Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1982
Dixieland Delight
Buy Dixieland Delight now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
"'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...'.
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 when he was driving down Highway 11W, a road in Rutledge, Tennessee.Roland, Tom, "The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits" (Billboard Books, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1991 ), p. 349-350 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.
When Alabama recorded the song in 1982 for 'The Closer You Get', it differed substantially from the acoustic demo cut by Rogers.
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.
The song picks up the tempo somewhat with a fiddle bridge before a reprisal of the refrain.
Music video
A music video was filmed for the song, and was directed by David Hogan. It has aired on CMT, TNN and GAC.
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.
The original album version was edited by nearly 1 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
for the University of Alabama.
"Dixieland Delight" is one of 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. The song has become a fight song for the University of Alabama, played regularly at Crimson Tide home football games, despite being a song about the state of Tennessee. 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.
In 2018, the song's publishing rightsonce owned by two different companies, but later solely reverted to Rogerswere 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."
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
See also
*Morris, Edward, "Alabama," Contemporary Books Inc., Chicago, 1985
References
Buy Dixieland Delight now from Amazon
<-- Return to songs from 1982