They had just a little bit of time to set up lights and cameras in the New York hotel room before Aretha Franklin got there. When the Franklin arrived, the Queen of Soul was hungry, recalls Anthony Arendt, director of photography on the “Muscle Shoals” documentary. The doc featured legends like Franklin, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Alicia Keys and Bono waxing fondly about the now-classic music made in Muscle Shoals, an otherwise quaint North Alabama community known for its disproportionately famous recording studios.

“She said, ‘Hey, is there anything to eat?’” Arendt recalls Franklin asking at her shoot. “So we just stopped everything, and she ordered from the [room service] menu. And then we just kind of chatted and we weren’t even filming. It was really nice.”

Some 10 years later, Arendt doesn’t recall what Franklin ordered from room service that day. (Hey, it’s Aretha, one of the greatest singers to ever walk Earth, so it was worth asking.) But he does recall she didn’t make the documentary’s skeleton crew feel nervous at all. “It wasn’t that kind of energy. It was all being there for the same purpose, and, boy, you could just tell that she just how important Muscle Shoals was to her.”

The Franklin interview segment in “Muscle Shoals,” helmed by first-time director Greg “Freddy” Camalier,” is a great example of the filmmakers’ resourcefulness. For example, 80 percent of the doc was shot on plain ol’ DSLR cameras. Without the budget for lighting doubles to perfect lighting ahead of a shoot, lighting was done on the fly.

Franklin arrived at the hotel for her “Muscle Shoals” interview looking radiant, in a shimmering top, dark skirt, gushing curls and elegant makeup. Still, it’s not easy to turn a hotel room — even an upscale one like Trump Tower, where Franklin was filmed – into a cool looking setting for a film. The filmmakers set Franklin up in a posh chair in front of a big window with drawn shades refracting translucent skyline. The rest of the hotel room’s furniture cleared out of the frame. The room’s lights dimmed.

“For me,” Arendt says, “it was just trying to get some symmetry and making her the center of importance. And I just loved the way she came in dressed. I thought it was awesome.”

Muscle Shoals music had plenty of history. Iconic tracks by the likes of The Rolling Stones, Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Staple Singers, Bobbie Gentry, Bob Seger and many others were cut there. Especially during the ’60s and ’70s.

But the 2013 doc gave Shoals music a future, says Rodney Hall, general manager of the iconic FAME Studios. Rodney’s the son of late great FAME founder/producer Rick Hall.

“We were well known within the music business,” Rodney Hall says, “as a center for music where a lot of great music had happened over the years. But the public didn’t really know. And honestly, even within the music business, they knew something happened, but they didn’t know exactly what.”

The “Muscle Shoals” doc began building buzz with its Sundance Film Festival premiere. The film really connected once it hit streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, which brought the “Muscle Shoals” story to the masses. That awareness led to dramatically increased music tourism in Muscle Shoals, Rodney Hall says.

“After the documentary,” Hall says, “we were basically forced to start giving tours [at FAME Studios], because people just started showing up to, you know, see where all this went down. Then, during this same time period, we raised money and started a nonprofit [Muscle Shoals Music Foundation] and bought Muscle Shoals Sound back and opened it back up as a tourism destination. We had the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, and it had always struggled because it was kind of a standalone situation here. Now we’ve got thousands of people a year coming through here [FAME] and Muscle Shoals Sound, and the hall of fame is doing better than it’s ever done.” Recently, Hall says, FAME Studios has welcomed visiting fans from as far as Finland and Australia.

The “Muscle Shoals” doc centers on the arc of mustachioed maestro Rick Hall and The Swampers, aka Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the studio musicians who helped make countless hits at FAME before defecting to start their own facility, Muscle Shoals Sound in 1969, to Hall’s chagrin.

Hall was the architect of Muscle Shoals’ signature country-funk sound. But he had to overcome personal tragedies and steep challenges to get there, as told in the documentary.

