The Country Music Hall of Fame wasn’t sure they were going to get the piano. The Apollo baby grand that was at FAME Studios from 1961 to 1970. The piano Aretha Franklin played on “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” her breakthrough hit, recorded at FAME in 1967. The piano played on virtually every FAME recording with piano on it from the studio’s most hallowed era.

Country Music Hall of Fame curator R.J. Smith says, “The whole family [of late FAME Studios owner/producer Rick Hall ] has been incredibly generous with their time, with their thoughts, with their artifacts,” for use in new exhibit “Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising,” which opens November 14 at the Nashville museum .

Smith continues, “The one thing that there was reluctance, perhaps just because it’s such a big

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