FAME Studios

FAME Studios occupies a former tobacco warehouse in Muscle Shoals, with multiple recording rooms featuring analog equipment and gold records mounted on the walls. The building retains its functional character with low ceilings and narrow corridors leading to different spaces where instruments and mixing consoles are arranged.

Rick Hall founded the studio in 1959 and moved to Muscle Shoals in 1961, where he recorded the first regional hit with Arthur Alexander. Over the following years, the studio became one of the most influential recording locations for rhythm and blues music in the United States.

The name FAME stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, reflecting the studio's roots in northwest Alabama. Musicians from across the country traveled here to capture the sound of the studio's session players, known as the Muscle Shoals Sound.

Visitors can join guided tours that walk through the recording rooms and explain how the studio operates. The spaces are compact, so groups move through the different areas one at a time.

The studio musicians, known as the Swampers, played on countless hit records without their names appearing on album covers. Their rhythm section became so sought after that the Rolling Stones invited them to record in Alabama.