Muscle Shoals

  Greg Camalier’s Muscle Shoals is a documentary about Rick Hall, who founded Fame recording studios in the quiet Tennessee River town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which inspired an incredible host of classic pop singers and songs. The film is a fascinating collection of music clips, stars‘ testimonials and memories, against the background of the turbulent culture and politics of the late 50s-‘70s.

The film’s explicit homage is to the magic of that location. Something in the air, in the murmuring river, in the wailing clack of the railroad, inspired the musicians who made the place legendary. The footage tries to catch that magic. If we believe it we see it.

The main subtext is the surprising fact that the black R’n’B sound behind all those hits was produced by an all-white rhythm section, who became known as the Swampers. We know that white producers propelled much of that black music but the role played by Hall’s young white musicians, all as hip as Wonderbread, is an eye-opener. The film rescues those principals from an unwarranted obscurity. The drama derives from the Swampers’ split from Hall to set up their own studio, his partnership and split from Atlantic honcho Jerry Wexler, and Hall’s brief warm reunion with the Swampers at the end.

Of course, even documentaries open out into metaphor. The singularity the film presents has a wider resonance, which moves it towards Aristotle’s fiction (what happens all the time) and makes it superior to history (which just happened to happen once).

The film represents the power that America used to have and could have. In this America blacks and whites slip into easy friendship and collaboration to make soulful harmonies together. Amid the vicious artifice of segregation whites and blacks connect and grow together. In this America the young and the imaginative get a chance to make something of themselves. This America breaks down barriers -- rockers Lynryd Skynryd even bring in a roadie who’s a classical pianist -- instead of raising and exploiting them (Hello, Tea Party!). The idyllic Muscle Shoals is idyllic America, its frontier wilds and wisdom intact, a past we should look forward to.