Birth of the legend: Sultans Of Swing

“We are the Sultans, we are the Sultans of Swing”. A legendary line from a legendary song, released in 1978 as a single, year later released again within the debut album “Dire Straits” by - Dire Straits.

Who were these Sultans in fact? How come, that this song started an 18 years long career of, in 1978, absolutely unknown British band?

Inspiration for this song came while Mark Knopfler, leader of the Dire Straits, witnessed a jazz band playing in an almost empty pub in Deptford, South London. At the end of their so-called performance, the lead singer announced “Thank you very much. We are the Sultans of Swing!”.

Mark Knopfler mentioned this story in one of his interview as follows:

It was a little deserted pub in Deptford where we were all living at the time — the pub was semi-deserted and the band were down at heel and it was just playing these Dixie standards of Louis Armstrong things, the way they always do. … I mean that’s one thing that struck me that whatever I might have felt about it they were expressing themselves and 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. You know they were rather tired little blokes in pullovers (laughter at end).

Originally, Knopfler composed the music on an open-tuned National Steel guitar - the type of guitar that can be seen in the cover of an iconic album “Brothers in Arms”.

Knopfler, however, found the song he composed not very remarkable. It might have happened Sultans of Swing would never be released, but luckily Knopfler took an other type of guitar, and that was, what changed everything. In an article on GuitarWorld.com, Knopfler states:

I thought it was dull, but as soon as I bought my first Strat in 1977, the whole thing changed, though the lyrics remained the same. It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat — which remained my main guitar for many years and was basically the only thing I played on the first album — and the new chord changes just presented themselves and fell into place.

After Sultans of Swing was released, the success came almost immediately. Sultans reached the 8th position in the UK Singles Chart, and the 4th position in the US Billboard Hot 100. Shortly after the release, the magazine Rolling Stone compared Mark Knopfler with his vocal stylization to Bob Dylan.

In the later years, Dire Straits have released 6 studio albums, multiple compilations, and their biggest selling album “Brothers in Arms” has sold more than 30 million copies.

Sultans of Swing is ranked #32 in the Rolling Stone’s list of greatest guitar songs.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Sultans of Swing.