Alabama, 4 places we take you
Muscle Shoals tours take you to four small towns on a bend of the Tennessee River in north Alabama, where Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones and Wilson Pickett came to record with a rhythm section nobody outside the business had heard of.
From $2952 tours that go there
Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, Florence and Tuscumbia together have about 70,000 people, and they produced a run of hits in the 1960s and 1970s that bigger cities envy. Rick Hall opened FAME Studios in 1959. His session players, later called the Swampers, left in 1969 to open their own studio in a concrete block building on Jackson Highway, and the Stones, Paul Simon and Bob Seger followed them there.
This is our founder's home ground, and the place we know best. Both studios are open for tours and still record, and the guides are often people who played or engineered on the records. We visit on the Southern road trip and on a day trip from Nashville, two and a half hours away.
2 tours
Nashville, Muscle Shoals, Memphis, Mississippi Delta and New Orleans
Nashville, Florence, Memphis, Clarksdale, New Orleans
Ten days down the road from Nashville to New Orleans, with the studios of Muscle Shoals, Sun and Stax, two nights in the Delta and three in the jazz city at the end.
From $4,890 per person, double room
See the tourMuscle Shoals
Nashville
A long day south to the two studios where Aretha, Wilson Pickett and the Rolling Stones recorded, with lunch in Florence and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
From $295 per person, lunch included
See the tourPrices per person sharing a double room; day tours per person. Flights to the start city are optional and priced on each tour.
The places
FAME stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, though the studio has been on Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals since 1961. Arthur Alexander's You Better Move On was its first hit, and in 1966 and 1967 Atlantic Records sent Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin down to use Rick Hall's room and his band.
Studio A looks much as it did: wood panels, a big live room, the piano Aretha played on I Never Loved a Man. The tour is led by staff who work the sessions, and when a band is booked the visit moves to Studio B.
Tours that visit FAME Studios
In 1969 the FAME rhythm section, Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood and Jimmy Johnson, bought a former coffin showroom in Sheffield and opened their own studio. The Rolling Stones recorded Brown Sugar and Wild Horses here in December 1969, and Cher, Bob Seger and Paul Simon came after.
The studio closed in 1978 and sat empty for years before a restoration brought back the original gear, the shag carpet and the tiny bathroom where Keith Richards is said to have written. It reopened in 2017 for tours and sessions.
Tours that visit Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
Florence is the biggest of the four towns, on the north bank of the river, with a university and a walkable downtown. W.C. Handy was born here in 1873 in a two-room log cabin, the son and grandson of preachers who thought a guitar was the devil's instrument.
The cabin has been moved and rebuilt next to a small museum with his trumpet and the piano he used to write St. Louis Blues. Every July the town holds the W.C. Handy Music Festival, with free shows across the area. We stop here for lunch and a visit on the road trip.
Tours that visit Florence
Across the river, Tuscumbia is a small county seat known mostly as the birthplace of Helen Keller. On its edge, the Alabama Music Hall of Fame honors the state's musicians, a list that includes Hank Williams, Nat King Cole, Lionel Richie, the Commodores and the band Alabama.
The building holds stage costumes, instruments, a tour bus you can walk through and a small recording booth where you can sing over a backing track. It is the best overview of the Shoals sound and a good last stop on our day trip.
Tours that visit Tuscumbia
Getting around
Two and a half hours by our van, through the hills of southern Tennessee.
The four towns are ten to fifteen minutes apart across the river bridges.
About two and a half hours west on Highway 72, past Tupelo, where Elvis was born.
Loading the map
Tour vanAmtrak trainRiverboatShort flight Map tiles: © Esri, HERE, Garmin © OpenStreetMap contributors. Lines join the stops in tour order in simplified form.
What is included
Best time to visit
Spring and autumn are the best. The W.C. Handy Festival fills the towns in late July. In winter the studios are open but the days are short.
At a glance
Questions
Yes, that is the day trip. FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound are ten minutes apart, and we add the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
Most of the original players have died. Guides at both studios worked with them, and some local session players drop in when they can.
A little: a few bars in Florence have bands at weekends. For nights out, the road trip continues to Memphis.
After the shoals in the Tennessee River, shallow rapids that boats once had to struggle over. The dams have covered them.
No. The guides play the songs in the rooms where they were made, and most visitors find they know more of them than they thought.
Nearby
Ryman Auditorium, Lower Broadway, Grand Ole Opry House, Music Row and RCA Studio B
3 toursFrom $1,890Explore
Beale Street, Sun Studio, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Graceland
4 toursFrom $2,290Explore
Clarksdale, Dockery Farms, Indianola, Leland
4 toursFrom $265Explore
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