FAME Studios may have launched the Shoals’ recording legacy, but it wasn’t the only studio that shaped it. Muscle Shoals Sound Studio opened in 1969, after behind-the-scenes tensions prompted members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section – affectionately nicknamed ‘the Swampers’ – to establish a studio of their own.
The drive north to this studio takes barely five minutes, threading through quiet residential streets, the landscape belying the musical history embedded here.
“If there was a hit record coming out of America, it was most likely coming out of this building,” said Will Allison, a studio musician, audio engineer and regular tour guide at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. The tour had started in a low-lit room with plush, slouchy couches. Everyone from Duane Allman to Wilson Pickett gazed out from the album sleeves papering the walls. “This was one of the most impactful studios of the time and still is today. It shaped the face of music.”
Will poured out a cascade of musical lore as we began our journey through the studio building. Cher named her 1969 album 3614 Jackson Highway after the studio’s address: a record that critics liked but that “flopped commercially” at the time. Then came the hits: R B Greaves’ ‘Take a Letter Maria’, recorded in a single take in just 15 minutes, went gold. The Rolling Stones arrived here in secret in 1969 and logged some of the most productive nights of their career. They cut Sticky Fingers, a ninth studio album wrapped in Andy Warhol’s notorious zipper artwork. “Keith Richards wrote ‘Wild Horses’ while sitting on the toilet,” Will chuckled, gesturing to the bathroom in question.
“Almost every artist in the world had a connection with this studio. It’s pretty unique what these four country boys could do,” he said, referring again to the infamous Swampers.
But when operations shifted to a larger, more modern site in Sheffield in 1979, the original Jackson Highway building was left to moulder. It fell quiet – but not for good. After being acquired by the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation in 2013, a revival began, bolstered by the release of the popular documentary Muscle Shoals and cash injections from megastars like Dr Dre. Restored to its 1970s aesthetic, the studio reopened in 2017 as both a working recording space and an attraction. Almost a decade on, more than 200,000 visitors have walked through its doors.