Muscle Shoals

Their initial singles flopped but, after the success of the Jackson 5 showed that family pop could be a commercial success, MGM Records signed the band and sent them to work at the famed R&B studio Muscle Shoals.

According to former curator of Alabama's Music Hall of Fame, George Lair, the Muscle Shoals sound was a product of geography.

"You can draw a triangle from Nashville to Memphis to Muscle Shoals, and while Nashville is the country centre, Memphis is generally known as the blues centre," he told NPR in 2023.

"Muscle Shoals, being between those two places, has been able to combine those two styles into a real Southern rhythm and blues that was very appealing."

At their peak, the Muscle Shoals' players were largely anonymous but music obsessives - the sort of people who pored over the liner notes of their vinyl albums - knew all about them: Keyboardist Barry Beckett, drummer Roger Hawkins, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bassist David Hood and pianist Spooner Oldham.