The Racial Courage, and Questions, Surrounding Muscle Shoals' Soul Songs

The film chronicles the incredible music made in Muscle Shoals, Alabama by producer Rick Hall and his house band, the Swampers. Performers like Pickett and Franklin traveled down from the north expressly to get the Muscle Shoals sound. Muscle Shoals offered not just phenomenal music but an alternative white Southern tradition-one that, deliberately and honorably, defined itself in large part by not being white at all. The white performers at Muscle Shoals have made a huge, widely recognized contribution to R&B. The black performers could have become a massively important part of country-music tradition, but they didn't, and it's hard to see what stopped them except for their color.

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