Song 244 (Lynyrd Skynyrd--"The Ballad of Curtis Loew")

I like songs that have a story and a moral behind the story; this is one of those songs. It is probably my second favourite song from Lynyrd Skynyrd; I actually had to buy "Second Helping" twice because the first record that I bought had a horrid skip in this song. I really did not mind buying it again because the store that I bought it from always gave me excellent deals and it ended up only costing me two dollars.
The song itself is about how prejudice can blind people to greatness of someone. In the story, a boy found a hero in a town drunk, Curtis Loew, who was an incredible Dobro player that played the blues. The boy would gather soda bottles and cash them in and give drinking money to Curtis Loew so he would play his Dobro for him. The saddest part of the song is that when Curtis Loew died no one knew of his greatness except the boy in the story and he is wishing that everyone would have seen Curtis for his greatness as a musician and not a worthless drunk. I have always wondered if this song was a biography or if it is fiction? It goes into a lot of detail for it not to have some truth to it.

Here is a recording of the song on YouTube.

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