Roll Tide Guy—My Home's in Alabama

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One year ago on Round and Square (4 March 2012)—Hurtin' Country: Fightin' Words
Two years ago on Round and Square (4 March 2011)—Breaking the Vessel (1)

[a] I'm Innocent...Roll Tide PD

I'm Innocent...
Roll Tide

Click here for coverage of "Roll Tide" (watch the reaction of the agents at :57)

[b] Alabama Home RF

And since I have your attention, let's start our month-long jaunt through Alabama history, literature, and culture with a classic. Tomorrow will have the other obvious one.

This one is by the "poet"...Alabama.

Heck, even Round and Square has done a post on this. Check out the song and the context.

My Home's in Alabama

And...my home's in Alabama (although it may soon be an incarceration unit).

Roll Tide, y'all.

[c] Sequoyah...Caverns RF

[Originally posted on June 4, 2014]

Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin (52)—The Possum (and Old Hank)

A year ago on Round and Square (27 April 2012)—La Pensée Cyclique: Mulan Granet-a
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin,"

[a] Pride of Beaumont RF

It was quite a run, and a good five decades longer than anyone might have expected. Almost from the crew cut beginning, "The Possum" was en route to being another Hank Williams, and on multiple levels, at that. I knew that he was a great songwriter and performer. I also knew that he missed a lot of shows, was a problematic husband, and was idiosyncratic on the road—touring or driving. He drank too much and, for a long time, did too many drugs. All of these parallels he shared with Old Hank. What surprised me the most, though, was something he did just a little bit differently. Not only did he make it past his third decade...he lived into his ninth. This is a stunner, of sorts.

[b] Texas Sunset RF

Let me explain.

George Jones died today at the age of eighty one. He was one of the great country music performers of all time, and had Billboard number one hits in each of five different decades—the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. His classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was ranked the number one country song of all time by Country America magazine in the mid-1990s, and he is one of a handful of artists whose "Greatest Hits" have to be abridged so as to fit into DVD compilations smaller than Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There's a lot of stuff there.

The obituaries are rolling in. Let's take a look at the New York Times version:

NYTimes George Jones

If you read all of the way to the end, you know that, during one of his many bouts of heavy drinking, his wife hid all of the keys to his cars. So he drove the lawn mower into Beaumont to buy more liquor. 

[c] So country...RF

That was George Jones.

His was also was a passionate, mellifluous voice of unapologetic country. He was so country that he didn't need to wear a cowboy hat. He was so country that when he opened his mouth and began strumming his guitar, you just knew it was going to be good. He was so country that...country stations didn't play him much once they made the sappy turn in the 1990s to bubble-gum wannabe-cowboy music. Through it all, George just kept drinking, missing shows, and selling more and more records (not a few of which went to paying earlier debts). 

If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will) 2:56

[d] 1A RF

He finally shaped up (with the help of a great spouse), and got his life more-or-less together. That powered him into his eighties. What we have with George, then, is five decades that Old Hank never was able to give us. George Jones's career is worth pondering in its own right. I, for one, though, can't help but wonder what those five decades might have meant for a possible Hank Williams life. 

They were the best—1A and 1AA (again, in more ways than one). And on that note, let's listen (again) to George Jones (and Mark Chesnutt) singing about Old Hank:

Meetin' Hank 3:09

Somewhere right now, I like to imagine Hank and George sharing a bottle of white lightning, talking about the last century or so, and wondering what happened to country music.

Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes? 3:16

[e] Shoes RF

Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin' (51)—The Show Hank Never Gave

A year ago on Round and Square (1 January 2012)—Hurtin' Country: My Home's in Alabama
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin,"

[a] Perspective (RF)

There it was. Canton, Ohio. January 1, 1953—sixty years ago to the day. 

Hank Williams was the lead act in two big shows scheduled for that Thursday afternoon and evening. Michigan State was set to play UCLA in the Rose Bowl, but the biggest event in pre-television Canton was a tall, skinny guy who even then was known as Old Hank. He was twenty-nine years old, and the biggest star in Nashville. Quite arguably, no one matched him anywhere in the whole of the United States, and he was popular overseas as well. The Canton shows had been talked about for weeks. They were sold out.  

