Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Muscle Shoals Blu-ray Movie Review

It's in the Water

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 23, 2014

Muscle Shoals is a small Alabama town on the banks of the Tennessee River. It's also the name of a musical style that you've almost certainly heard without realizing it, because the "Muscle Shoals sound" is the underpinning for so many classic rock and soul hits that the list is breathtaking. The story of Motown is well-known, and most people have at least heard of Memphis' Stax Records and Chess Studios in Chicago, which was the subject of the film Cadillac Records. Muscle Shoals's influence arguably reaches further and wider than any of these, but it remained unchronicled until director Greg "Freddy" Camalier embarked on the four-year project that became the first release of his fledgling company, Ear Goggles Productions. After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013, the film was acquired by Magnolia Pictures, which released it to theaters in September and is now offering it on Blu-ray. In the meantime, the film picked up a Grammy nomination and a Golden Reel nomination from the sound editors guild for its impressive soundtrack.

No one really knows why Muscle Shoals, a town of 8000 surrounded by even smaller towns, many accessible only by dirt roads, generated so much musical talent and inspiration. Camalier includes suggestions from various interview subjects about the spirts of the area's original Native American inhabitants, the nearby river's mystical power, "fields of energy" and even practical analysis of the cross-cultural ferment among musical styles (gospel, hillybilly, bluegrass). In the end, though, the mystery remains, along with the cosmic joke that some of the greatest classics of American R&B—including Aretha Franklin's "Respect", Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally", Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman"—had their distinctively funky instrumentation supplied by an anonymous band of studio players from Muscle Shoals, nearly all of whom were, as one record executive put it, "mighty pale".

♪ Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers ♬

The lead character of Muscle Shoals is Rick Hall, who built FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals in the early Sixties after splitting from his initial partners. A big man with a big personality, and a gifted storyteller, Hall overcame humble origins and personal tragedy to become one of America's leading music producers. Through a combination of charisma, taste and sheer orneriness—anyone who wants to be in the music business better expect to get their ass kicked, he says at one point—Hall assembled a group of studio musicians with whom everyone wanted to record. The core came to be known as the Swampers: Jimmy Johnson on guitar; David Hood on bass; Roger Hawkins on drums; and Barry Beckett on keyboards. All but Beckett, who died in 2009, are major participants in Muscle Shoals.

A great upheaval occurred in 1969, when the Swampers left FAME Studios to start their own enterprise, which came to be known as Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Hall was furious at what he perceived to be a betrayal, and even more so when he learned that the Swampers were being bankrolled by Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, for whom Hall had been making hit records with the Swampers for years. "It was war", says Hall, recalling the episode. As things turned out, however, the Muscle Shoals sound was so much in demand that there was more than enough work to keep two studios busy. Hall quickly assembled a reaplacement group of musicians from the apparently bottomless pool of talent in and around the town. Meanwhile, the new studio took off in its own direction. While Hall continued to thrive, Jimmy Johnson became the studio producer for dozens of major acts, including the iconic Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose rising career was cut short by the tragic 1977 plane crash that killed three members of the band.

Some of the best parts of Muscle Shoals are those that examine in detail what became defining moments in a recording artist's career. Atlantic Records singer Wilson Pickett reluctantly accompanied Jerry Wexler to FAME Studios, convinced that a group of white musicians couldn't possibly understand his style; he emerged with "Land of 1000 Dances" and "Mustang Sally", among other major hits. Aretha Franklin was dropped by CBS Records after five years of failed nightclub-style recordings (an example is included; it's painful to hear). Wexler brought her to Muscle Shoals, where she and Hall's musicians wrote "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You", the record that began her transformation into the Queen of Soul. (Wexler had to fly the Swampers to New York to finish the rest of the album's songs, including "Respect", after Aretha's husband got jealous of a horn player who was flirting with her.) Percy Sledge came into FAME Studios shaking like a leaf, because he'd never sung professionally before. Hall and the Swampers helped him create "When a Man Loves a Woman". The Rolling Stones flew in for two days and left with "Wild Horses", "Brown Sugar" and two more songs—the most prolific they'd ever been, according to Keith Richards.

Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi of Traffic so loved playing with the Swampers that they persuaded them to come out on tour, but the vagabond glitter of the road didn't appeal. These were homebodies from Muscle Shoals, and they were eager to get back to the place from which they drew their inspiration. In a deleted scene, the surviving Swampers can be seen sitting with their former mentor, Rick Hall, old grievances long forgotten, everyone reminiscing about their many shared experiences, and everyone grateful to have been part of it.

