Muscle Shoals / Sheffield, Alabama, December 1969 - updated for 2000

In the mid-eighties I passed through Muscle Shoals, Alabama and realized I was where the Stones had recorded a few tracks in December 1969, before heading off to play Altamont at the end of the 1969 tour. I asked a local official for information and the next thing I knew I was standing in Rick Hall's famous Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Faithful fan Gary Stutts of Sheffield has informed me that some of what I remembered from my trip wasn't accurate. The Stones recorded apparently at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, adjacent to Muscle Shoals. They recorded Wild Horses, You Gotta Move, and the backing track of Brown Sugar there. When the kind folks at Fame let me snap a picture of a picture of the Stones that they had framed on their wall, I assumed the Stones had recorded there or at its predecessor. Either way, fans of great music should check out the Muscle Shoals sound, it's right up there with Memphis as an all-time great musical genre.