For the most part, this was an interesting documentary look at the Fame and Muscle Shoals recording studios and their driving forces, Rick Hall and the Swampers – Hall’s studio musicians until 1969. Hall’s genius was to bring black and white musicians and performers together to create some of the greatest pieces of soul of the 1960s. These stars included Percy Sledge, Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Etta James, while Fame supplied ‘greasy’ white backup bands in racist rural Alabama. The band split off from Hall to form their own studio where they also recorded and almost created Southern rock, where the Stones recorded four of their greatest songs, and others including Dylan, Paul Simon, and many more came to record. The film is very strong through the 1960s and early 1970s but thereafter it’s a void. What happened after 1975 or 1980?. We just don’t know. How did they fare with the rise of hip-hop?. Other genres?. Some of the talking heads help a lot, but others, and especially Bono spout little more than essentialist claptrap. The early stories around Aretha and soul are really great. We also do get a sense of the power and role of the large record labels. Racism figures large in this tale, but the film dodges the rise of Southern rock’s racist reaction in Lynard Skynard with their huge Confederate flags. Was this a part of the split-off Muscle Shoals studio as well?. Hall’s studio seemingly remains more integrated, the Swampers’ Muscle Shoals increasing caters to white artists, or at least so it appears. Worth watching but it left me wanting more analysis