Muscle Shoals Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot on Red by Anthony Arendt, the virtual camera operator on Avatar, Muscle Shoals features spectacular location photography intended to make the town and its riverside environs as inviting and mysterious as possible. This footage has been skillfully interwoven with the contemporary interviews, which have been shot all over the country, sometimes in hotel rooms, sometimes in storied locations like the Electric Ladyland Studio in New York City, and of course at the FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio where so much musical history was made. A 16mm Swedish documentary provides historical footage of Hall and the Swampers at work, and vintage photographs and album covers have been collected from diverse sources and scanned at high quality.

Digitally edited and color-corrected on a digital intermediate, the results as presented on Magnolia's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray are excellent. In the contemporary sequences, detail and sharpness are superb, whether one is looking at ripe cotton buds, a field of bright yellow sunflowers or the craggy and expressive face of Rick Hall telling one of his many yarns. The vintage film and home movies look about as good as can be expected, and the photographs translate to the screen with astonishing clarity—a tribute, among other things, to the Blu-ray's solid blacks and fine delineations of shades of gray. The greens of the surrounding countryside and the various shades of the interview locales (shades of red and orange seem to be a favorite color choice) provide visual stimulation and variety. Muscle Shoals may not sound like an inherently visual film, but Camalier's commentary makes it clear that he went to great lengths to frame shots and capture material that would make the film as interesting to watch as it is to hear.

The average bitrate of 17.99 Mbps is low by Magnolia's standards, but the numerous talking head shots no doubt made the compressionist's job easier, and in any case Red footage compresses well. Artifacts were not an issue.

Muscle Shoals Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In an ironic twist, a film that celebrates the glory days of vinyl records and analog recording has a superb digital soundtrack, presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. The track has the usual front-oriented quality of a documentary, but because it is so heavily dominated by musical selections, the sense of stereo separation is much stronger than one usual encounters in such mixes. While the voices of the interview subjects remain firmly anchored to the center, the songs they're discussing ring out from the front left and right with a clarity and focus you may never have heard before. Since bass and bass drums were an important component of the Muscle Shoals sound, the low frequency extension is deep but tightly focused; there is no subsonic rumbling here.

The rear channels have been subtly employed to "open up" the original stereo recordings, but without calling attention to themselves. Some of the outdoor scenes, especially those involving the Tennessee River and nearby swamp lands, have sounds of rushing water subtly woven into the background. All of this mixing has been done with a careful eye and ear toward the film's dramatic momentum, so that the soundtrack keeps pulling the story of Muscle Shoals forward, until the credit scroll, which is accompanied by the full-length version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", which immortalized the town and the Swampers in its lyrics.

Muscle Shoals Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries


• With Director Greg "Freddy" Camalier: Camalier's commentary is somewhat spotty and a little disappointing. He does provide some interesting trivia on various shooting locations and logistics, but he offers no background on how the project was developed and far too little on such intriguing subjects as how he persuaded so many music stars to appear in the film or the provenance of some of the vintage interviews. Most directors reveal something of themselves in their commentaries, but Camalier holds everything back, except that he admires many of his shots.



• With Rick Hall, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood and Spooner Oldham: The founder of FAME Studios, the two members of the original Swampers and the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer sideman reminisce about their adventures together and add even more detail to the film, identifying figures only partially visible in old photos and vintage clips. Hall, still the natural leader after all these years, talks more than anyone, and at the end he asks each of his fellow participants what first made them want to be a musician.



• Additional Scenes & Interviews (1080p; 1.78:1; 28:41): A "play all" function is included.
• Aretha "Call Me" Session
• Candi Staton
• Donnie Fritts
• Harvey Thompson
• Muscle Shoals Montage: As described in Camalier's commentary, this was the film's alternate opening.
• Recording in Muscle Shoals
• Spooner Oldham
• Swampers & Rick Reunion: Too leisurely for inclusion in the main feature, this easygoing chat is the single best scene in the group.



• Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:32).



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Good Ol' Freda, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me and Marley, as well as a promo for AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

Muscle Shoals Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Rick Hall's story is unique, and so is that of the Swampers and all the musicians who created the Muscle Shoals sound. Camalier's documentary has been advertised, understandably, with the names of the famous musicians being interviewed, but the most memorable characters are the ones you meet for the first time: the musicians, songwriters and producers who did it not for money and fame (though some earned a good living and a few, like Spooner Oldham, even became well-known, at least among their peers), but for love of the music itself. Muscle Shoals can't explain why so many of them came from this one tiny region in Alabama, but the film is a fitting testament to their accomplishments. Highly recommended.