The album, produced and engineered by Kooper, contains not only the infamous “Free Bird”, but “Tuesdays’ Gone,” a great tune that I consider one of the best done by this band. It is not so easy or cheap to find clean copies of the early pressings: The first Skynyrd album, Prounounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, was released on the “Sounds of the South” label, an imprint of Kooper’s distributed by MCA. ![]() Al Kooper “discovered” them, which says something: Kooper is a foundational figure of modern popular music, having played, produced, founded or recorded with everybody: from Dylan to Hendrix, Mike Bloomfield, to Blood, Sweat and Tears, among countless other big name artists over the years. Although other bands and performers, like Canned Heat, ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughan are often lumped into the “southern rock” category, I don’t think of any of them as “southern” any more than I do The Band, or Neil Young, though all of them drew from country music in its various forms.īack to Skynyrd. ![]() īack in the day, I was smitten with the Allman Brothers, mainly the Fillmore East album and only turned to Skynyrd in the last few years (along with The Outlaws, The Marshall Tucker Band and a few others) I certainly heard my share of all of them on the radio in the mid-‘70s. I just really dig their music– they were originals – superb players and well worth exploring beyond the stereotypes. I’m not making any sort of cultural statement here. Is it possible to enjoy the band without endorsing any negative symbolism? I don’t know about others, but I can. ![]() In popular culture, the band is often associated with the glory of the South and, perhaps unfairly, some of the pejoratives. Given the current cultural antipathy toward symbols of the “old South,” I admit to a moment’s pause before diving into a piece about Lynyrd Skynyrd.
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