Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. XLVII--Dire Straits: Sultans of Swing

I was driving a 1973 Gran Torino to class in 1979 when a song I'd never heard before came on the radio and after listening for a bit I thought, "Holy shit--Dylan's got his mojo back!"  After listening a bit more, though,  I realized I was wrong--the guitars were a bit too jazzy and the vocals not quite harsh enough--but I was happy when at its end the DJ announced that the song was "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits.  After my classes had ended for the day I drove straight to the mall and picked up their first album, appropriately titled Dire Straits, at Target for $4.99.

"Sultans of Swing" would go to to reach #4 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 and would mark the start of one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and 1990s.  Dire Straits would go on to sell millions of albums worldwide, have #1 hits ("Money for Nothing"), win Grammy Awards, perform on sold out tours, and songwriter/lead guitarist Mark Knopfler would eventually compose numerous movie soundtracks and become renowned for his guitar virtuosity.  And for me, they also mark the end of discovering bands on the radio--it wasn't long after I'd discovered "Sultans of Swing" that I went to work managing a record store, and not much after that MTV came along and changed radio forever.  Alas...

I'm not sure that a song about a talented but little heard jazz band would could get airplay in this day and age, but in the late '70s it sure could.  Knopfler's deadpan vocals are Dylanesque as he weaves his way through a night at an empty nightclub where the Sultans of Swing (an actual band that Knopfler watched one night) are playing.  Lyrically the song is nuanced but not arty, and allows Knopfler to make good use of inflections and pregnant pauses that help to paint a picture of a rainy night in London.  And from beginning to end there is a wondrous guitar--two guitar solos!--that reminds us that even though no one's listening to the Sultans of Swing the players don't care as long as they're making their instruments sing together.  It's all about the music....

Fun factoid:  Not only do Mark Knopfler and I share a first name, but we both also pick our guitar strings with our thumb--he with great grace and elan, and me with utter mediocrity.

And as the man at the microphone says. "Thank you, goodnight, now it's time to go home...."

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee