members, including Johnson, actually played on their hit, “Sweet Home
Alabama,” which name-checks both Muscle Shoals and their legendary
backup band. Director Greg 'Freddy' Camalier uses a lot of the band’s
concert and TV footage, which features a giant Confederate flag, which
served as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s dominant background visual. Early in the
documentary, the Muscle Shoals session players relate how uncomfortable
it was to eat at the segregated nearby diners with the black artists
they played for, emphasising how very colour-blind recording in the
studio was in comparison. It was African-American artists that put the
Muscle Shoals studios and its Caucasian musicians on the map. It was
their sound that induced everyone from The Beatles to the Rolling Stones
to cover black records made in Muscle Shoals. It would be the hit
records created by the collaboration of the black artists and the white
producers and session musicians together that would bring white groups
to their door looking to duplicate that sound. In the sequence
immediately preceding, prior to his starting the multiracial Allman
Brothers Band, we see the late Duane Allman’s productive time as FAME
Studios’ session guitarist, which included becoming the impetus for
Wilson Pickett’s hit cover of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” The lengthy view
of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Confederate flag, a symbol of racial hatred and
inequality so proudly emblazoned by a group that was fostered by
Johnson, who proudly played alongside some of the biggest black acts in
history, jarringly undoes the positivity established by the film up to
that point.
Another curiosity of the film is the reunion of Rick Hall with his
former session men, The Swampers. In a sterling example of how shady
the music business can be, a petty grudge between Hall and Jerry Wexler,
the co-creator of soul empire Atlantic Records, was carried to the
degree where Wexler set up a recording studio of his own across town and
stole The Swampers right out from under Hall. The fact that The
Swampers did not tell Hall, the one person to whom they owed their
professional success, until right before he was to sign a huge contract
which included the musicians, is even uglier a betrayal. In one moment,
Hall shares his justifiable resentment at both Wexler and his former
protégés, but shortly afterward is seen walking amiably into the studio
with the men, claiming that over the passage of time, he was able to
forgive them. Considering that at the film’s start, one of rock’s
fiercest creatures, Rolling Stone Keith Richards calls Hall “a wild
man,” it feels too convenient for this person of the tremendous strength
and passion we’ve seen for the past ninety minutes to have simply
shrugged his shoulders about an act of treachery that could’ve cost him
everything he’d worked for.
While
gorgeously photographed and lovingly researched, the tempo of the film
is uneven, with the riveting early days of the studios passing by in a
fun, exuberant blur, while the relatively dull, later post-fame history
is drawn out. Another moment that makes the choice of spotlights and
their duration more curious is that the late, great Otis Redding, who
recorded his own material and produced the classic, “Sweet Soul Music”
for protégé Arthur Conley at Muscle Shoals, is literally resigned to
being an Easter Egg: Redding is only shown on some silent home movie
footage of Hall’s fully after the end credits, which are run under the
entirety of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Twenty minutes on Lynryd Skynyrd and
ten seconds of Otis Redding? Inconceivable.
While
the odd pacing and bizarre and awkward tone-deafness to some of those
featured keeps the doc from perfection, Muscle Shoals has all the
ingredients of a great exploration spanning many lines of interest. The
establishment of a unique and authentically American sound that crossed
racial boundaries, the human story of Rick Hall’s triumphs and tragedies
and compelling insights by R&B and rock legends recognising what Muscle
Shoals meant to the soundscape of modern music, make the film important
viewing.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Sept
27th, 2013
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