Muscle Shoals

For many years, the city of Muscle Shoals, Alabama exerted a magnetic attraction on rock 'n' roll and soul legends such as the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin, producing classic tunes such as "Brown Sugar," "I'll Take You There" and "When a Man Loves a Woman." The remote city has just 8,000 inhabitants and lies on the Tennessee River, which was already known to Native Americans as the "Singing River." A key figure in the music scene there was Rick Hall, who grew up very poor and later set up the FAME Studios to prove something to his hometown, where he had always felt he had been held back. In his studios, Hall allowed black music and white music to merge, forming the characteristic "Muscle Shoals sound." His studios became a place where skin color didn't matter, even before the Civil Rights Movement really got going. Interspersed with many music clips, artists like Bono, Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin, Alicia Keys, Keith Richards, Percy Sledge, Etta James, Jimmy Cliff and many others talk about the attraction of Muscle Shoals and why the place still exerts such an influence in the world of music to this day.