Soul Music: Magic in Muscle Shoals
- Music History Hall
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Soul Music
In the late 1960s, a wave of black pride washed over the nation. The African-American community started to embrace their African heritage and call themselves soul sisters and soul brothers, and their traditional southern food soul food. Their music was soul music.
After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, anger spread throughout the black community, and a wave of empowerment.
African-American art flourished. Black communities expressed themselves through their art. They opened black writers' guilds, arts repertories, and started singing soul music—powerful roots-based music.
Ray Charles was the "Genius of Soul" and James Brown, the soul brother number one, "The Godfather." African Americans had fought hard for their civil rights, and by the late 1960s, they wanted to express themselves through their art and culture.
Many artists contributed to the soul genre. Famous soul singers include Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin. The place where many soul singers went to cut their records was a little recording studio in the backwoods of Alabama—Muscle Shoals.
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is a small town on the edge of the Tennessee River, a place the Native Americans thought was spiritual and magical. The studio was simple, with wood panel walls, old equipment, and great acoustics. Muscle Shoals was a unique recording studio that set the world on fire.
The beauty of what happened down in Muscle Shoals was that the soul singers and studio musicians collaborated until they got the right sound. The "Queen of Soul" was already a recording artist before she went to Muscle Shoals, but this was the place where she became the Aretha Franklin that everybody knows and loves.