Located about 70 miles from aerospace engineering hub Huntsville, Muscle Shoals was devoid of the rock and roll lifestyle distractions found in traditional recording cities, like Los Angeles and New York. So rockstars like The Stones, who recorded two of their all-time hits, “Wild Horses” and “Brown Sugar” at Muscle Shoals Sound, were able to focus music — and not groupies, drugs and hangers-on, trappings that would color the band’s following album, 1972′s “Exile On Main St.”

The Swampers — bassist David Hood, drummer Roger Hawkins, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, keyboardist Barry Beckett — were happy to remain in the background and just help make hits. Smashes like “Mustang Sally,” “Respect” (which was recorded in New York), “Old Time Rock and Roll,” and “I’ll Take You There.” And on and on.

Despite being unassuming white dudes who could pass as farmers, The Swampers, a nickname famed in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” lyrics, sounded funky as all get out when they played music together. In fact, when Paul Simon reached out about getting the same Black musicians on some of his favorite R&B tracks, he was surprised to learn Hood, Hawkins, Johnson, Beckett were Caucasian, as Atlantic Records executive/producer Jerry Wexler, recounts in the documentary. Wexler played a massive role in bringing hitmakers to the Shoals.

The subplot of Black and white musicians working together to make great stuff clicked with Arendt. A Caucasian, he’s married to a Black woman, and they have a mixed child together. “I’m really proud that I think I was a voice in pushing that part of the narrative of the film,” Arendt says.

Some Shoals studio musicians ascended beyond supporting roles. Duane Allman, standout guitarist on Pickett, Franklin and Boz Scaggs tracks, went on to found legendary Southern rock group the Allman Brothers Band. In fact, the Allmans first jammed together at FAME. Half a century later, you can still feel the echoes of all the history that’s gone down inside the studio’s wood-paneled walls.

Today, post “Muscle Shoals” doc tourism continues to evolve. On Jan. 20. the Florence-Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau and marketer Visit The Shoals launched “Mavis’s Movin’ & Groovin’ Bus Tours.” The colorfully exteriorized 15-passenger Ford van is doing Shoals music tours, with stops at notable local sites. Those tours start 9 am. Wednesdays and Fridays, departing from Florence-Lauderdale Visitor Center in McFarland Park. The bus’s name, “Mavis,” feels like a reference to soul singer Mavis Staples, whose group Staple Singers cut classics like “Respect Yourself” in the Shoals. Tour tickets and more info at visitflorenceal.com.

The doc also jump-started a rebirth for recording at Shoals studios. Since 2013, major artists including Chris Stapleton, Steven Tyler, Demi Lovato, Ann Wilson, Nuno Bettencourt and Gregg Allman recorded new material at Muscle Shoals studios.

“On the studio side,” Rodney Hall says, “it [the documentary] brought a lot of exposure to us. We get a lot of bucket-listers. And just people that just want to be in the room and record where Aretha or Duane Allman worked.”

In early 2018, FAME mastermind Rick Hall died at age 85 from cancer complications. But thankfully he lived long enough to see the “Muscle Shoals” doc lift up his contributions to not just Muscle Shoals but American music and beyond.

“It meant the world to him, you know, it really did,” Rodney Hall says. “And he loved enjoying it with the other guys, with The Swampers and Spooner [Oldham, Shoals keyboardist extraordinaire]. They [the doc filmmakers] changed our world. Our only regret is that more people couldn’t have been included in it because you can only get so much in a 90-minute film I don’t believe Dad would have gotten his [2014] Lifetime Grammy Award the without the film.”

While making “Muscle Shoals,” Arendt experienced myriad cool moments. In addition to the Aretha Franklin interview, his fond memories of the project include Keith Richards living up to Richard’s rep as the coolest human ever. Richards’ interview was shot at Electric Ladyland, the New York studio Jimi Hendrix started.

Surprisingly, The Stones guitarist, known for being elegantly wasted almost as his timeless riffs and songs, “had one of the best memories of anybody we interviewed,” Arendt says. “He remembered everything. I mean, he went into the littlest details about being at the [3614 Jackson Highway [Muscle Shoals Sound] studio. It was almost as if he was right back there.”