And they never happened.

Hank never showed.

Hours earlier, Hank lay dead in the back seat of a big '52 Cadillac, having succumbed to liquor, pills, and (some have argued) heartache. His life was a little like a college dormitory sofa. Unnoticed for much of the time, it gets moved to center stage (usually an abandoned lot for the sofa) and a big audience. Then it lights up the night and burns an impossibly brilliant flame before sputtering out just as quickly...and forever.

This is how I think of it. My father approached it somewhat differently when he told me Hank stories while I was growing up. Dad had listened to all of Hank's 45s as he made his youthful way around Mayville, North Dakota in the late-1940s and early-1950s. Hank wasn't "country," he told me. Hank was music. Dad told of radio shows with Hank's folksy chatter, and even late night rebroadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry on WSM (50,000 watts of nighttime power) that could make it up the Red River beyond Fargo, and almost to Winnipeg. 

He ended with a cautionary note. "Son," he said seriously (this is how I remember it now), "it isn't easy to drink yourself to death at the age of twenty-nine." He went on to explain that abuse that serious took hard work, and more than a little cognitive turmoil. I forgot the overall point (something about leading a life of relative moderation, I think), so entranced was I by the idea of a legend burning out before thirty.

[c] Career RF

Years later, reading a biography of Hank Williams in advance of an interdisciplinary seminar on country music and East Asian poetry (this really happened), I chanced upon a line that has stayed with me as powerfully as dad's observation about hard drinking. Colin Escott observed, if I recall correctly, that for months during 1952 Hank Williams had missed shows, showed up drunk, and generally been a pretty undependable figure in a world that needed punctuality and organization. DJs and booking agents were losing interest, and Hank's career was threatened with a downward spiral. Then it all changed, and Hank's reputation skyrocketed, blazing even brighter than before...lasting for all of the next sixty years.

"Sometimes," Escott noted, "death is a good career move."

[d] Sinology RF

It was for Hank Williams, unpleasant though the full implications of that thought might be. You see, Hank could still be with us had things turned out a little differently. He could be eighty-nine years old, and revered by generations of country artists in the way that Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, and others have been (he would be a lot more interesting than his kid, that's for sure). I sometimes imagine Hank, sitting in a rocking chair, explaining success on the stage. Word has it that he would do all sorts of fascinating musical things when working with his band in a relaxed setting. When they got on stage, though, he was all (show) business. 

"Just give 'em vanilla, boys," he cautioned. And off they went.

***  ***

In Chinese cosmology and historiography, there is a way of counting that marks the years in an ever-repeating cycle of sixty. Over the millennia, observers have sometimes remarked that every sixtieth year is similar, and a sinologist once remarked that we should translate a major work of scholarship in 1994, precisely because it was originally published in 1934, and "it would be like no time has passed at all." 

I am thinking about Hank Williams that way today. It was sixty years ago....exactly. It is as though time never passed.

Hank Williams (Sr.) "I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive" (2:30) 

[e] Hank RF

Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin' (50)—12-12-84

One year ago on Round and Square (12 December 2011)—Beginnings: The Whig Interpretation of History
Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."

[a] Loss RF

Exactly twenty-eight years ago this evening, one fictional man watched a true love go. If he could do it over, he would go back to the end and start over again...on 12-12-84. This is a calendrical twist on the old country saw: she's gone—she done left me. The difference here is that the lyrics are sincere and direct. On top of it all, David Ball is smart. He hits the interpretive nail right on the head (with nary a cliché to be seen). You see, time is a teacher...and his failures still echo in (his) head. 

My first thought today, in 2012, is...why does this all have to be "he/she." This has much more rich potential than simple gender binaries. Still, with that in mind, let's think a bit more about this song (and its East Asian counterparts).

[b] Snippet RF

You see, about a a decade ago, I read a little snippet in the New York Times. It went something like this. Men and women have varying degrees of commitment to...memory. It seems that women (according to the little survey I read) look back to the past, shrug, and move on. Men (remember that this is a survey, and a broad generalization beyond that...and an earlier era) look into the deep, dark, chasm of time...and want to do it over. They want to take a mulligan, pull out their second serve, or throw the curve ball after missing with the fastball. They want to reach back into the past and rescue themselves from their previous failures. 

