The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will open its next major exhibition, Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising, on Friday, November 14th, for a nearly three-year run. The more than 5,000-square-foot exhibit will survey the emergence of Muscle Shoals as a recording epicenter in the 1960s and 1970s and spotlight its enduring cultural impact. The exhibit is supported by OneLouder.
In a small corner of Alabama by the Tennessee River, local musicians, songwriters and producers created a swampy, Southern sound merging R&B, country, pop music and more. Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising tells the story of this distinctive music and how black and white creators found a way to work together at a time when segregation prevailed. Fame Studio, helmed by producer Rick Hall; Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, home of the acclaimed Swampers house band; and other studios built a home-made system for cutting music dusted with grit and soul. Hitmakers flocked to this otherwise quiet community seeking a new sound created by homegrown talent.
Aretha Franklin had a career-defining moment in Muscle Shoals and Country Music Hall of Fame member Willie Nelson recorded his beloved Phases and Stages album there. Music recorded in Muscle Shoals included Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On,” Mac Davis’ “Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me,” Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy,” Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll,” Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome,” Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” Candi Staton’s “Stand By Your Man” and much more. Enduring music continues to be made in the community today by the Alabama Shakes, the Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, the Secret Sisters, John Paul White and others, with artists continuing to record in Muscle Shoals.
“In Muscle Shoals, American music crossed lines that weren’t supposed to be breached,” states Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “The Tennessee River flowed through this place, and instead of drawing a boundary, somehow forces came together. Black and white sounds, R&B, blues, soul and country met between the banks. A new rhythm rose and recording studios sprouted to nourish that rhythm. This exhibit takes an expansive look at the sound that forever changed popular music and continues to nurture a rich musical scene in northwest Alabama.”
Neither the racial harmony nor the musical kind came easily. At the center of the exhibit is the “Aretha piano” from Fame, the instrument heard on numerous hits and the place where Franklin’s life was transformed. It is where the force and the limits of the Muscle Shoals system were revealed. The exhibit will also feature an introductory film narrated by multiple Grammy award-winning artist Jason Isbell, a North Alabama native who worked at Fame.
The museum’s curatorial and creative teams conducted more than 50 hours of filmed interviews with musicians, artists and others involved in the Muscle Shoals story. They collected an array of significant artifacts for display, including stage wear, instruments, original song manuscripts and more. Interactive elements within the galleries will incorporate audio recordings, original interview footage and historical photographs.
An illustrated and in-depth exhibition catalog will supplement the gallery presentation, with a foreword by Jason Isbell and main essays by exhibit co-curator RJ Smith. The catalog, available on November 14th, will feature historical photographs and artifacts from the exhibit, as well as supporting essays by Ericka Blount, Rob Bowman, Warren Denney, Stephen Deusner, Michael Gonzales, Marlin Greene, Patterson Hood and Francesca Royster. The catalog will be available through the museum’s website and retail store, as well as distributed widely in bookstores and online outlets through a partnership with the University of Illinois Press.
In support of the exhibit’s debut, the museum will host a concert celebration and a variety of public programs during the opening weekend. The concert and programs are made possible in part by Pedigree and Pedigree Foundation.
Tickets to the opening concert in the museum’s CMA Theater are sold separately, while programs in the Ford Theater are included with museum admission, with reservations encouraged. Tickets can be purchased or reserved beginning on Friday, September 12th, at 10 am Central.
The museum will host an all-star concert with artists and musicians involved in or inspired by Muscle Shoals’ musical legacy, including Tiera Kennedy, Bettye LaVette, Wendy Moten, Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn, Maggie Rose, Shenandoah and John Paul White. The house band of Muscle Shoals aces will be led by guitarist Will McFarlane and include Mark Beckett on drums, Mickey Buckins on percussion, Kelvin Holly on guitar, Clayton Ivey on keys, Shoals Sisters Marie Lewey and Cindy Walker on background vocals, Charles Rose on horns, and Bob Wray on bass.
In anticipation of the opening, the official Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising exhibition playlist is now available on streaming platforms. The playlist features songs compiled by the museum and follows the exhibit narrative across decades of music.
Muscle Shoals is the commonly used name for the region covering four small cities clustered on either side of the Tennessee River in northwestern Alabama — Florence, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals. In this quiet corner of the South, a thriving recording center was born, starting in the late 1950s. Prodded by Fame Studio owner Rick Hall and other like-minded entrepreneurs, local musicians, who were mostly white, collaborated with Black singers and turned out one hit after another: “You Better Move On” by Arthur Alexander, “Steal Away” by Jimmy Hughes and more.
In Muscle Shoals, black and white musicians were creating together in the studio, making hit records that showcased Black artistry to the diverse American audience, and attracting artists from outside to come to Muscle Shoals. Alabama-born Wilson Pickett made some of his best music there (“Land of 1000 Dances,” “Mustang Sally,” “Funky Broadway”). Clarence Carter (“Slip Away,” “Patches”) and Etta James (“Tell Mama”) made memorable music while in town, too.
In 1967, Aretha Franklin’s breakthrough recording session at Fame sent ripples through Muscle Shoals with her pop and R&B hit, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” It took her music to an elevated place, while putting Fame’s musicians in union with her powers. In 1969, Rick Hall’s rhythm section left and opened their own studio. In time, these musicians would become known as the Swampers, and their new place, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, took a novel approach, putting the house band in charge of the art and the business.
The Rolling Stones made a celebrated stop at the studio in 1969, recording “Wild Horses,” “Brown Sugar” and “You Gotta Move.” Other acclaimed albums were soon recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, including Paul Simon’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Willie Nelson’s Phases and Stages, Bob Seger’s Night Moves and Stranger in Town, and Bob Dylan’s Saved.
After the Swampers left Fame, Hall assembled another house band, the FAME Gang, the first racially integrated session band for the studio. Hall produced the hit album Fancy with country star Bobbie Gentry, Candi Staton’s “I’d Rather be an Old Man’s Sweetheart (Than a Young Man’s Fool)” and “Sweet Feeling,” Clarence Carter’s “Patches,” and multiple hits with the Osmonds (“One Bad Apple,” “Yo-Yo,” “Down by the Lazy River”).
In the 1980s, as country music’s hold on the pop market greatly expanded, much of the Muscle Shoals scene flowed toward country music. Mac Davis was a frequent hitmaker at Fame, and Alabama, Shenandoah, Hank Williams Jr., Jerry Reed, Mac McAnally and others recorded music in the Shoals.
Today, the regional presence of artists like Jason Isbell, the Alabama Shakes, the Secret Sisters, Gary Nichols, John Paul White and the musical community around Single Lock Records has established a lively contemporary Muscle Shoals scene. In recent years, the blend of artists coming to record in Muscle Shoals studios has included the Black Keys, Lana Del Rey, Phish, Chris Stapleton, the War & Treaty and others.
