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" Ask anyone what the music capital of the United States is and you&amp;#039;ll get a handful of half-right answers. New York City is the de facto land of Fake It to Make It or Break It, with scores of bootstrappy and harrowing stories of starving for your art from punk, pop, and hip-hop icons. Los Angeles is Manifest Destiny for those looking to score a record contract and see their names mount the Billboard charts. Nashville is the seat of all things country and star-spangled; Detroit, Boston, Austin, and Chicago all follow suit as creative hubs that&amp;#039;ve broken through the skin of local notoriety to national prowess via Motown, Aerosmith, pivotal jazz, and the most exceptional strip of independent rock establishments you&amp;#039;ve ever seen. These are the hometowns of American music; these are cities where aspiring musicians flock for the sole purpose of cutting their teeth at nightclubs every single night of the week, where labels set up shop and send out scouts to drink for free and discover the Next Big Thing.  And then we&amp;#039;ve got Muscle Shoals, a small town sidled up against the Tennessee River in northern Alabama that&amp;#039;s responsible for some of the most vital strains of rock and roll and R&amp;amp;amp;B to hit airwaves the world over. For Muscle Shoals, out this weekend, Greg &amp;quot;Freddy&amp;quot; Camalier rallied a veritable stable of superstars to speak on the importance of this diamond in the riverbed. It&amp;#039;s one of the most gorgeously executed and exceptionally researched rock documentaries ever made. Focusing on Fame Studios, Rick Hall, its founder, and the Swampers, the session band that Hall handpicked whose members eventually moved on to set up their own shop down the street, Muscle Shoals Sound, Muscle Shoals delves into the archives to recount the more significant moments that played out between studio walls. Percy Sledge details the makings of &amp;quot;When a Man Loves a Woman&amp;quot; and getting to know Hall and the Swampers in 6/8 time. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger sing the praises of Muscle Shoals Sound, making the point that Exile on Main Street likely would&amp;#039;ve been laid on tape there had an excessive stupor not kept them in France in the &amp;#039;70s. Aretha Franklin credits Hall and Fame as the catalysts that launched her career, and Gregg Allman, Percy Sledge, Steve Winwood, Jimmy Cliff, and Clarence Carter follow suit with equally eloquent praise. Revelatory monologues and valuable studio footage aside, Muscle Shoals shines on screen and on the turntable, as its soundtrack is a meticulously curated gem in and of itself. When you&amp;#039;ve got thousands of hours of iconic tape to roll, singling out the best of the best is a formidable task, and yet the Muscle Shoals soundtrack somehow condenses the contributions of both studios into a volume that serves as a textbook for musical greatness. We&amp;#039;ve got the stream of the whole soundtrack right here \u2014 which includes the original studio cut of Lynyrd Skynrd tracking &amp;quot;Free Bird&amp;quot; at Muscle Shoals Sound, along with Wilson Pickett&amp;#039;s cover of &amp;quot;Hey Jude&amp;quot; and other soulful standards \u2014 so plug in and pay homage to the capital of American music you haven&amp;#039;t had the chance to visit yet.      Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a25024/muscle-shoals-soundtrack/>