Maybe it's a "guy" thing (whatever that really means).

This is the spirit of David Ball's song of pained mnemonics. Take a click, and listen carefully.

David Ball 12-12-84

          David Ball
          12-12-84
          12-12-84, ten o'clock at night
           Funny how you can remember
           Certain moments in your life
           I wish I could go back
          To take back the words I said
          Though it's been years since that night
          They still echo in my head

          Chorus
          Time is a teacher
          And time has taught me well
          What brings a man to his knees
          Is often brought on by himself
          If a second chance were offered
          And she could love me like before
          I'd go back to the end and start over again
          On 12-12-84

          A cold wind was blowing
          It whistled through the pines
           I told her I don't need her
          And she told me goodbye
          I remember embers dying
          In the ashes and the coals
          And like smoke up the chimney
          I watched a true love go
 
          Chorus
           I'd go back to the end and start over again
           On 12-12-84

[c] Go RF

Time is a teacher, oh, and time has taught him well. David Ball—who I think is one of the best writers and voices in Nashville history (a minority opinion, I realize)—remembers embers dying in the ashes and the cold, like smoke up a chimney, he watched a true love go.

Damn. This is so good that I want to cry.

He'd go back to the end and start over again...on 12-12-84. 

How are we going to top that? 

Or, better put, how are we going to balance the painful do-over fantasies of male rejection with an East Asian lyric of parallel strength? Well, it is not that difficult to find pain in the writing of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean lyricists. It is, however, a bit harder to see the kind of "I screwed up" finality in those lyrics. Or is it? Maybe we just need to turn the lens just a little bit and to view other forms of rejection known to almost every person who wrote poetry (and served in office) in Chinese (or Japanese or Korean) history. This poem comes from China, and is as brief as it is powerful. Let's read the four lines of Huang Tingjian's "Living in Exile at Jiannan."

          Huang Tingjian (1045-1105)
          Living in Exile at Jiannan

          Frost falls only to melt in the valley;
          Wind strews the leaves over the hills.
          By and by the bright year will dim
          And all the wood mites hibernate.
                                         —Translated by Michael E. Workman

Notes

[1]  Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974), 357.

Bibliography

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

[d] Splendor RF

Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin' (49)—It Would Be You

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."
One year ago on Round and Square (29 April 2011)—Francis Parkman and the Oregon Trail

[a] Like You RF

It's hard describing stuff—any stuff. This is something that has bothered storytellers throughout the world, and from time immemorial. Yes, even Grog struggled around the campfire to tell just how big the mastodon was, how sharp his tusks were, and how woolly the sky appeared as it loomed over him on the savannah. Years later, Melville struggled with a whale of a narrative challenge. Call him Ishmael (and alliterative).

The world is too big and language is too small. That is the nature of language...and the world. How do we handle it? Maybe we just need to simile and put the best face on a difficult situation. 

Our songwriters (Robbins and Oglesby) put us right into the middle of that problem today. Take a listen to Gary Allen, who is trying to describe a heartache. He doesn't know it, but he has a peculiar condition—indeed, a postmodern condition. Paging Dr. Foucault—the prognosis isn't looking good.

It Would Be You 2:55

      It Would Be You
        Songwriter: Kent M. Robbins and Dana Hunt Oglesby
        Artist: Gary Allen

[b] Like cold RF

It's hard describing a heartache
Because it's a one of a kind thing
A serious injury
And a whole lot of endless pain
If it was a storm
I'd compare to a hurricane
Oh it's even got a name

Chorus
If it was a drink
It would be a strong one
If it was a sad song
It would be a long one
If it was a color
It would be a deep deep blue
But if we're talking about a heartache
It would be you

If it was a full moon
It would be a total eclipse
If it was a tidal wave
It would sink a thousand ships
If it was a blizzard
It would be a record breaking cold
If it was a lie
It would be the biggest story you've ever told

Repeat Chorus

If it was a color
It would be a deep deep blue
But if we're talking about a heartache
It would be you

***  ***

[c] Like winter (almost) RF

There is a big world out there, and language can't render it precisely. We keep trying, though, and usually end up lost somewhere in the semiotic river beds of metaphor. 

