Sweet Home Alabama
"Sweet Home Alabama" was a major chart hit for a band whose previous singles had "lazily sauntered out into release with no particular intent". The hit led to two TV rock show offers, which the band turned down. In addition to the original appearance on "Second Helping", the song has appeared on numerous Lynyrd Skynyrd collections and live albums.
Alabama Song
The "Alabama Song" was written as a German poem and translated into idiosyncratic English for the author Bertolt Brecht by his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925 and published in Brecht's 1927 "Home Devotions" (), a parody of Martin Luther's collection of sermons. It was set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 play "Little Mahagonny" (') and reused for Brecht and Weill's 1930 opera "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" ('), where it is sung by Jenny and her fellow prostitutes in Act I. Although the majority of all three works is in German, the "Alabama Song" retained Hauptmann's English lyrics throughout.