Sunrise in Alabama

According to the lyrics sheet “Sunrise in Alabama” was written in 1982. As was usual, I did a guitar/vocal work tape of the song so I would remember how it went. However, this version was recorded at Billy Earl and Kathy Lee’s house in Nashville where Billy had a studio in the basement and had started Fat Man Music Publishing. We recorded several of our songs there (“All the Way to Carolina”, “Call Me” and “Make Up Your Heart” have already been posted to CGMYouTube.) and for Fat Man Music.

As best I can remember, Billy played all the guitar parts, Jimmy Gunn played drums, Kevin Hogan played bass and I played keyboard. Avery Burdette usually did the keyboards, but I think he wasn’t available for this session. I sang the vocals. That was the usual cast of characters, but a couple of times I think Rod Smarr, a guitar player, played bass.

Mike speaking:

I’m assuming Mike would say something like, “We were writing or just talking and Randy said, “We should write a song that has the word Alabama in the title and maybe Alabama would record it.” So, I did, but they didn’t. But, I thought it turned out pretty good even if they didn’t record it. They should have, but they didn’t.” That’s what I’m assuming Mike would say.

Randy speaking:

I did do that. I told Mike we should write a song with the word Alabama in the title and maybe Alabama would record it. This was in the early 80s and they were riding high. We thought it was a good plan if everyone did their part. So, Mike did his part and wrote some lyrics, I did my part and wrote some music and Alabama…well, they didn’t do their part. But, I think it would have been a good one for them.

Mike came up with a great story about a city girl and a country boy that is universal no matter where you live, at least if you’re both from different geographic places, or wrong side of the tracks category. Sometimes you can take the boy/girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy/girl (It could be city instead of country) and things get complicated. I guess it all depends on how much in love you are.

In the second verse there’s a line “I wish that it could be tonight”, which is spoken. Randy Owen could’ve nailed that line or Barry White. (I would have tried to find a Barry White filter to use on it when we demoed it, but it didn’t exist back in those days.) I don’t have a Randy Owens or Barry White ‘bassness’ in my voice, so it didn’t sound quite the way I wanted it to. I was hoping that if Alabama heard it, Randy would have thought, “Damn. I could do that line the way it’s supposed to be done.”, and they would record it. But, they didn’t. I don’t know if they ever heard it.

If you’re from Alabama then you understand about the sunrises and sunsets. We have some gorgeous ones. Rock Killough and George Slade had some wonderful pictures and graciously allowed me to use them for this song. Thanks guys.

Hope you like it.

Thanks to Koolshooters for the thumbnail photograph.

Thanks to Victor Steep, Engin Akyurt, Matthias_Groeneveld, Yonitec, Klimkin, Coverr-Free-Footage, Mixail Mixai, MagicTV and Zaid Pro for the videos from Pixabay and Dmitry Varennikov, KoolShooters (2), Shvets Production and Largo Editt, for the videos from Pexels.