‘Muscle Shoals’ documentary review by David Gritten

PG CERT, 111 MIN DIR Greg Camalier STARRING Rick Hall, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, The Swampers.

David Gritten finds this documentary about the Alabama town and those who have flocked to it as joyous, uplifting, and as funky as the musicians it celebrates.

A small, lush, green town in rural Alabama on the banks of the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals is tiny compared with cities like Memphis, New Orleans and Nashville. Yet for the last 50 years it has punched way above its weight in the annals of American music.

It’s the epicentre of southern country soul. Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge and Candi Staton recorded and made their names at its legendary recording studios; in later years the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart arrived to infuse their music with the elusive “Muscle Shoals sound”.

In his admiring, well-researched documentary with a strong sense of place, director Greg Camalier traces the story of the Muscle Shoals phenomenon, and obtained access to stellar artists that made the town famous in the music business.

Yet the key figure in Camalier’s film is the little-known Rick Hall, who produced many of the early Muscle Shoals hits for his Fame label, in a local studio converted from a tobacco warehouse. A brooding man with an obsessive eye for detail, Hall is the man who made it happen.

His great achievement was to assemble a bunch of local musicians (they became known as The Swampers) to play as the studio house band. They were all white, yet their playing was so authentic that outsiders (notably Paul Simon) assumed they were black.

The Swampers backed Franklin, Pickett and Sledge on some of their finest recorded moments and inadvertently did much to break down racial barriers in American popular music.

An array of famous talking heads confirms details of this terrific story. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards enthuse about Muscle Shoals, where Wild Horses was recorded. Even the normally reticent Aretha Franklin finds words of praise for the place, and a detailed account by several witnesses about the fractious, argumentative session during which she recorded her exquisite hit I Never Loved a Man is gripping.

The one quibble is Camalier’s choice to pad out his material, adding talking-heads interviews with white stars whose links with Muscle Shoals were tenuous at best. Jagger and Richards certainly justify their presence; but Gregg Allman has little to add; one doesn’t associate Lynyrd Skynyrd with Muscle Shoals; and goodness knows why Bono pops up to gush about it.

Yet overall the film, propelled both by gorgeous music and rich anecdotes, is joyous, uplifting, and as funky as the musicians it celebrates.