Richards’ rep had told the filmmakers they had him for 45 minutes. “And I think he stayed for two hours,” Arendt says. “He was so gracious.”

But maybe the most important part production was “getting Rick Hall’s trust,” Arendt says. “That was something I had to earn, for him to trust me to do my thing, and I think we got there. We became great friends.”

With Richard Lowe editing and input from Camalier, the doc struck a deft balance between the newly shot footage and archival material. One of the best newly shot scenes was of Rick Hall and The Swampers hanging out again. They’d actually made the peace long ago. But it was provided a poignant full circle moment for the doc.

Arendt’s previous credits included virtual photography on James Cameron blockbuster “Avatar” and camera operator/second unit DP for the Tom Hanks written and directed rom-com “Larry Crowne,” which starred Hanks and Julia Roberts. He got the “Muscle Shoals” gig after a camera assistant he works with in Los Angeles mentioned a friend was doing the documentary and asked permission to pass along Arendt’s name as a candidate for director of photography.

“And I was like, ‘Well, yeah, great. Sounds good, What is Muscle Shoals?’” Arendt recalls with a laugh. “I had no idea what Muscle Shoals was.” He and director Freddy Camalier had four or so phone conversations before filming. Arendt met Camalier and the doc’s producer, Stephen Badger, for the first time in-person in Nashville, where they met up to drive to the Shoals together. Arendt was struck by how well researched Camalier, a commercial real estate agent by trade then, and Badger, his college buddy and now the CEO of Mars Candy Company, were on the subject of Shoals music. “I was really impressed,” he says.

Although Arendt wasn’t familiar with the Muscle Shoals backstory previously, he loved learning how the dots connect to the soundtrack of his life. He’s now particularly fond of the early recordings Lynyrd Skynyrd did at Muscle Shoals Sound, released as the 1978 posthumous album “Skynyrd’s First and… Last” after the tragic ‘77 plane crash that killed singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines and others.

Tonight, April 21, Arendt, who’s based in Los Angeles, will be back in the Shoals. He and Badger are part of a special 10-year screening of the “Muscle Shoals” doc, 7:30 p.m. at Florence’s Shoals Community Theatre, at 123 N. Seminary St. There’s also a VIP 6 p.m. cocktail event with the filmmakers before the screening, at the GunRunner Hotel bar 310 E. Tennessee St. Tickets and more info at theshoalstheatre.org.

Sadly, in addition to Rick Hall, many of those interviewed for the doc have since passed. Gregg Allman, Jerry Wexler, Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, to name a few. It will likely be stirring for their surviving friends and musical colleagues to see them on the big screen again.

Saturday, the City of Muscle Shoals is hosting a free concert celebrating the city’s 100th anniversary. Scheduled performers include Kip Moore, Sara Evans, Candi Staton, Blind Boys of Alabama and others. Many of the acts will be backed by an all-star band featuring members of The Swampers and, another iconic studio muso collective, the FAME Gang. The concert, being held at Muscle Shoals City Hall, address 2010 E. Avalon Ave., starts at 2 p.m. Schedule and more info at cityofmuscleshoals.com.

“I’ve had a film career for over 35 years,” Arendt says, “and worked on huge budget movies, and I gotta tell you this [’Muscle Shoals’ documentary] is definitely one that has impacted my life. I’m so proud to be a part of something that actually made a difference.”

MORE ON MUSIC:

The 20 best songs ever recorded in Muscle Shoals

Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and me: Alabama guitarist’s epic life

From Huntsville’s Oakwood University to ‘Saturday Night Live’

The greatest Huntsville concert that never happened

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on ‘Heavy Metal Drummer,’ country music

Daru Jones on playing drums for Jack White, Meg White’s drum skills

Ann Wilson talks Heart, new Muscle Shoals album, Led Zeppelin

The 20 best Southern rock guitar solos of all-time