Rob Bowman, author: Land of a Thousand Sessions (book)

At 750 pages, 30 chapters, and a whopping ten pounds, this hardcover book is literally one of the biggest I’ve ever read. Subtitled The Complete Muscle Shoals Story 1951–1985, Land of a Thousand Sessions covers the studio scene and all the sessions around the Muscle Shoals/Quad Cities region of Alabama, where so much music history was made. Artists as varied as Aretha Franklin, the Osmonds, Paul Simon, Bob Seger, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Cliff, Mac Davis, Bobby Womack, Willie Nelson, Bobbie Gentry, Wilson Pickett, and the Rolling Stones and their recordings are covered, along with local studio history. The author, Rob Bowman, wrote one of my favorite books, Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records (now an HBO series, STAX: Soulsville U.S.A.), and he’s no hack journalist. I cannot even imagine the amount of research and time it took to do this, in addition to almost 100 interviews. The book is also chock full of photos, most of which I'd never seen before. Studios like Rick Hall’s FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound are covered, but even more fascinating are all the funky places people would set up and work out of, and they’re well chronicled here along with many, many sessions. Dubbed the “Hit Recording Capital of the World” in its heyday, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, Florence, and Tuscumbia still have a busy recording scene going on, but it’s so important to see it through documentation of the past in a book like Land of a Thousand Sessions. We’re lucky Rob Bowman took the leap and made this happen!