“Greatest unknown musician” and “greatest white soul singer” are catchy if backhanded props. They both fit Eddie Hinton. Born in Jacksonville and raised in Tuscaloosa, he was an uncommonly gifted singer, songwriter and guitarist. Had the goods for a career like the one John Mayer enjoyed decades later.

Hinton recorded with artists like Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Staple Singers, Waylon Jennings and Jimmy Cliff. Wrote/cowrote hits for Aretha Franklin (“Every Natural Thing”), Percy Sledge (“Cover Me”), Bobby Womack (“Just a Little Bit Salty”) and The Box Tops (“Choo Choo Train”). In the late ’60s and early ’70s he was first call lead guitarist at bustling Sheffield, Alabama recording studio Muscle Shoals Sound.

But mental illness struggles and an appetite for self-destruction and instead Hinton’s fate was that of a tragic cult hero known mostly only to Southern music obsessives. He wanted to be an artist himself, not just a songwriter and session musician. But due to industry rejection, bad luck and substances fueled downward spiraling, it never happened.

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In 2018, Donnie Fritts, who cowrote Dusty Springfield’s hit “Breakfast in Bed” with Hinton, told me, “As [Atlantic Records exec and music producer] Jerry Wexler said, ‘It was always going to be next year for Eddie.’”

Hinton died in 1992 in the bathtub at his mom’s house from heart failure at age 51. Bloated. Broke. A shadow of his prime.

In the early aughts, Deryle Perryman, a Shoals native who’d worked in the music business, and Moises Gonzalez, a Cuban born filmmaker Perryman met after relocating to New Mexico, spent five years working on a documentary about Hinton.

“We went out of our way,” Perryman tells me during a recent phone call, “to tell a kind and loving and sympathetic story about Eddie. Because it was obvious pretty early on that the guy had some issues. He did some things that didn’t help himself. But still …”

Gonzales adds Hinton “did finally get some. Get some kind of psychiatric help, but it was really very, very late in his life, the last year or two of his life.

Mental illness awareness and treatment has come a long way since Hinton’s lifetime. His arc might’ve been much different if he was a young musician today.

Titled “Dangerous Highway,” after one his songs, the Hinton doc premiered in 2007. The filmmakers interviewed a slew of Alabama music icons for it, including: Wexler, Allman Brothers/Rolling Stones guitarist Chuck Leavell, Allmans producer Johnny Sandlin and Swampers studio musicians David Hood, Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins.

Perryman and Gonzales also interviewed Hinton’s mom. They unearthed striking images of a young Hinton as a clean-cut high school basketball star. When the filmmakers screened “Dangerous Highway” in the Shoals years ago, they had breakfast with Hinton’s mother the next morning. “She wondered where all the baby pictures were,” Perryman recalls. “And all I could say was, ‘We weren’t told a baby picture story.’”

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Blues star Robert Cray narrated “Dangerous Highway.” That stemmed from a chance meeting Perryman had with Cray at a Birmingham hotel while in town for a local music festival.

In 2018, Hinton was rightfully inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame,

“Dangerous Highway” premiered at Florence, Alabama’s George Lindsey UNA Film Festival in 2007. Six years later, the “Muscle Shoals” documentary film centered on FAME Studios mastermind Rick Hall and studio musicians/Muscle Shoals Sound founders The Swampers.

That 2013 “Muscle Shoals” doc, featuring interviews with stars like Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Gregg Allman and Bono, brought new awareness and renewed appreciation for the Shoals’ music recording legacy. All these years later, watching or rewatching the Hinton documentary feels like an indie prequel.

Tonight at 7p.m., “Dangerous Highway” will screen at Florence’s Shoals Theater as part of the 2025 W.C. Handy Music Festival. Perryman and Gonzales will be there.

The event, titled “Dear Y’all: An Evening for Eddie Hinton,” will also feature a live performance by former “Saturday Night Live” singer Christine Ohlman and 10 Gallon Hat, a band comprised of Shoals heavies Kelvin Holly, James LeBlanc, Jimbo Hart and Jay Tooke.

Back in Muscle Shoals Sound’s heyday, the great mononymous British soul singer Lulu cut a song called “Where’s Eddie” there. Released in 1970, the track, later covered by punky Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers with bassist Shonna Tucker delivering a definitive vocal, was a Hinton/Fritts cowrite.

While making “Dangerous Highway,” Perryman and Gonzalez talked with Donnie Fritts about writing “Where’s Eddie” with Hinton. As Perryman tells it, “When he and Eddie finished that song, he [Fritts] looked at Eddie and said, why didn’t we say, ‘Where’s Donnie’? And Eddie said, “Because I’m Eddie.”