On this day (January 28) in 1983, Alabama released “Dixieland Delight” as the lead single from their album The Closer You Get. It reached the top of the country chart in April, giving the band their ninth consecutive No. 1 single in a string of 21 chart toppers. The single later found lasting popularity with fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
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No other country act–solo or group–found the same level of success that Alabama enjoyed in the 1980s. Their famous run of 21 No. 1 singles began in 1980 with “Tennessee River” and ended in 1987 with “You’ve Got the Touch.” They didn’t miss the top 10 with a single until 1993, when “Angels Among Us” peaked at No. 28.
[RELATED: How Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight” Became a Foul-Mouthed College Football Tradition]
The song quickly became an anthem for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. For years, the song played during home games between the third and fourth quarters. It also inspired an obscenity-laced chant that matched the lyrics. Listen to the Crimson Tide crowd below to hear why the use of the song was discontinued for a short time between 2014 and 2017.
This Alabama Hit Is About Tennessee
“Dixieland Delight” might be a tradition for Crimson Tide fans, but it doesn’t mention Alabama in the lyrics at all. It does, however, mention Tennessee–one of the school’s biggest rivals–multiple times.
“I came to a stop sign at a dead-end road, and the thought just came, ‘rolling down the backwoods, Tennessee by-way,’ which is what I was doing,” songwriter Ronnie Rogers recalled. “I finished about half of it that day. And the chorus,” he added.
Later, he played the unfinished song for a friend who told him it would be perfect for Alabama’s forthcoming recording sessions if he could finish it. “I went out in the woods, and I didn’t know where I was going. So I look around, and there was a whitetail buck deer, a red-tailed hawk sitting on a limb, and a chubby old groundhog was all around me,” Rogers recalled. “I said, ‘God, thank you,’ I wrote it all down, and they liked it.”
Featured Image by CBS via Getty Images
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