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The small town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama has been a hotspot of stellar record producing for most of the last 60 years. Starting with the founding of Fame Studios in 1959, hit records began to pour out of this tiny town in Northwest Alabama thanks in many ways to legendary producer and FAME founder Rick Hall’s work. These records included hits by artists ranging from Arthur Alexander, the first artist who hit it big under Rick Hall, and Wilson Pickett, to the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin.

One of the most important ingredients to the success of Rick Hall at FAME was his outstanding in-house rhythm section made up of Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett, and David Hood all of whom were later known as The Swampers. These men were renowned world wide for their musical skill, and they decided that they wanted to utilize their talents for their own studio in 1969. They collectively left Rick Hall and FAME Studios to found Muscle Shoals Sound Studios with the blessing and funding of Atlantic Record bigwig Jerry Wexler, who was rather upset with Rick Hall for a previous incident between the two of them regarding Aretha Franklin’s visit to Muscle Shoals.

Following this split, a period of extreme productivity in the town of Muscle Shoals that was a product of a huge increase in the number of recording studios in Northwest Alabama, all in search of the elusive “Muscle Shoals sound.” However, no studios in the area were nearly as impactful as the two aforementioned companies, thus the following timeline will focus on their production specifically.

The hits of FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio from the five year period immediately following the split of The Swampers from FAME (1969-1974) will be shown on the following timeline. Given the sheer amount of music that was released by FAME and MSS during those five years, the selected the songs and/or albums are those that were the most successful or influential in a personal evaluation given their sales and impact on music.