Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2014 12:12 am
The song was written after frontman Mark Knopfler hit up a Deptford pub around close and watched the Dixie cover band try to entertain the few drunks still there. “When the guys said, ‘Thank you very much, you know, we are the Sultans of Swing,’ there was something really funny about it to me because Sultans, they absolutely weren't,” Knopfler said. “You know they were rather tired little blokes in pullovers."
You get a shiver in the dark,
It's raining in the park, but meantime:
South of the river, you stop and you hold everything.
A band is blowin' Dixie, double-four time.
You feel alright when you hear that music play.
You step inside, but you don't see too many faces.
Comin' in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down.
Competition in other places...
But the horns, they blowin' that sound.
Way on down south,
Way on down south, London-town
...
And then the man, he steps right up to the microphone.
And says at last, just as the time bell rings,
"Goodnight, now it's time to go home."
And he makes it fast, with one more thing:
"We're the Sultans,
"We are the Sultans of Swing."
It's raining in the park, but meantime:
South of the river, you stop and you hold everything.
A band is blowin' Dixie, double-four time.
You feel alright when you hear that music play.
You step inside, but you don't see too many faces.
Comin' in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down.
Competition in other places...
But the horns, they blowin' that sound.
Way on down south,
Way on down south, London-town
...
And then the man, he steps right up to the microphone.
And says at last, just as the time bell rings,
"Goodnight, now it's time to go home."
And he makes it fast, with one more thing:
"We're the Sultans,
"We are the Sultans of Swing."