GOOD AS THE BEST & BETTER THAN THE REST
A secret cemetery for dogs only, and when a Queen walked in Alabama.
I was headed to Muscle Shoals one morning after spending the night in Corinth. It was only the second time I’ve ever been up in that part of the world, the first time around the turn of the century to see Law of Nature play at Slugburger. It wasn’t far into the beautiful Appalachian hills of that part of Alabama when I saw a sign for the coon dog cemetery.
Even though it was still morning I was already watching my light but something like that you can’t turn down. So I headed way up into what some call the Freedom Hills.
There, in a shady patch on top high up in the mountains, is one of the kindest places I’ve ever been. It’s an exclusive graveyard, only for those dogs who have served as coon dogs. Perhaps that special breed, and the journeys they go on with their people, are why the cemetery was filled with declarations of love.
And love was declared. The gravestones weren’t just anodyne recitations of names, births, and deaths—they had detail, boasts, richness. Many were handmade. One tombstone read Our Son.
As I waved aside bees and knelt among the pines, I marveled at the poetry and the gentleness on top of that hill, and wondered why cemeteries for people didn’t feel the same way.
I KEPT HEADING EAST until I found the place I was looking for—FAME Studios. There were lots of reasons to go to FAME, all of which happened to do with music, a lot of it, recorded by a series of geniuses over many years. But 99% of it of my trip there was because of one day in 1967.
There are many incredible songs in Aretha’s catalog, but not much surpasses “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” By “not much,” I don’t just mean her other songs, I mean any other example of recorded music. I, like, I can’t listen to it critically, because when I start to open my brain to trying to decipher the individual parts, or why it works, my vision starts to fuzz out at the corners. It’s less than three minutes but lasts forever.
As we say in my culture, Roll Tide.
ACROSS TOWN WHERE THE SWAMPERS broke away and made their own place is the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. The fabled spot at 3614 Jackson Highway is where the Stones recorded “Brown Sugar” (and I guess “Wild Horses,” but I’ve never really liked “Wild Horses,” because it’s boring). The light was blaring at this point—too much time in the coon dog cemetery—so the best I could do was try to catch an angle. But I owed a place as rich and odd as this little box at least an attempt.
That, my friends, is a terrible photo. But it’s all I got.
[John Cusack voice] ALL TIME, TOP NINE SONGS RECORDED AT MUSCLE SHOALS SOUND STUDIO (not in order, although I tried) (only one song per artist):
Lynyrd Skynyrd, “That Smell”
The Staple Singers, “I’ll Take You There”
R.B. Greaves, “Take a Letter, Maria”
Bob Seger, “Night Moves”
Simon & Garfunkel, “My Little Town”
Mel & Tim, “Starting All Over Again”
The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar”
Cher, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You”
Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody”
AS ALWAYS I am gorjusjxn on Instagram and you can see more of my photography at McCartyPolaroids.
I love the handmade stones in the Cemetery. When I visited the Muscle Shoals studio I was struck by how small and plain the actual studio is. And the idea that people come into that space and make life changing art so profound that people tattoo themselves with the lyrics. It’s a kind of magic