A is like B. 

It Would Be You is a little exploration of the country world of metaphor. No, I am not claiming that it is particularly deep. In fact, it doesn't scrape too far down into the lyrical topsoil with its renderings of full moons, tidal waves, and blizzards. Yes, the song pretty much is the title (the "chorus line") and that is the point. If we're talking 'bout a heartache...that would be you.

Much though I would like the lyrics to have braved the icy waters of metonymy and even synecdoche, (with a heartier dash of polysemy for good measure) it steers instead a middle course through the metaphorical Doldrums. Again, if you think my critical response means I don't like the song, think again. Shallow has its merits when it comes to hurtin', you see. Worldly description is one thing; personal pain is another, and highfalutin synecdochal renderings just aren't necessary. It's almost as though Gary Allen wades through knee-deep language all of the way until he has immediacy. And that, quite simply, would be you.

So to speak.

***  ***

Heartache and the imprecision of language (not to mention rhyme, rhythm, and metaphor/metonymy/synecdoche) were well-traveled concepts in East Asia, too. For this week's juxtaposition, I have chosen a snatch of prose from Matsuo Bashō's Narrow Road of the Interior. It describes a scene the poet cannot but render in superlatives. It also shows some of the limits of such description, even when rendered by one of the greatest poets the world has seen and heard.

The Narrow Road of the Interior
Matsuo Bashō (1689)

[d] Shore RF

Noon was already approaching when we engaged a boat for the crossing to Matsushima, a distance of a little more than two leagues. We landed at Ojima Beach.

Trite though it may seem to say so, Matsushima is the most beautiful spot in Japan, by no means inferior to Dongting Lake or West Lake. The sea enters from the southeast into a bay extending for three leagues, its waters as ample as the flow of the Zhejiang Bore. There are more islands than anyone could count. The tall ones rear up as though straining the sky; the flat ones crawl on their bellies over the waves. Some seem made of two layers, others of three folds. To the left, they appear separate; to the right, linked. Here and there, one carries another on its back or cradles it in its arms, as though caring for a beloved child or grandchild. The pines are deep green in color, and their branches, twisted by the salt gales, have assumed natural shapes so dramatic that they seem the work of human hands. The tranquil charm of the scene suggests a beautiful woman who has just completed here toilette. Truly Matsushima might have been made by Ōyamazumi in the ancient age of the might gods! What painter can reproduce, what author can describe the wonder of the creator's divine handiwork?

Ojima Island projects into the sea just offshore from the mainland. It is the site of the Venerable Ungo's dwelling, and of the rock on which that holy many used to practice meditation. There also seemed to be a few recluses living among the pine trees. Upon seeing smoke rising from a fire of twigs and pine cones at one peaceful thatched hut, we could not help approaching the spot, even though we had no way of knowing what kind of man the occupant might be. Meanwhile, the moon began to shine on the water, transforming the scene from its daytime appearance.

We returned to the Matsushima shore to engage lodgings—a second-story room with a window on the sea. What marvelous exhilaration to spend the night so close to the wind and clouds! Sora recited this:
               matsushima ya                                   Ah, Matsushima!
          tsuru ni mi o kare                              Cuckoo, you ought to borrow
               hototogisu                                          the guise of the crane.

I remained silent, trying without success to compose myself for sleep. At the time of my departure from the old hermitage, Sodō and Hara Anteki had given me poems about Matsushima and Matsu-ga-urashima (the one in Chinese and the other in Japanese), and I got them out of my back now to serve as companions for the evening. I also had some hokku, compositions by Sanpū and Jokushi.

[f] Like stuff RF

Notes
[1] Helen Craig McCullough [translator and editor], Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 535-536. 
Bibliography  
McCullough, Helen Craig [translator and editor]. Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

NEXT
Sunday, May 13th
Mama Tried
Two weeks from now, we will celebrate Mother's Day (and Beloit College's commencement) with a little downer of a Merle Haggard tune.