If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)

Infobox Single
Name = If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)


Artist = Alabama
from Album = Roll On
A-side = If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)
B-side = I'm Not That Way Anymore
Released = July 1984
Format = 7"
Recorded = November 3, 1983
Genre = country
Length = 3:22 (single edit)
3:44 (version on "Greatest Hits Vol. III")
4:28 (original album version)
Label = RCA Records

Writer = Murray Kellum, Dan Mitchell
Producer = Harold Shedd and Alabama
Chart position = * #1 (Hot Country Singles)
Last single = "When We Make Love"
(1984)
This single = "If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)"
(1984)
Next single = "(There's A) Fire in the Night"
(1984)

"If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band)" is a song made famous by the country music band Alabama. The song was released in 1984 as the third single from the band's fifth album, "Roll On", and became the group's 14th straight No. 1 single on the "Billboard magazine" Hot Country Singles chart that October.

During the first weeks "If You're Gonna Play in Texas..." was on the "Billboard" chart, the song's flip side, "I'm Not That Way Anymore" was listed as a tag-along "B-side" since the B-side had an accompanying music video that aired on CMT.

ingle and album edit differences

The single edit was more than a minute shorter than the original album version. Two features were deleted from the single version:

* The opening fanfare, featuring Alabama's vocalists — accompanied by just a piano — singing a few bars of "The Eyes of Texas." This introduction leads into the single's opening, which suddenly picks up the tempo to 3/4-time.
* A second repeat of the refrain, the first part a capella, before the fiddle-led bridge leading to the last part of the song.

The version that appears on the band's "Greatest Hits Vol. III" album excises the intro but retains the extra refrain.

References

*Morris, Edward, "Alabama," Contemporary Books Inc., Chicago, 1985 (ISBN 0809253062)
* Roland, Tom, "The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits" (Billboard Books, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1991 (ISBN 0-82-307553-2))
*Whitburn, Joel, "Top Country Songs: 1944-2005," 2006.