Muscle Shoals is the largest city in Colbert County, Alabama, United States. It is located on the left bank of the Tennessee River in the northern part of the state and, as of the 2020 census, Muscle Shoals had a population of 16,275. The estimated population in 2019 was 14,575.
Both the city and the Florence–Muscle Shoals Metropolitan Area (including four cities in Colbert and Lauderdale counties) are commonly called "The Shoals". Northwest Alabama Regional Airport in Muscle Shoals serves the Shoals region.
Etymology There are several explanations as to how the city got its name. One is that it was named after a former natural feature of the Tennessee River, a shallow zone where mussels were gathered and settlers named, and spelled, "Muscle Shoals". When the area was first settled, the proper spelling of "mussel" to refer to the shellfish had not been locally adopted. Cherokee people knew this place as ᏓᎫᎾᏱ (Dagunahi), or "the place of clams or mussels," from daguna (mussel) and -hi (place).
History In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as Europeans entered the area in greater number, it became a center of historic land disputes. The new state of Georgia had ambitions to anchor its western claims (to the Mississippi River) by encouraging development here, but that project did not succeed.
Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration during the Great Depression, the Tennessee Valley Authority was established to create infrastructure and jobs, resulting in electrification of a large rural area along the river. The Ford Motor Company built and operated a plant for many years in the Listerhill community, three miles east of Muscle Shoals; it closed in 1982 as part of industrial restructuring when jobs moved out of the country.
The area of Muscle Shoals was a part of the historic Cherokee hunting grounds dating to at least the early eighteenth century, if not earlier. In the early 18th century, Muscle Shoals was the site of a French trading post. In 1783, six prominent North Carolinians (William Blount, Richard Caswell, Griffith Rutherford, John Donelson, Joseph Martin, John Sevier) formed a company for the purposes of establishing a colony at Muscle Shoals.
Many Cherokee fought against the rebels during the late American Revolutionary War, hoping to expel them from their territories. After the Revolution, Cherokee attitudes toward the new U.S. republic were divided, as settlers increasingly encroached on their territory. An anti-American faction, dubbed the Chickamauga, separated from more conciliatory Cherokees, and moved into present-day south-central and southeastern Tennessee. Most of this band settled along the Chickamauga Creek, from which their name was derived. They claimed Muscle Shoals as part of their domain. When Anglo-Americans attempted to settle the region in the 1780s and 1790s, the Chickamaugas bitterly resisted them.M. Thomas Hatley, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution (Oxford, UK: University Press, 1993), 215–228.William C. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, NJ: University Press, 1992), 19–20.
The Upper Creek, residing in what became north and central Alabama, also resented any European or Euro-American presence in the region. A major incident occurred in 1790, when U.S. President George Washington sent an expedition under Major John Doughty in an attempt to establish a fort and trading post at Muscle Shoals. This expedition was nearly annihilated by a Chickamauga and Creek party sent to destroy it, and the administration abandoned the project.William S. Coker and Thomas D. Watson, Indian Traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Panton, Leslie & Company and John Forbes & Company, 1783–1847 (Pensacola: University of West Florida Press, 1986), 178. Meanwhile, Francisco Luis Hector de Carondelet, governor of the Spanish Louisiana, was in conversations with the Indian confederation to establish a fort in 1792.Luis de Las Casas (3 de diciembre de 1792). «Gobernador Habana sobre reedificación de dos fuertes». Portal de Archivos Españoles. Archivo General de Indias, ESTADO, 9, N.27: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes. p. 1. Archived from the original August 24, 2021. Consulted August 24, 2021. «y otro en Muscle Shoals en el Río Tenesí ».
Anglo-American settlers in Tennessee continued to agitate for control of this region. The site was particularly desirable, as it controlled access to fine cotton-producing land immediately to its south.Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 170–174. In 1797, John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, complained to Andrew Jackson that "The prevention of a settlement at or near the Muscle Shoals is a manifest injury done the whole western country." At Sevier's behest, Jackson attempted to persuade Congress and President John Adams to fund a new expedition to take control of the site, but to no avail.H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 2006), 93.
U.S. officials finally took control of the region through a land purchase from the Cherokee in 1807, followed by the Chickasaw in 1817. Fort Hampton was built in neighboring Limestone County to protect both native and Anglo interests. Muscle Shoals was later used as a site from which to exile the Upper Creek to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).Don C. East, A Historical Analysis of the Creek Indian Hillabee Towns and Personal Reflections on the Landscape and People of Clay County, Alabama. (New York: iUniverse, 2008), 106–107.
