music.wikisort.org - Composition

"Dixieland Delight" is a song written by Ronnie Rogers, and recorded by American country music band Alabama. It was released in January 1983 as the lead-off single from their album The Closer You Get....

"Dixieland Delight"
Single by Alabama
from the album The Closer You Get...
B-side	"Very Special Love"
Released	January 28, 1983 (U.S.)
Recorded	1982
Genre	Country[1] neotraditional country[2]
Length	3:57 (single edit) 5:23 (album version)
Label	RCA Nashville
Songwriter(s)	Ronnie Rogers
Producer(s)	Harold Shedd and Alabama
Alabama singles chronology
"Christmas in Dixie" (1982) "Dixieland Delight" (1983) "The Closer You Get" (1983)
Audio
"Dixieland Delight" on YouTube
Music video
"Dixieland Delight" on YouTube

Background and writing

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 while driving on U.S. Route 11W, a rural highway through Grainger County, Tennessee.[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.^{[citation needed]}

When Alabama recorded the song in 1982 for The Closer You Get, it differed substantially from the acoustic demo cut by Rogers.[1]

Content

The song's title refers to the girlfriend of the singer. Later in the song, Rogers conjures up images of various forest animals (e.g. a white-tailed buck deer 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, in a truck in a meadow.^{[citation needed]}

The song picks up the tempo somewhat with a fiddle bridge before a reprisal of the refrain.^{[citation needed]}

Music video

A music video was filmed for the song, and was directed by David Hogan. It has aired on CMT, TNN and GAC.^{[citation needed]}

Chart performance

Released in January 1983, "Dixieland Delight" became Alabama's ninth No. 1 song on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Singles chart.[3]

The original album version was edited by nearly 1½ 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.

Legacy

"Dixieland Delight" is one of the band Alabama's most enduring singles, and is closely associated with 1980s country music as a whole. The song has been referenced by Brad Paisley in his 2011 single "Old Alabama", by Midland in 2017's "Make a Little", Russell Dickerson's 2017 hit "Every Little Thing", Niko Moon 2020 hit "Good Time", and by the Walker Hayes song Fancy Like.[4] The song has become a staple at the University of Alabama, played regularly at Crimson Tide home football games. The song was briefly dropped in 2015 after complaints about vulgar additions to the lyrics by some fans, but was reinstated three years later, with a plea from university officials to not sing the modified version.[5] In 2022, the Tennessee Volunteers played the song over Neyland Stadium's public address system after defeating the Crimson Tide for the first time since 2006.[6]

In 2018, the song's publishing rights—once owned by two different companies, but later solely reverted to Rogers—were sold to Downtown Music, a global independent rights management and music services company. Billboard columnist Tom Roland considered the deal unusual, citing it as a rare example of a single song deal. Roland noted that Downtown "expects to garner favorable placements and higher visibility by highlighting its attributes."[4]

Charts

Certifications

Certifications for Dixieland Delight

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
United States (RIAA)[9]	Platinum	1,000,000
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

See also

• Morris, Edward, "Alabama," Contemporary Books Inc., Chicago, 1985 (ISBN 0809253062)

References

External links

• Lyrics of this song at Genius

---