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MP3 3.7 MB • 128 kbps • 4:00
Story behind the song
I wrote a song called “Dixie Boy�? about my family and my life growing up. I did the demo and we pitched it to Don Williams and he didn’t record it. My publisher called me upstairs one day and we were in the UA tower and Bell Rice says, “Is it going to hurt your feelings if you don’t sing your demos anymore?�? I said, “No, I didn’t come here to be a singer. I came here to write songs. Are they that bad?�? He said, “No, but people think we’re trying to get a Don Williams cut on everything.�? I wish I could sound like Don Williams...that was the last demo I did, and I put the song on the shelf.
It was just very personal to me because my Mom died the year I moved here, and she got to hear it before she passed away. One day about a year or so later I was playing it for some reason and the receptionist heard the song. She was from Fort Payne and she knew the group Alabama. I ended up marrying her later. She asked if she could play that song for the boys and I told her “of course.�? “My Home’s In Alabama�? and “Mountain Music�? were doing pretty good at the time. This was 1981 or ’82 and she played it for them and darn if they didn’t cut it. I was actually raised 70 miles from where they were and even though they were raised on a mountain, and I was raised in a small town (Huntsville was a small town then), they associated with enough of the stuff in the song that they cut it and put it on the album. It would have been a single except for a little song called “Dixieland Delight.�?
I think they made the right decision, but anyway that’s how that song came to be on that album and what I discovered is when four million people buy an album it’s almost like having a single, because at the very minimum, four million people have heard that song. The audience is singing it and the song hasn’t even been on the radio and you know those people bought that album. That’s the way that “Dixie Boys�? was like a single. I wish my mom could have lived to hear Alabama sing that song, but she didn’t. She started to get sick when I moved up here. I didn’t want to move and she said, “You’ve waited a long time for this you know. I’ll be okay.�? Well, she wasn’t, she died in October of ’81. I did get to take her to a Conway Twitty show and he sang our song.
She’s really the one I got my love for music from, there was always a radio on in the house and she was always singing. Both she and my Dad were a tremendous influence on me and I wish my Mom could have gotten to share a little bit more of it.
| Interview with Jim McBride conducted by Adam Olson |
