The South's Gonna Do It

The song talks about Southern pride and discusses how the South is "gonna do it again". The lyrics refer to several Southern rock bands and musicians:

• Grinderswitch
• The Marshall Tucker Band
• Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Dickey Betts (guitarist with The Allman Brothers)
• Elvin Bishop
• ZZ Top
• Wet Willie
• Barefoot Jerry
• Charlie Daniels Band

The first line in the song is also a play on Grinder's Switch, Tennessee, the fictional hometown of Grand Ole Opry star Minnie Pearl.

The song uses a clever play on words to promote Southern rock music. The notion that "the South shall rise again" was a familiar sentiment and rallying cry for disaffected Southern whites after the American Civil War. The song co-opts that sentiment, but uses the statement to celebrate Southern rock acts contemporary to the song itself. The "it" that the South is going to do again, it is implied, is that the South would produce further popular Southern rock bands.

Daniels in fact bristled at more nefarious interpretations of what the "it" was. When the Ku Klux Klan used the song as background music for radio commercials for a 1975 rally in Louisiana, Daniels told Billboard magazine, "I'm damn proud of the South, but I sure as hell am not proud of the Ku Klux Klan. ... I wrote the song about the land I love and my brothers. It was not written to promote hate groups."[1]