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Sweet Home Alabama By Lynyrd Skynyrd is perhaps the best known and loved entry in US rock songbook history. Never mind that the band got its start in Jacksonville, Florida. Their song became an anthem to Alabama as the center of the south.

The famous tune is noted both for its lyrics and for the memorable guitar riffs and solo. Written by band member Ed King, the guitar line was originally played on a 1972 Fender Stratocaster that now hangs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. He has said that the famous guitar solo came to him in a dream. Other lore around the writing of the song states that the band fought about the guitar part being in a different key from the rest of the tune.

Recorded at the famous Muscle Shoals recording studio (which is also referenced in the lyrics) in 1974, the melody was the big hit off the second Lynyrd Skynyrd album, Second Helping.

Lore has it that the words were written to contradict the lyrics of two Neil Young songs. The Canadian refers to southern racism and the politics of the day in Southern Man and Alabama. There was controversy at the time the album was released and it was widely thought that Young and the band were feuding. In fact, all of these musicians had a lot of respect for each other.

More than the myths swirling around the tune, it was the blues-driven guitar solo that has made it so compelling and representative of southern pride and attitudes. It is arguably the most recognized, meaningful and covered riff in all the history of American music.

Sweet Home Alabama has been especially popular in the soundtrack of feature films. There is, of course, the 2002 movie with the same name starring Reese Witherspoon. But it also shows up in scores for Con Air, Forrest Gump, 8 Mile, The Girl Next Door and the most recent remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Likely the most iconic of American rock songs, Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd is the sound of the southern US. It sums up both the politics of that era as well as the energy of the seventies. It is tragic that the band who made it so famous did not really get to see that fame. Their future was destroyed by a plane crash in 1977 that claimed the lives of three members and seriously injured the rest. Lynyrd Skynyrd was re-formed as a band some years later with relatives and new musicians.

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