Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."
One year ago on Round and Square (1 April 2011)—Theory Corner 1a: Bricolage
One year ago on Round and Square (1 April 2011)—Theory Corner 1a: Bricolage
[a] Memory RF |
[b] Immediate RF |
No, you'll see thick nuggets of southern life sprouting up throughout these lyrics. What separates this song from your average "country identity" ode is its immediacy. There are real chunks of autobiography here, and for every Stonewall Jackson image you will see, further down the lyrical road, a Thomas Wolfe reference. This is as close to autobiographical realism as it gets in country music. Dirt-kickin' mimesis, as it were.
Take a listen, and leave your preconceptions at the salo(o)n door. Either kind of either kind. If you're packing Fox News or MSNBC firepower, take them out of the holsters and leave them on the table (yup, that little ideological featherweight near your left ankle, too, mobster-boy). You'll get a claim check to pick them up on your way out. No spin here. Just listen...and read.
Good Ole Boys Like Me
Songwriter: Bob McDill
Artist: Don Williams
When I was a kid Uncle Remus
he put me to bed
With a picture of Stonewall Jackson above my head
Then daddy came in to kiss his little man
With gin on his breath and a Bible in his hand
He talked about honor and things I should know
Then he'd stagger a little as he went out the door
CHORUS
I can still hear the soft Southern winds in the live oak trees
And those Williams boys they still mean a lot to me
Hank and Tennessee
I guess we're all gonna be what we're gonna be
So what do you do with good ole boys like me?
Nothing makes a sound in the night like the wind does
But you ain't afraid if you're washed in the blood like I was
The smell of cape jasmine through the window screen
John R. and the Wolfman kept me company
By the light of the radio by my bed
With Thomas Wolfe whispering in my head
Chorus
When I was in school I ran with a kid down the street
But I watched him burn himself up on bourbon and speed
But I was smarter than most and I could choose
Learned to talk like the man on the six o'clock news
When I was eighteen, Lord, I hit the road
But it really doesn't matter how far I go
Chorus
With a picture of Stonewall Jackson above my head
Then daddy came in to kiss his little man
With gin on his breath and a Bible in his hand
He talked about honor and things I should know
Then he'd stagger a little as he went out the door
CHORUS
I can still hear the soft Southern winds in the live oak trees
And those Williams boys they still mean a lot to me
Hank and Tennessee
I guess we're all gonna be what we're gonna be
So what do you do with good ole boys like me?
Nothing makes a sound in the night like the wind does
But you ain't afraid if you're washed in the blood like I was
The smell of cape jasmine through the window screen
John R. and the Wolfman kept me company
By the light of the radio by my bed
With Thomas Wolfe whispering in my head
Chorus
When I was in school I ran with a kid down the street
But I watched him burn himself up on bourbon and speed
But I was smarter than most and I could choose
Learned to talk like the man on the six o'clock news
When I was eighteen, Lord, I hit the road
But it really doesn't matter how far I go
Chorus
[c] Past wince RF |
But then, if the lyrics in the first verse seem problematic, why do we keep listening, just like I did thirty years ago? I listened back then, but I didn't hear. Still, something stuck. Bob McDill's lyrics are haunting; Don Williams and his velvety voice hung with me like a magnetic field. And if we do (finally) keep listening, the story gets a little bit more complicated—more layered and textured with every line.
It's a real life, told in a particular cultural form (the "memory song") over several scenes, and in just four minutes (with chorus).
[d] Rural (WPA) RF |
Driving along the lonesome road one day (this is how I imagine it)—a complete failure in the songwriting business—McDill heard George Jones's A Good Year for the Roses. Then he got it. He realized that he had to love (good) country music in order to write it well. He couldn't fake it, and he realized that he didn't need to. He had everything he needed in his past and his memory. Daddy, gin, Hank Williams, and cape jasmine—all there.
Those who don't know me very well might think that my opinion comes from a certain partisan strain that I just can't hide—a need to defend a kind of country culture. No, far from it. I was ready to typecast this song in 1982, and would have had no problem tossing it into the ash heap. I couldn't though, and precisely because what is derisively termed "the dustbin of history"...is history.
You see, I study history. For a living. Studying history seriously (not just so that we can bolster our preconceived ideas) causes all sorts of problems for us mortals. It doesn't take long before we start to see that the world is complicated. Really complicated. Individual lives are woven in webs of social relationships and shared meanings, and we begin to realize that the way we look at the world today can't be transplanted onto the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s or beyond. We can't just plop into 1955 with our orange Gore-Tex vests and run with the in-crowd.
[e] Memory RF |
So Uncle Remus and Stonewall Jackson give way to those Williams boys (Hank and Tennessee). Daddy is serious, loving, didactic, and drunk. The wind howls, but he's safely washed in the blood of the lamb. Off to sleep he drifts with John R., the Wolfman, and the gyrating cultural changes of rock (and roll). And Thomas Wolfe, for homeward-looking angels' sake.
Whoa.
It keeps on going. This is no facile ode to the farm, no little streetcar named simple country desire, no catharsis on a hot tin roof. The line that floors me to this day is "...learned to talk like the man on the six o-clock news." This is profound and, for me, quite poignant—a kind of Hunger of Memory for a country boy the world could easily stereotype...and dismiss. He makes life choices and practices diction while reading Tennessee Williams and Thomas Wolfe.
Pure country, huh?
Still sound simple? All of a sudden, I am thinking back to my own childhood, and certain books on the shelf that today would make me (and my parents) wince a little. What if I wrote a song about being lulled into sleep? How do I explain Kipling...and Kim?...or (found in grandma's attic) a story about tigers racing themselves into butter around a tree? As "progressive" as it felt to go to school in Madison, Wisconsin during the Vietnam War (we took the entire day off in elementary school to talk about the Kent State shootings) and to discuss anthropology and English literature with my parents (teachers 24/7), none of us would look at what we read and what we said in the 1960s and 1970s and say "that's exactly how I would say it—or even think it—now."
Note—Don't give up on Kipling.
Nope. Times change, and that rusty cliché is a lot more important than most of us realize. Study more history if this doesn't make sense. Really...study it.
[f[ Unexpected RF |
Do you sense a parallel to my criticism of almost all Top-40 country music these days?
It's not just Montaigne, either. The godfather of the modern autobiography, Jean Jacques Rousseau, understood this implicitly at first...then quite explicitly as time went on. It is as though he wrote the following lines for interpreters of Good Ole Boys Like Me.
I have entered upon a performance which is without
example, whose
accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my
fellow-mortals
with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be
myself. I know
my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made
like any one I have been
acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if
not better, I at least claim
originality, and whether Nature did wisely in
breaking the mould with which she
formed me, can only be determined after
having read this work.
Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself
before the
sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus
have I
acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and
veracity
have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no
crimes,
added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous
ornament,
it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: I may
have
supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never
asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared
myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and
sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power eternal assemble
round
thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to
my
confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my
sufferings;
let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the
wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.[1]
wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.[1]
[g] Forgotten RF |
That's autobiography. That's autobiographical song.
*** ***
The challenge in finding an East Asian poem, for the second week in a row, is too easy. And, for the second week in a row, I am determined (against all juxtaposing precedent) to take the easy path. There is method here. This kind of wistful, autobiographical lyric is so important to the Chinese poetic tradition that I want to show how it works. As I did last week, I am just opening the book to the "lyric" (詞) section and picking something. It is that prevalent...and that significant. While I would not expect this single (set of) lyrics to be "just like" Good Ole Boys" (and the very first line can only be understood by a Daoist), I trust that the tonal similarity will be clear enough.
Tune: "Pleasure in Front of the Hall," Two Songs
Lu Zhi (c.1246-c.1309)
[1]
Be a loafer—
Wash off the dust of fame and gain in the vast waves,
Turn my head away from distant Ch'ang-an
Content with my lot and my poverty.
If I do not wear a turban and socks,
Who will blame me?
Nothing disturbs my heart;
I keep company with mists and clouds
And have wind and moon for neighbors.
—Translated by Sherwin S.S. Fu
[2]
Wine in the cup is heavy.
A calabash of spring color inebriates this old man of the mountain,
A calabash of wine presses heavily on the flower stems.
Following me, boy,
Even when the calabash is dry, my merriment does not end.
But who is with me
To accompany me to the dark mountains?
It is Lieh Tzu who rode the wind.
Lieh Tzu rode the wind.
—Translated by Hellmut Wilhelm[2]
Notes
[1] Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions [Translated by J. Cohen] (New York: Penguin Classics, 2005), 35.
[2] Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974), 419.
Bibliography
NEXT
Sunday, April 15th
Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
We hit the hard stuff in two weeks. "Tonight," the bottle let Merle Haggard down. We'll examine the implications for liquid medication and memory.
[1] Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions [Translated by J. Cohen] (New York: Penguin Classics, 2005), 35.
[2] Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974), 419.
Bibliography
Liu Wu-chi and Irving Yucheng Lo. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry.
Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Confessions [Translated by J. Cohen]. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974.
NEXT
Sunday, April 15th
Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
We hit the hard stuff in two weeks. "Tonight," the bottle let Merle Haggard down. We'll examine the implications for liquid medication and memory.
[h] Contemplative RF |
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