By Brent Thompson
Though Muscle Shoals – the catch-all term for the tri-city area of Muscle Shoals, Florence and Sheffield, Ala. – is widely recognized as one of America’s music hubs, a detailed history of its legendary scene has gone surprisingly untold. The stellar 2013 Muscle Shoals documentary film helped remedy the situation, but there is always more to the story.
In November, music scholar Rob Bowman will release Land of a Thousand Sessions: The Complete Muscle Shoals Story 1951-1985 via Malaco Records. Bowman, best known for his Stax biography, Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records, has gone to painstaking detail in telling the story of the “Hit Recording Capital of the World.” Focusing on the area’s recording heyday and running nearly 750 pages, Bowman has conducted research and interviews like no other writer on this subject.