Stars Fell on Alabama is a 1934 jazz standard composed by Frank Perkins with lyrics by Mitchell Parish. The title references a real meteor shower observed in November 1833 near Muscle Shoals, Alabama—the night the stars fell. One of the first popular recordings was by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians with Carmen Lombardo on vocals, recorded August 27, 1934 and released by Decca as 104. Since then the tune has been recorded by over 100 artists, including Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. A well known album appearance is Sinatra’s version on the 1957 album A Swingin’ Affair! The song is typically performed as a romantic jazz ballad or swing number. In 21st century Jacksonville State University’s Marching Southerners perform an arrangement of the tune and it has become their unofficial anthem. In Alabama the phrase Stars Fell on Alabama was added to the state license plates in 2002. The track has appeared in films such as Constellation (2007) and Outside the Wire (2021) in versions by Billie Holiday with Louis Armstrong and by Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong.
