Dixieland Delight
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| “Dixieland Delight” | |||||
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| Single by Alabama from the album The Closer You Get... |
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| A-side | "Dixieland Delight" | ||||
| B-side | "Very Special Love" | ||||
| Released | January 28, 1983 (U.S.) | ||||
| Format | 7" | ||||
| Recorded | 1982 | ||||
| Genre | Country | ||||
| Length | 3:57 (single edit) 5:23 (album version) |
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| Label | RCA Records 13446 | ||||
| Writer(s) | Ronnie Rogers | ||||
| Producer | Harold Shedd and Alabama | ||||
| Alabama singles chronology | |||||
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"Dixieland Delight" is a song made famous by the country music band Alabama. Originally released in 1983, the song was the lead-off single to Alabama's fourth album, The Closer You Get....
Contents |
[edit] About the song
The song's title refers to the girlfriend of the singer.
Songwriter Ronnie Rogers, who previously had hits with Ed Bruce, Dave Dudley, Tanya Tucker and others, recalled to country music journalist Tom Roland that the idea for "Dixieland Delight" came to him when he was driving down a Tennessee road in his Jeep CJ-5.[1] The song's first line ("Rollin' down a backwoods, Tennessee byway; one arm on the wheel") soon led into an image of the main character's other arm wrapped around his girlfriend and - with a long, hard work week at an end - envisioning a weekend of fun and relaxation with her.
Later in the song, Rogers conjers up images of various forest animals (e.g, a white-tailed buck and a red-tailed hawk) and how they bring peace to him, before returning to how the main character plans to become intimate with his girlfriend ("Home-grown country girl, gonna give me a whirl") during their weekend outing.
When Alabama recorded the song in 1982 for The Closer You Get, it differed substantially from the acoustic demo cut by Rogers.[2] The finished product was a twin-tempoed song, with a 3/4-time beat used for the first half of the song (the two verses and refrain).
The song picks up the tempo somewhat with a fiddle bridge before a reprisal of the refrain. The tempo speeds up once again for the second fiddle bridge and fade out (a reprisal of the first verse).
A music video was filmed for the song, and has aired on CMT and Great American Country.
[edit] Single and album edits
The original album version was edited by nearly 1 1/2 minutes for release as a single. The differences include:
- A shorter introduction (about half of the intro is excised).
- Shorter fiddle bridges; the second one almost immediately goes into the final reprisal. Also, a slower guitar riff is edited out before the tempo picks up for the segue leading into the first fiddle bridge.
- An earlier fade out (not quite halfway through the first verse reprisal).
The single edit is included in several of Alabama's greatest hits collections, including For the Record. The full-length album version is included on the band's second greatest hits album.
[edit] Chart performance
Released in January 1983, "Dixieland Delight" became Alabama's ninth No. 1 song on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Singles chart.
To date, "Dixieland Delight" remains one of the group's most popular songs.
[edit] Sources
[edit] References
- ^ Roland, Tom, "The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits" (Billboard Books, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1991 (ISBN 0-82-307553-2)), p. 349-350
- ^ ibid.
[edit] See also
- Morris, Edward, "Alabama," Contemporary Books Inc., Chicago, 1985 (ISBN 0809253062)
- Whitburn, Joel, "Top Country Songs: 1944-2005," 2006.
| Preceded by "We've Got Tonight" by Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton |
Billboard Hot Country Singles number one single by Alabama April 16, 1983 |
Succeeded by "American Made" by The Oak Ridge Boys |
