" Sweet Home Alabama " is a song by Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd that first appeared in 1974 on their second album, Second Helping .
Despite controversy, it reached #8 on the US charts in 1974, and was the band's second hit single.
Creation and recording
At a band practice shortly after bassist Ed King had switched to guitar, King heard fellow guitarist Gary Rossington playing a guitar riff that inspired him (in fact, this riff is still heard in the final version of the song and is played during the verses as a counterpoint to the main D-C+9-G chord progression). In interviews, Ed King has said that, during the night following the practice session, the chords and two main guitar solos came to him in a dream, note for note. King then introduced the song to the band the next day. Also written at this session was the track that would follow "Alabama" on the Second Helping album, "I Need You".
A live version of the track on the compilation album Collectybles places the writing of the song during the late summer of 1973, as the live set available on the album is dated October 30, 1973.
The track was recorded at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, using just King, bassist Wilkeson, and drummer Burns to lay down the basic backing track. Ed King used a Marshall amp belonging to Allen Collins. The guitar used on the track was a 1972 Fender Stratocaster. However, King has said that the guitar was a pretty poor model and had bad pickups, forcing him to turn the amp up all the way to get decent volume out of it. This guitar is now displayed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
The famous "Turn it up" line uttered by Ronnie Van Zant in the beginning was not intended to be in the song. Van Zant was just asking producer Al Kooper and engineer Rodney Mills to turn up the volume in his headphones so that he could hear the track better.
There is a semi-hidden vocal line in the second verse after the "Well, I heard Mr. Young sing about her" line. In the left channel, you can hear the phrase "Southern Man" being sung lightly (at approximately 0:55). This was producer Al Kooper doing a Neil Young impression and was just another incident of the band members messing around in the studio while being recorded. According to Leon Wilkeson, it was Kooper's idea to continue and echo the lines from "Southern Man" after each of Van Zant's lines. "Better...keep your head"..."Don't forget what your / good book says", etc. But Ronnie insisted that Kooper remove it not wanting to plagiarize or upset Young. Kooper left the one line barely audible in the left channel.
Following the two "woos" (Leon's the first, Ed's the second) at the start of the piano solo, (at approximately 4:08) Van Zant can be heard ad-libbing "My, Montgomery's but it's got the answer." The duplicate "my" was produced by Kooper turning off one of the two vocal takes. For Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1976 film Free Bird , this final line was changed to "Mr. (Jimmy) Carter got the answer." in a reference to the 1976 Presidential Election.
The count-in heard in the beginning of the track is spoken by Ed King. The count-in to the first song on an album was a signature touch that producer Kooper usually put on albums that he made.
"Sweet Home Alabama" was a major chart hit for a band whose previous singles had "lazily sauntered out into release with no particular intent." The hit led to two TV rock-show offers, which the band turned down. In addition to the original appearance on Second Helping , the song has appeared on numerous Lynyrd Skynyrd collections and live albums.
None of the three writers of the song were originally from Alabama. Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington were both born in Jacksonville, Florida. Ed King was from Glendale, California.
Controversy
"Sweet Home Alabama" was written as an answer to two songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama" by Neil Young, which dealt with themes of racism and slavery in the American South. "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," said Ronnie Van Zant at the time. Van Zant's musical response, however, was also controversial, with references to Alabama Governor George Wallace (a noted supporter of segregation) and the Watergate scandal:
In Birmingham, they love the governor (boo boo boo)
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell me the truthIn 1975, Van Zant said: "The lyrics about the governor of Alabama were misunderstood. The general public didn't notice the words 'Boo! Boo! Boo!' after that particular line, and the media picked up only on the reference to the people loving the governor." "The line 'We all did what we could do' is sort of ambiguous," Kooper notes "'We tried to get Wallace out of there' is how I always thought of it." Journalist Al Swenson argues that the song is more complex than it is sometimes given credit for, suggesting that it only looks like an endorsement of Wallace. "Wallace and I have very little in common," Van Zant himself said, "I don't like what he says about colored people."
