Capsule Review: Muscle Shoals

by allan tong for FILMbutton

“There’s something in that mud,” says Bono about the Fame recording studios in this swampy hamlet in Alabama. Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, The Allman Brothers, The Rolling Stones and many others have recorded some of the best songs of the past 50 years here. Contemporary interviews and archival photos bring those recording sessions to life, but the real soul of this film is Rick Hall, the man who founded the Muscle Shoals studio, whose tragic childhood and hard life drove him to be the best producer in the music world. A stunning film.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.

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