During World War I President Wilson authorized a dam on the Tennessee River just downstream of Muscle Shoals to help power nitrate plants for munitions. The first plant started producing nitrates two weeks after the armistice, but the dam was not completed until 1924.
Meanwhile, in 1922 Henry Ford tried to buy the nitrate works and the unfinished dam. The Michigan car manufacturer and industrialist proposed leasing the uncompleted hydro-electric dam at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River in Alabama. The US War Department had begun the project during World War I, and engineers estimated a cost of $40 million to complete. At this time, public projects were financed either through raising taxes—which, Congress was unwilling to do at the time- or by issuing bonds. For the Muscle Shoals project, the proposal was for 30-year bonds at 4% interest.
Ford and his friend and fellow inventor Thomas Edison balked at the idea that the US government should have to pay $48 million in interest on top of the $40 million they would have to pay back—all for a project that would benefit the public (the argument being that the hydro-electric dam and accompanying fertilizer plants would create jobs and revitalize the area). Responding to the bond issue, Edison remarked: "Any time we wish to add to the national wealth, we are compelled to add to the national debt." Edison and Ford hoped that a new monetary system could be created where dollar bills were issued directly to workers and manufacturer, with the money being backed by the goods they produced rather than the gold and silver held in bank vaults.“Ford Sees Wealth in Muscle Shoals,” The New York Times, (December 5, 1921) Congress eventually rejected Ford's idea.
The project of area development based on hydroelectric power languished until the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration created the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933 to construct needed infrastructure and install an electrical system in the rural area, using newly generated electricity from the dam complex.
Music Residents in Muscle Shoals created two studios that have recorded many hit songs since the 1960s. These are FAME Studios, founded by Rick Hall, where Arthur Alexander, Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and numerous others recorded; and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, founded by the musicians known as The Swampers. They worked with Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, The Allman Brothers, and others.
In addition to the city being home to country music band Shenandoah, it has been a destination of numerous artists to write and record. Both FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio are still in operation in the city. They recorded such recent hit songs such as "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood and "I Loved Her First" by Heartland, continuing the city's musical legacy. George Michael recorded an early, unreleased version of "Careless Whisper" with Jerry Wexler in Muscle Shoals in 1983. Bettye LaVette recorded her Grammy nominated album "Scene of the Crime" at FAME in 1972.
The original Muscle Shoals Sound Studios were located at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield but that site was closed in 1979 when the studio relocated to 1000 Alabama Avenue in Sheffield. The studio in the Alabama Avenue building closed in 2005; it houses a movie production company, which also hosts tours and concerts at the venue.Cypress Moon Studios. Roots of American Music Trail. Retrieved September 14, 2018
Muscle Shoals encouraged the cross-pollination of musical styles: black artists from the area, such as Arthur Alexander and James Carr, used white country music styles in their work, and white artists from the Shoals frequently borrowed from the blues/gospel influences of their black contemporaries, creating a distinct sound.
Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records, was born in and lived in the area. He stated that the Muscle Shoals radio station WLAY (AM), which played both "white" and "black" music, and where he worked as a disc jockey in the 1940s, influenced his merging of these sounds at Sun Records with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash.Sam Phillips Biography. Sun Records. Retrieved October 10, 2024
Rolling Stone editor David Fricke wrote that if one wanted to play a single recording that would "epitomize and encapsulate the famed Muscle Shoals Sound", that record would be "I'll Take You There" by The Staple Singers in 1972. After hearing that song, American songwriter Paul Simon phoned his manager and asked him to arrange a recording session with the musicians who had performed it. Simon was surprised to learn that he would have to travel to Muscle Shoals to work with the artists. After arriving in the small town, he was introduced to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section ("The Swampers") who had recorded this song with Mavis Staples. Expecting black musicians (the original Rhythm Section consisted only of white musicians), and assuming that he had been introduced to the office staff, Simon politely asked to "meet the band". Once things were sorted out, Simon recorded a number of tracks with the Muscle Shoals band, including "Kodachrome" and "Loves Me Like a Rock".
When Bob Dylan began to plan the recording of an album that would feature his new-found faith in Christ, he recruited veteran R&B producer Jerry Wexler and they agreed to use the Muscle Shoals studio. Wexler remembered: "Dylan came to me because he wanted the sonority he'd heard in Aretha and Otis as opposed to those out-of-time, see-you-down-the-line, thirteen-and-a-half-measure, out-of-time phrases." With Wexler, Dylan recorded two albums of contemporary gospel music, Slow Train Coming (1979) and Saved (1980).Heylin, Clinton, 2011, Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades, 20th Anniversary Edition, pp. 502–503.