The Ballad Of Curtis Loew Double Trouble Gimme Three Steps Lynyrd Skynyrd

The Ballad Of Curtis Loew Album: Second Helping (1974)
Double Trouble Album: Gimme Back My Bullets (1976)
Gimme Three Steps Album: Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd (1973)
by Lynyrd Skynyrd

The Ballad Of Curtis Loew was written by Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Allen Collins, who both died young (Van Zant in 1977 at 29, Collins in 1990 at 37). If they spoke about the song, it's been lost to time, but guitarists Gary Rossington and Ed King have both discussed it, and they give conflicting origin stories.

According to King, who joined the band in 1972, Curtis Loew is a composite of different people, including Shorty Medlocke, the grandfather of Ricky Medlocke, who played guitar in an early Lynyrd Skynyrd lineup (Ricky later formed the band Blackfoot). Shorty, according to King, could "play anything," and contrary to the song's lyrics, was not black (In a 1997 interview on the Lyve From Steel Town album, the band was quoted as jokingly saying, "We needed to 'color' the song up").

Rossington a founding member of the band who grew up with Collins and Van Zant in Jacksonville, Florida, says there really was a Curtis Loew, although "Loew" wasn't his last name. "It's a true story," he said in a radio interview. "It's about a Black man who grew up in the west side with us. There was a store called Mulberry Market, and there was a Black man who stayed out there. His name was Curtis and he had an old dobro guitar. He kept it in his house right behind the store, but if you gave him some money - 50 cents or even a quarter - he'd play a song for you. He'd rake out his bottle and play the blues.

We would collect Coke bottles - which the song says - drive all around the neighborhood getting them, then we'd cash them in, get the money and give it to Curtis Loew. He would go right across the street to the wine store and buy a bottle of wine. We'd give him like a quarter and he'd play for a minute and he'd come out straight and just play a song and say, 'give me the money, boy.' But when we'd all get together, three or four of us would put our money together and we'd give him like a dollar, $1.50. I think a bottle of cheap wine back then was $1.25. Then he'd go across the street and buy a bottle, have two or three nips, then he'd play a little song and half a bottle would be gone.

He was into it. He was stomping his foot and he'd take an old Coca-Cola crate, turn it upside down, and that was his beat. He's start playing and he'd drink a little more wine he'd start singing and playing and kicking. That was fun."
"The Ballad Of Curtis Loew" wasn't released as a single and the band rarely played it live, but it still found a following among the Skynyrd faithful and is one of the most popular deep cuts in classic rock. It's part of the band's second album, Second Helping, which also includes "Sweet Home Alabama." The band recorded the album at The Record Plant in Los Angeles at the same time the Eagles were making their third album, On The Border, at the same studios. Members of both groups would congregate around the pinball machines in the studios and became friends.

A dobro is a resonator guitar with a mechanical amplifier. It was originally released in 1927. Gibson now owns the rights to the dobro guitar.

The name "Loew" was probably chosen because it rhymes (sort of) with "dobro." According to Ronnie Van Zant's widow Judy Van Zant Jenness, the unusual spelling was Ed King's idea. When he was writing the liner notes for the Second Helping album, he decided to name the character after Loew's Theater - thus giving an old bluesman a Jewish name. A very sophisticated insult for a bunch of country bumpkins, eh?

Ed King played the bottleneck slide guitar on The Ballad Of Curtis Loew.

"Double Trouble" is a song written by Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins, which was recorded in 1975. It appears on the band's fourth album, Gimme Back My Bullets, and was released as a single in the United States. It peaked at number 80 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number 86 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles.

According to the book Whiskey Bottles and Brand New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd by Mark Ribowsky, the genesis for the song came from a time when Gary Rossington was in jail with Van Zant and he asked him how many times he'd been arrested, to which Van Zant answered, "11." Rossington replied, "Man, Ronnie, you're just double trouble." Also according to Ribowsky, the band originally recorded under a record label called "Double T Productions" which stood for "Double Trouble." The song also features backup vocals from The Honeycuts.

The Single featured artwork where the band was pictured within two cards, perhaps suggesting a game of 21. The two cards are an Ace of Diamonds and an Ace of Spades, being 2 or 22 within the confines of that game. Trouble either way...

Gimme Three Steps is based on a true story. As Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington tells it, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was about 18 at the time, used a fake ID to get in a bar while his younger bandmates Rossington and Allen Collins waited for him in a truck. Van Zant danced with a girl named Linda, whose boyfriend, who was not too happy about it, came up to Ronnie and reached for something in his boot. Figuring he was going for a gun, Van Zant told him: "If you're going to shoot me it's going to be in the ass or the elbows... just gimme a few steps and I'll be gone." He ran to the truck, and he, Rossington, and Collins wrote this song that night.

According to the Freebird Foundation, run by Van Zant's widow Judy Van Zant Jenness, the events of Gimme Three Steps took place at a bar called The Little Brown Jug, located on Edison Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida, where the band is from. This explains the lyrics, "I was cuttin' the rug, down at a place called The Jug," which is where Ronnie ran into an angry local man with a gun.

The pace of the chorus is fast, to signify Van Zant running away from the guy he thought was going to shoot him.
This made the cut for Skynyrd's first album. Their producer, Al Kooper, had them play all their original songs, and out of the 14 they had, picked nine to record for the album.

Gimme Three Steps was one of the few songs Skynyrd released as a single. It was their first major-label release, and it didn't chart.

The band's name was a mocking tribute to Leonard Skinner, a physical-education teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, who was notorious for strictly enforcing the school's policy against boys having long hair. Despite their high school acrimony, the band developed a friendlier relationship with Skinner in later years, and invited him to introduce them at a concert in the Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum.

Interviewed by the Florida Times Union in January 2009, Skinner said he was just following the rules about hair length. It bothered him that the legend had grown that he was particularly tough on the band members. In fact, he didn't even remember them when they were in high school. He said, "It was against the school rules. I don't particularly like long hair on men, but again, it wasn't my rule."

Though he hasn't been shy of the attention he received because of his name, Skinner never really warmed up to the group's music. "No," he said when asked if he liked their tunes. "I don't. I don't like rock 'n' roll music."

On September 20, 2010, Skinner died at a nursing home in Jacksonville, at age 77 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years.