The final line of the song indicates that it may be against racial discrimination: "Montgomery's but it's got the answer." This is a reference to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which led to a Supreme Court decision declaring Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses unconstitutional.
In 1976, Van Zant and the band supported Jimmy Carter for his presidential candidacy, including fundraising and an appearance at the Gator Bowl benefit concert.
Muscle Shoals
One verse of the song includes the line "Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers/And they've been known to pick a song or two." This refers to the town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a popular location for recording popular music due to the "sound" crafted by local recording studios and back-up musicians. "The Swampers" referred to in the lyrics are the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. These musicians, who crafted the "Muscle Shoals Sound," were inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1995 for a "Lifework Award for Non-Performing Achievement" and into the Musician's Hall Of Fame in 2008 (the performers inducted into the latter were the four founding Swampers — Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson — plus Pete Carr, Clayton Ivey, Randy McCormack, Will McFarlane, and Spooner Oldham). The nickname "The Swampers" was given to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section by singer/songwriter Leon Russell.
Part of the reference comes from the 1971-1972 demo reels that Lynyrd Skynyrd had recorded in Muscle Shoals with Johnson as a producer/recording engineer. Johnson helped refine many of the songs first heard publicly on the "Pronounced" album, and it was Van Zant's "tip of the hat" to Johnson for helping out the band in the early years and essentially giving the band its first break.
Lynyrd Skynyrd remains connected to Muscle Shoals having since recorded a number of works in the city and making it a regular stop on their concert tours.
Covers
A few cover versions have appeared, notably a slowed-down rock version by Big Head Todd and the Monsters, as well as a more faithful version by the Charlie Daniels Band and an altered version by the country group Alabama (who changed the lyrics involving the Watergate scandal with a verse talking about Alabama football). This rendition was included on the 1994 tribute album Skynyrd Frynds .
Other covers include:
- Leningrad Cowboys in Total Balalaika Show - Helsinki Concert
- Spanish band Siniestro Total did a popular cover of this song called "Miña terra galega", in a reference to their homeland Galicia.
- Spanish band from Murcia Fenomenos Extraños did another popular cover from Siniestro Total´s "Miña Terra Galega" called "Mi güertica murciana" with many references to their land.
- British Nazi punk/Rock Against Communism band Skrewdriver has covered this song on their fifth album After the Fire .
- Hank Williams, Jr. performs this song on his 1987 live album, Hank Live .
- Argentine band Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota (a.k.a. Redonditos de Ricota or Los Redondos) play a song titled "Caña Seca y un Membrillo", which has a big likeness to "Sweet Home Alabama".
- Jewel recorded a cover version of the song for the movie Sweet Home Alabama .
- German rockers, Bonfire covered the song on their Fuel To The Flames album from 1999 as well as on their greatest hits album 29 Golden Bullets in 2001. They also performed the song live several times, featured on their live albums Live Over Europe! and One Acoustic Night.
- Killdozer covers the song on the Touch and Go Records compilation God's Favorite Dog .
- In 2005, Universal Recording artists Boyz After Money Always (B.A.M.A.) recorded a rap remake to the classic rock song. B.A.M.A.'s version reached #16 on the billboard hip-hop singles chart and went on to sell over 150,000 ringtones.
- Canadian jam band The Clumsy Lovers included a version on their CD Under the Covers .
- The University of Alabama's Million Dollar Band plays it as an unofficial fight song for the Crimson Tide.
- Kid Rock's 2008 song "All Summer Long" samples "Sweet Home Alabama" on the chorus and uses the guitar solo and piano outro; Billy Powell is featured on the track. "All Summer Long" also samples Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London", which has similar chord progression to "Sweet Home Alabama". Since Kid Rock's release, the original song has charte
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Sweet Home Alabama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Sweet Home Alabama" is a song by Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd that first appeared in 1974 on their second album, Second Helping. Despite controversy, it reached #8 on the US ...
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