On This Day in 1978, Dire Straits Release Their First Big Hit, Debut Single “Sultans of Swing”

It was a rainy night in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, when Mark Knopfler found himself in a small pub watching a Dixieland jazz band playing to an audience of less than a handful of drunken patrons. The night inspired him to later write Dire Straits‘ first hit.

“I think they were actually surprised they had an audience of three or four,” said Knopfler in an interview with AC/DC‘s Brian Johnson on his A Life on the Road series in 2021. “I remember asking them to play ‘[The] Creole Love Call’ or ‘Muskrat Ramble.’ I think they were amazed that somebody was in the pub who actually knew a few of the titles.”

Knopfler added, “I was just there to have a couple of pints. And at the end of the night, the trumpet player or whoever does the announcement says, ‘Well, um, right. That’s it. It’s time to go home.’”

At the end of the night, the band member ended their set, according to Knopfler, by saying “Goodnight and thank you. We are the sultans of swing.”

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“Sultans, they absolutely weren’t.”

He added, “When the guys said ‘Thank you very much, We are the Sultans of Swing,’ there was something really funny about it to me because Sultans, they absolutely weren’t. You know they were rather tired little blokes in pullovers.”

Knopfler started writing a song inspired by the night for Dire Straits, right down to the band playing the 1927 Duke Ellington jazz standard “The Creole Love Call.”

You check out guitar George, he knows all the chords
Mind, it’s strictly rhythm he doesn’t want to make it cry or sing
They said an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

And Harry doesn’t mind, if he doesn’t, make the scene
He’s got a daytime job, he’s doing alright
He can play the Honky Tonk like anything
Savin’ it up, for Friday night
With the Sultans
We’re the Sultans of Swing

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Then a crowd of young boys, they’re foolin’ around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best, brown baggies and their platform soles
They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playin’ band
It ain’t what they call rock and roll
And the Sultans
Yeah, the Sultans, they play Creole, Creole

And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
And says at last, just as the time bell rings
“Goodnight, now it’s time to go home”
Then he makes it fast with one more thing:

We are the Sultans
We are the Sultans of Swing

At first, Knopfler thought the song sounded flat, but it evolved once he bought his first Stratocaster in 1977. “It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat, which remained my main guitar for many years and was basically the only thing I played on [our] first album,” shared Knopfler. “The new chord changes just presented themselves and fell into place.

Initially, the band released the “Sultans of Swing” in 1977 as part of a five-song demo, before it was rerecorded for their 1978 debut, Dire Straits, and released on May 19, 1978, in the UK (and January ’78 in the U.S.).

The album went to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and hit No. 5 in the UK, while “Sultans of Swing” gave Dire Straits their first big hit right out of the door, peaking at No. 4.

Photo: Christian Rose/Roger Viollet via Getty Images