Sweet Home Alabama
8 min readJun 21, 2024
Many stories and urban legends concern the iconic Lynyrd Skynyrd tune Sweet Home Alabama. One could spend countless hours online researching the various theories of the song’s meaning, the “feud” between the band and Neil Young based on his songs “Southern Man and “Alabama” or what Skynyrd thought about Alabama Governor George Wallace. Possibly even more intriguing are the stories of how the song came to be, its role in the album Second Helping, and its path to becoming an iconic part of Southern music history.
To get the song’s history in context, you have to track the “histories” of the band, Al Kooper and Ed King.
Lynyrd Skynyrd was formed in Jacksonville, Florida in the 1960s. They were originally known as My Backyard, later the Noble Five, and then the 1%. The band went through many incarnations before the classic lineup jelled. The name came from a twist on the name of a PE teacher who had challenged the boys for their long hair, Leonard Skinner.
Al Kooper, who produced Sweet Home Alabama and the Second Helping album, had become a major force in the rock music world by the time the decade of the seventies rolled in. He was a founder of Blood, Sweat & Tears, and had written numerous hit songs and played with Stephen Stills, The Who,, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, B.B. King, and Bob Dylan. Kooper had built one of the most impressive resumés in rock n’ roll.
Kooper was familiar with the Atlanta music scene, having played as a solo artist in the 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival. He moved to Atlanta in 1972, convinced that the town was ripe with undiscovered musical talent he could sign and produce.
He had a relationship with the Candymen, who had been the backup band for Roy Orbison but then became successful independently, and would later evolved into the Atlanta Rhythm Section. They, in turn, had a connection to Studio One in Doraville through their lead singer, Rodney Justo, who would later become the first lead singer for the Atlanta Rhythm Section, and through their manager, Buddy Buie.
All these connections led to Studio One co-founder and the man who would be a major factor in the future work of Skynyrd and many other major Southern artists, Rodney Mills. He would be the engineer on Skynyrd ‘s first album, Pronounced, and on Sweet Home Alabama, and would later rescue and produce the multi-platinum Street Survivors.
In July 1972, Kooper visited an Atlanta club called Funochio’s. Skynyrd was headlining a three-band bill that included one of the first all-female bands, Birtha, and Atlanta favorites Phaedra, which included major area players Bill Whitley and Lou Van Dora. (Van Dora would later be in Rex. Ironically, Rex opened for Skynyrd and Ted Nugent in Greenville, SC, on October 19, 1977, the band’s final show before the crash.)
It took some time and persuasion, but Kooper eventually persuaded Skynyrd and their manager, Alan Walden, to sign a management contract, and Kooper agreed to produce their first album.
The path that led Sweet Home Alabama co-writer Ed King to membership in Lynyrd Skynyrd went all the way back to 1968 when Skynyrd was still known as the One Percenters. The Florida band had opened for King’s band, The Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Years later, he was recruited to join Skynyrd to replace Leon Wilkeson and played bass on the Pronounced album. Soon, Wilkeson returned to the band, and King, at the suggestion of manager Alan Walden, moved to guitar, creating what they came to call “The Three Guitar Army.”
Their first album was recorded at Doraville, GA’s Studio One. Atlanta music legend Bob “Tub” Langford and Mills were engineers on some of the album’s tracks. When the album was completed, Kooper did not yet have Skynyrd signed to a contract with a record company, so he traveled to L.A. to set up SOS Records, which would release the Pronounced album in conjunction with MCA.
While there, he ran into his friend Pete Townsend from the Who. The Brits were setting up a tour in the fall to support their album “Quadrophenia.” Townsend asked Kooper if he had a band that could support them, and he suggested Skynyrd. Townsend accepted.
After wrapping the recording of Pronounced, the band returned to Jacksonville and continued practicing in the now-famous “Hell House. That’s where Sweet Home Alabama came into existence.
Gary Rossington remembered that it all started with a riff he was playing. Van Zant told him to keep playing it, and soon Gary and Ed had finished the melody, and Ronnie had written the words. The melody for the song was written in about 15 minutes, and the lyrics in less than two hours.
Ed King dreamt the guitar solos in his sleep, saying they came to him note for note. According to producer Al Kooper, the solos would later be recorded in the wrong key, but it just worked, and the band didn’t want to change it.
Ronnie Van Zant insisted that the band go into the studio immediately to record the new song, as he felt it was unique and didn’t want to lose anything. The band headed to Studio One and recorded just that song in June 1973. The rest of the album Second Helping wasn’t recorded until the following year.
The Pronounced album had been released in August 1973, and the album began getting radio play and selling moderately well, on the strength of the single “Free Bird.” The tour with the Who began at the Cow Palace in October 1973 and exposed Skynyrd to a more extensive fan base. Album sales increased. Based on the positive fan response, the record company wanted to take the band to an L.A. studio for their second album.
Without the knowledge or permission of the band, when Kooper got to the studio in L.A. with the Sweet Home Alabama tapes, he added backup vocals by two of the most prolific and noted studio singers of the time, Merry Clayton and Clydie King. Clayton had provided lead vocals with Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones hit “Gimme Shelter” and would perform on tracks with Ray Charles, Ringo Starr, Coldplay, and others. King had appeared on recordings with Humble Pie, the Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, and Joe Walsh.
The song starts with a count-off, one, two, three, provided by Ed King. Usually used as a starting mark for recording in the studio and then edited out of the final version, the band chose to leave it in. After the line that mentions Neil Young, you can barely hear “Southern Man” voiced in the background. Rumors persisted for years that it was a sample of a Young vocal, but it was actually producer Al Kooper who sang the line.
Kooper appeared as a guest musician on several Skynyrd tracks, but you won’t find him in the credits. He is credited as Roosevelt Gook.
In a 2014 interview, Ed King said they knew that they would have a hit with the song. After the recording was finished, he recalled Ronnie Van Zant saying, “There’s our Ramblin’ Man.” King later said, “The Allmans had their big hit, and he said that was ours. I believed it, too — it was just a very cool song, from the moment we wrote it — it was like a feel-good song.”
Second Helping was released in April 1974. The decision was made to release “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” as the first single, thinking no song would be able to follow Sweet Home Alabama, which was released as the second single in June 1974 and went to number 8 on the charts. It was and still is Skynyrd’s highest-performing single. The song has gone platinum in the U.S. The phrase “Sweet Home Alabama” is now used as Alabama’s official state slogan.
Ed King passed away in 2018. King used a Fender Stratocaster on the recording of Sweet Home Alabama. For those with a passion for historic instruments and a very thick wallet, Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville once had that guitar listed for sale for $450,000. There is no report as to its current availability.
In his 2012 autobiography, Neil Young said, “My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory, condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.”
Young wrote the song “Powderfinger” specifically for Lynyrd Skynyrd to record, but. sadly, the October 20, 1977, plane crash happened before the band had a chance to take it into the studio.
