Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (16)—Cheap Whiskey

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."

[a] Over  RF

This series of posts, as the title suggests, is meant to explore depressing subjects. It's hard to beat drinking themes when it comes to eventual misery, and the song below is a powerful and versatile story of harmless joy turning starkly negative and dark.[1] I heard Martina McBride sing this at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in 1993, and was transfixed both by the way she "told" the story of misery and loss. She is much more famous for several other songs (including "Independence Day"), but putting this song on her very first album/CD placed her in the company of serious country musicians.

Let's look at the wider lyrical message of the song. He sits all alone in his easy chair...and ponders all that he lost when she left him. The songwriters (Emory Gordon and Jim Rushing) really nail it with the key line "you can't have two loves in your life." "He" wants to have it both ways...until "she" says goodbye. The combination of chorus phrases "the smell of cheap whiskey/and the sound of goodbye" is among the best I have ever heard in a country song. 

Take a listen.

Cheap Whiskey Audio  3:09
Cheap Whiskey Live  3:30

For advice on how best to "engage" the lyrics, click here.

             Cheap Whiskey
                  Martina McBride 
                  (Emory Gordon Jr./Jim Rushing)

He sits all alone in his easy chair
Staring back on his lost yesterdays
Long before he encountered the bottle
And the demons that drove her away

In his hand he is holding her photograph
Her image all tear-stained and worn
Tonight he's embracing reality
And he curses the day he was born

Chorus
And the darkness still echoes her warning
You can't have two loves in your life
Now the things that will haunt him
Until the day that he dies
Is the smell of cheap whiskey
And the sound of goodbye

Since the hour that she left he's been sober
And each breath that he draws makes him think
About the light of his life gone forever
When he traded her love for a drink

Repeat Chorus

The smell of cheap whiskey
And the sound of goodbye

The painful message in the song has a number of parallels in East Asian poetry. I have chosen, as always, to avoid seeking a one-to-one "agreement" with the country song. That would be difficult (cheap whiskey) in any case, since the liquid of abuse tended more toward fortified rice and plum wines. Many poets waxed eloquent about the wonders of heated wines, but I have chosen a slightly different angle, as you will see below. 

             Tune: "A Southern Song" 
                   Wen Tingyun (Wen T'ing-yün)  813-870

In soft hanging coils, she embroiders her hair; 
Eyebrows she traces like airy half-moons. 
Remembered pledges haunt the long day through; 
Because of him, harrowed by grief is she 
       In this season of a hundred flowers.[2]
                              —Translated by William R. Schultz
 

[1] Martina McBride produced an excellent (and very powerful) video to accompany this song. I strongly share both the sentiment and the organizational connection (noted at the end of the video). The reason I have not included it in today's post is because our purpose here is to examine lyrics, and the "official" video tells such a powerful and particular story that the very generality of the song's lyrics are narrowed. By all means do a search on YouTube and watch the "official" video. It is one of the most important issues in the world. Just examine the lyrics first.

[2] Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974), 252.

Bibliography
Liu Wu-chi and Irving Yucheng Lo. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974.

NEXT
Whoever's In New England
Next week, on Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin', the lyrics are pathetic (in the strict sense of the term). Reba McEntire will help us...to keep getting more and more depressed, as we do every Sunday (same time, same station).