The rest of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee may have retained strong overtones of racism in their culture, but music was the balm that swept most of it away.

If you were present during the recording sessions at Stax, or American, or Fame, or Royal (the home of Hi), or Ardent, you would have found yourself in the company of a genuinely cooperative bi-racial team, enjoying each other’s company and working together toward a common goal. This atmosphere is what gave the southern studios such a unique sound, blending cultural ideas until it was impossible to separate one from the other. All of America was intoxicated by the hit songs coming from this small corner of the world, but the mood changed drastically, and overnight, when Martin Luther King was murdered in the very neighborhood where these studios were setting such a good example of what should have been.

Almost instantly, a pallor was cast over race relations that never quite subsided. In minutes, a lifetime of good was reversed by the hateful actions of a single racist man. The music would continue, but the mood and the camaraderie that defined the Memphis/Muscle Shoals sound would be forever altered by circumstances that could not ever be rationally explained. This episode covers the time just before and after the tragic murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

Featured tracks include;

1. Cry Like a Baby – The Box Tops
2. Field of Clover – The Box Tops
3. Think – Aretha Franklin
4. I Say a Little Prayer – Aretha Franklin
5. The House That Jack Built – Aretha Franklin
6. Do Right Woman, Do Right Man – Otis Clay
7. As Long As I Got You – Laura Lee
8. Don’t Lose Your Good Thing – The Blues Busters
9. Why Don’t You Try Me- Maurice & Mac
10. Search Your Heart – George Jackson
11. Ten Miles High – David & the Giants