Sweet Home Alabama

Lynyrd Skynyrd is from Jacksonville, Florida. They wrote this song about their impressions of Alabama and as a tribute to the studio musicians at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, where they recorded from 1970-1972. The studios gained fame during the '60s and '70s when it became the vogue thing for bands to record there. Artists like Bo Diddley, Aretha Franklin, and many big southern rock groups recorded there. "The Swampers" was a name Leon Russell's producer Denny Cordell came up with for the musicians, and when Russell earned a Gold Record for his 1971 album Leon Russell and the Shelter People (recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios), he gave one to the guys that said, "Presented to The Swampers." (These commemorative gold records were often given to folks who helped create or market the album, and they often went to record executives or radio stations). Lynyrd Skynyrd saw the record, and when they included the line, "Muscle Shoals has got The Swampers" in this song, they popularized the nickname and brought a lot of attention to these Alabama players who worked behind the scenes on many famous recordings. To find out how the nickname originated in the first place, we asked a Swamper - bass player David Hood, who told us: "We had been working with Leon, we had been working with Denny Cordell, who was his producer. I think Denny came up with the name. We did an album called The Shelter People. And on the album there were musicians on some tracks from Tulsa - Carl Radle and some of the guys from out there - and tracks by us. And to differentiate, he wrote down "The Muscle Shoals Swampers" on the ones we did, and the Tulsa one, I don't know what he called them, but the Tulsa people on the others. And that just kind of took. As for Skynyrd's Muscle Shoals output, they recorded a full album there in 1972 which wasn't released until nine of the tracks were included on their 1978 album (after their tragic plane crash) Skynyrd's First and... Last. According to David Hood, the tape from the sessions, which included their song "Free Bird," got kinked at some point after it left the studio, and when the band's manager would play it for record companies, it was flipped and sounded terrible. The band wasn't happy with the Muscle Shoals crew at the time, but put aside any hard feelings when they found out the recordings were fine if played correctly. These early Skynyrd recordings were produced by Muscle Shoals house musician Jimmy Johnson; the band's first release was produced by Al Kooper.

Some of the lyrics are a jab at Neil Young: I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow Young had written songs like "Southern Man" and "Alabama," which implied that people in the American South were racist and stuck in the past. Skynyrd responded with "Sweet Home Alabama," a song about Southern pride and all the good things in Alabama. The feud between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young was always good-natured fun; they were actually mutual fans. Ronnie Van Zant often wore Neil Young T-shirts onstage and is wearing one on the cover of Street Survivors, the last Skynyrd album released before his death. When we spoke with Rickey Medlocke, a member of the band in their early years who returned to the fold in 1996, he said that Van Zant "loved Neil Young." Added Medlocke, "I know there has been a lot of controversy about Neil Young and Ronnie having some kind of tiff, but they really didn't."

Neil Young performed this once: He played it at a memorial to the three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd who died in a plane crash in 1977.