Muscle Shoals, AL
Two small studios in northwest Alabama produced a wildly disproportionate share of 20th-century American popular music. FAME Studios at 603 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals (founded 1959 by Rick Hall) recorded Aretha Franklin's breakthrough "I Never Loved a Man" (1967), Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally" and "Land of 1000 Dances," Etta James's "Tell Mama," Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, and dozens more — the "Muscle Shoals Sound." Hall's famous rhythm section (the Swampers — Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson) broke off in 1969 to open their own room at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield, where they recorded the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" (December 1969, three days of sessions captured on tape and film), plus Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album, Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," Paul Simon, the Staple Singers, Cher, and Bob Dylan. Both studios are open for public tours and still actively record. Helen Keller's birthplace Ivy Green is six miles east in Tuscumbia — Keller was born June 27, 1880 in a small white cottage on the family property; the pump where Anne Sullivan first communicated the word "water" to seven-year-old deaf-blind Helen by spelling it into her hand is still there.
Huntsville is where Wernher von Braun and his team built the rockets that reached the Moon, and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center is where that story is told — the official visitor center for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, a Smithsonian affiliate, and the home of Space Camp. The crown jewel is real: the Saturn V Dynamic Test Vehicle (SA-500D), a National Historic Landmark, lies on its side full-length inside the Davidson Center so you can walk the entire 363 feet of moon rocket. Outside, a full-scale Saturn V replica stands vertical as a landmark visible for miles. Also here: Pathfinder, the world's only full-stack Space Shuttle display, an Apollo command module, and more than 1,500 artifacts.
A two-room shotgun shack in East Tupelo, built by Vernon Presley in 1934 with $180 borrowed from his employer. Elvis Aaron Presley was born here January 8, 1935 — his identical twin Jessie Garon was stillborn. The Presley family lost the house to the bank when Elvis was two; they moved around Mississippi for the next eleven years before leaving for Memphis in 1948. The house was bought by the city of Tupelo in 1957 with proceeds from a benefit concert Elvis performed for the local youth. The 15-acre Elvis Presley Park surrounding the house includes the original Assembly of God church where Elvis was first exposed to gospel music (moved here from its original site), an "Elvis at 13" bronze statue, and a museum tracing his early years in the Shake Rag community. More than 100,000 visitors a year. Designated a Mississippi historic landmark; part of the official Mississippi Blues Trail.
The oldest registered distillery in the United States — federally registered in 1866 — sits in a hollow at Lynchburg, where a limestone cave spring runs a constant 56 degrees and feeds every drop of the whiskey. Jack Daniel's is defined by the Lincoln County Process: before aging, the new spirit is slowly filtered through ten feet of sugar-maple charcoal, which is what separates Tennessee whiskey from bourbon and gives it its mellow character. The charcoal is made on-site by burning ricks of maple. Here's the irony pilots and visitors love: Lynchburg sits in Moore County, which is dry — for most of the distillery's modern history you could tour the world-famous whiskey operation but not legally buy a drink in the town that makes it. (Commemorative bottles are now sold at the distillery itself.)