Alabama has two national heritage areas, the Black Belt and Muscle Shoals, neither related to a gym.

Alabama Black Belt NHA includes many Civil Rights sites, reflecting the progress forged by the large African American community that descended from the people brought here and bred against their will to work the rich black soil extending in a belt from the Mississippi River across Alabama. Several of these sites are run by the national park service, including Tuskegee Institute, Selma to Montgomery NHT, and Freedom Riders NM. Two other sites I recommend highly are the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma and the Legacy Sites in Montgomery. The first is an authentic old place filled with memorabilia, well illustrated stories and contains many important exhibits from the Civil Rights struggle, carefully preserved near where the marchers began their march for voting rights. The second is a much newer series of bold exhibits, perhaps most importantly featuring an artistic memorial dedicated to the victims of lynching.

Muscle Shoals NHA is dedicated to the rhythm & blues soundtrack of many of our lives. In 1959 a local music promoter who failed to make it in Nashville took a big risk and opened the small Florence Alabama Music Enterprises studio across the river from Florence in a less developed area called Muscle Shoals. Rick Hall hired some local talent to who lived closely enough to come in as needed to be the studio band for visiting artists. They were joined by Duane Allman, who just showed up and lived in the parking lot until he got a job there. They recorded a few songs there you may know, including Mustang Sally by Wilson Pickett. Etta James went to FAME to try to revitalize her career and recorded her album, Tell Mama, in which she sang I’d Rather Go Blind just a couple miles away from Helen Keller’s birthplace and childhood home, which is another great place to tour. A trumpet player got a little fresh with a young singer, and her husband was pissed. Rick went to their hotel after, but he got in a new fight with her husband. Rick lost the singer and her label (Atlantic) as a result. Still, Aretha Franklin recorded I Never Loved a Man and Do Right Woman, before she walked out never to return. FAME did pretty well nevertheless, especially with a Mormon family called the Osmonds.

In 1969, Hall’s best house band bought a casket shop nearby and opened their own place, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Run by these experienced artists, they also wrote songs and ended up producing more hits than almost any other studio in the world, with most of the work done on the first take. They wrote a song called Old Fashioned Rock and Roll and eventually got Bob Seger to record the vocals over their track, although they accidentally duped the intro. A band called The Rolling Stones illegally recorded Sticky Fingers there, before going to a riotous concert with Hells Angels where they sang Brown Sugar. Another time Lynyrd Skynyrd was stuck with a song until a roadie suddenly announced he could play the piano and gave them the opening to Freebird (demo version). They went on to make the house band famous as the ‘Swampers’ in their song Sweet Home Alabama. Newer singers like Lana Del Rey sometimes just walk in and ask to record there too. The list of songs is too long to mention, so take the tours, maybe watch the Muscle Shoals documentary, enjoy the music and listen to the stories.

I should mention that American Music has its roots along the Natchez Trace and nearby rivers: New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and Muscle Shoals. The songs of the enslaved, French & Spanish trader influences, back country pickers, gospel music and travelers singing for their supper all came together to form the Blues, Jazz and all the rest. WC Handy was born and grew up in Florence below, before being inspired to write down classic blues songs like St Louis Blues and Beale Street Blues. He preserved his log cabin, and there’s a small but excellent museum there now. This is a fascinating and emotionally moving area of the country to visit, and, if I can mention one more, the Jesse Owens Museum is worth a stop too.