The Singing River Sculpture honors the many people whose work made Sheffield and the Muscle Shoals area the “Hit Recording Capital of the World” and those who continue that legacy. Along the Tennessee River, the Yuchi and other early inhabitants held a legend of a Spirit Woman who lived in the river, protected them, and sang to them, loudly when the river was angry and softly when it was peaceful, and in her honor they called it the Singing River. From throughout the 20th century to the present, artists, musicians, songwriters, producers, recording engineers, music publishers, and other professionals from the Muscle Shoals area helped shape a wide range of music, with performers such as Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, the Staples Singers, and Bob Seger contributing to the area’s fame. In the 1960s, while segregation was enforced outside the studios, musicians of different races and religions worked together inside them to create widely loved songs including Steal Away, Mustang Sally, Tell Mama, Patches, and Respect Yourself. Arthur Alexander’s songs You Better Move On and Anna were recorded by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles on their first albums, and the area’s songwriting tradition continued with songs such as I Loved Her First, I Swear, Blown Away, and Before He Cheats. The players and singers remained central to this music, and four members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section—Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett, David Hood, and Roger Hawkins—were honored in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama as “the Swampers,” studio musicians who produced and played on hundreds of hits from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. Sheffield played a major role in this history: Dexter Johnson built the first audio recording studio in the Muscle Shoals area in a Sheffield garage in 1950; in 1969 Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, Roger Hawkins, and Barry Beckett established Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield and operated it until 1985; Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, the area’s first Number One record and first Gold Record, was recorded at NorAla studio on 2nd Street by Quin Ivy and Marlin Greene; and after Ivy sold the facility in 1973 to David Johnson, who renamed it Broadway Sound Studios, recording continued in Sheffield into the 1980s and remained a prolific industry there over six decades.