* Signed by Rob Bowman * The Muscle Shoals story is one of the most unlikely tales in the history of American popular music. Through dogged determination, maniacal intensity and indomitable will power, producer Rick Hall kick started a hit-making music industry that by any reasonable logic should have never happened. A tiny hamlet in northwest Alabama, Muscle Shoals was part of an area known as the Quad Cities that included three other small towns, Sheffield, Florence and Tuscumbia. Effectively in the middle of nowhere, the Quad Cites skewed 90% white and 10% black.