Reply #49: Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed. You have no idea of what you write! [View All]

You left out the lines:

"Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers,

they've been known to pick a song or two

(Yes they do)

Gets me off when I'm feeling blue . . ."

This stanza refers to the MS Horns and Rhythm Section as well as the entire Rick Hall early non-Motown/non-Memphis soul sound that came out of FAME studios in MS, Alabama in the late 60s and 70s. Aretha Franklin recorded "Respect" and "Chain of Fools" there as Gregg Allman played guitar! The Staple Singers in "I'll take you there" -- Mavis chants "David, little David, play your guitar, lay it on me, oh David, Little David. . ." She refers to David Hood, the noted bass player who was doing the bass riff as she chanted to him. He is Pat Hood's father (Pat is lead singer of the Driveby Truckers, by the way).

Other songs recorded at MS include Clarence Carter's "Patches" and "Dark End of the Street," as well as several Rolling Stones albums.

The whole thing about the Muscle Shoals Sound is that it was an integrated sound: about half the singers/musicians were equally split! Rick Hall knew he could not get the sound he wanted out of just white musicians, just as did the Allman Brothers.

The entire song, from its power chords to the lyrics are a gigantic joke played upon Yankees. In fact, it was taken as such by most people in the South, and still is: the "Mr. Young" and "in Bham they love the governor" are hilarious. Note they say that "they" love the governor, not WE love the governor and make sure to get it in one city! "we all did what we could do" that is rather ambiguous: either to defeat Wallace or his tactics or else trying to get by in a decaying death throes of segregation era.

Segregation was over de facto as well as de jure when Skynrd wrote and played this song. After Wallace's shooting in Maryland, he recanted and spent the next 15 years or so in penance, including a come back to the Governor's Mansion, running as a populist and not a segregationalist. When he had been merely a circuit court judge, he was known as an ally of the Progressive Jim Folsom and for giving black defendents a fair shake in his court rooms. When he first ran for governor, he supposedly made a vow "never to be out-niggered in an election again" and won the primary the next cycle. . . and the rest is history. He came to recant when he realized that he could catch a lot more flies with honey than vinegar and also that he was totally dependent upon black folk for his daily toileting, feeding, and mobility.

Wallace was a vastly complicated man and politician, but always the politician until he became paralyzed, then he became a real man.