Released April 15, 1974 Label MCA Records | Length 4:51 | |
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Recorded Record Plant Studios, Los Angeles, California, January 1974 Genre Southern rock, blues rock, country rock Writer(s) Allen Collins
Ronnie Van Zant | ||
"The Ballad of Curtis Loew" is a song written by Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zant and recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The song was first released on the band's 1974 album, Second Helping and again on their compilation, The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd and later on All Time Greatest Hits. It is on many of their compilation albums and before the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, was performed once live on stage. Ed King says, "The original version of the band only played 'Curtis Loew' one time on stage. We were playing in a basement in some hotel and thought we'd try it. We never played it again until the Tribute Tour with Johnny Van Zant."
Contents
Synopsis
A young boy wakes up "before the rooster crows" and searches for soda bottles to cash in to give some money to a man named Curtis Loew, who buys wine and plays his Dobro guitar "across his knees" for the boy all day. Curtis is described as a "black man with white curly hair" who "looked to be sixty". The boy idolizes Curtis, returning to him, despite receiving beatings from his mama, to hear the old man play and clap along. The boy recalls "people said he [Curtis] was useless. Them people all were fools." He professes Curtis to be "the finest picker to ever play the blues". When Curtis eventually dies, the boy notes that nobody "came to pray". The song ends with a lament to Curtis: "I wish that you was here so everyone would know."
Origin
The band's website says that the song is based on a composite of people who actually lived in the Van Zants' original neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida. Specifically, the country store "is based on Claude's Midway Grocery on the corner of Plymouth and Lakeshore in Jacksonville." The business has since been renamed Sunrise Food Store, but still occupies the same location. The specific spelling of the surname comes from Ed King writing the liner notes for the Second Helping and deciding to name the bluesman after the Jewish Loew's Theatre. Some of the sources mentioned include Claude H. "Papa" Hammer, Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, Robert Johnson and Shorty Medlocke, the grandfather of Rickey Medlocke, Lynyrd Skynyrd's drummer during their 1970 tour and one of the band's current guitarists.