Why a Rolling Stones Backup Singer Turned Down Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ at First
Some classic rock songs were controversial before they were completed. For example, a famous backup singer for The Rolling Stones initially refused to work on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” She said a horrific historical event made her turn down the song at first.
The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ is connected to Lynyrd Skynyrd
Merry Clayton is a backup singer perhaps best known for duetting with Mick Jagger on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” During a 2013 interview with The A.V. Club, she said fellow backup singer Clydie King told her she could sing on “Sweet Home Alabama.” Clayton didn’t like the idea but her husband, Curtis, said she’d do it.
“I get off the phone and said, ‘Curtis, why are you telling Clydie that I’m going to be at a session that I do not want to do? You know I’m not going to sing anything about sweet home nobody’s Alabama,'” she said. During a 2018 interview with NPR, she said she didn’t want to sing about Alabama because the Ku Klux Klan killed four Black children in a 1963 bombing at a church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Merry Clayton sang for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ through her teeth
Clayton told The A.V. Club that her husband urged her to perform on “Sweet Home Alabama.” “He says, ‘Oh, but sweetheart, you must sing ‘Sweet Home Alabama,”” she recalled. “He said, ‘You’re young, Merry. You don’t understand.’ He said, ‘What you don’t know is that you can’t picket and you can’t stand on the front lines because with your mouth, you’d be dead. But you have the biggest platform there is to partake in and what you should do is let the music be your protest.’
“And I got it; at that moment, it clicked in my head and I got it,” Clayton recalled. “So I said, “OK, I’m going to go to this session, but you better believe I’m going to be singing through my teeth ‘Sweet Home Alabama.'”
How ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ performed on the pop charts and impacted popular culture
“Sweet Home Alabama” was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s only top-10 single in the United States. It peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for 17 weeks. While “Sweet Home Alabama” was the band’s highest-charting single, both “Free Bird” and “What’s Your Name” lasted longer on the chart.
Lynyrd Skynyrd included “Sweet Home Alabama” on the album Second Helping. That record reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200, remaining on the chart for 45 weeks. “Sweet Home Alabama” went on to appear on numerous Lynyrd Skynyrd compilations.
In addition, “Sweet Home Alabama” became a standard. Jewel, Sheryl Crowe, Metallica, Ghost, and others played the song. Nirvana performed part of it during their MTV Unplugged appearance. In the same vein, Kid Rock sampled “Sweet Home Alabama” and mentioned the song in his hit “All Summer Long.” The latter track combines the instrumentals of “Sweet Home Alabama” and Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.”
“Sweet Home Alabama” is the most famous Southern rock song ever and it wouldn’t be the same without Clayton’s talent.
