Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (46)—Good Ole Boys

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

[a] Memory RF

We are going to look at longin' today. We are staying with the wistful strands of that overall theme for another week, and this song is all about relationships—just not the kinds you might have come to expect among the generally painful themes of this series. The lyrics here are deep, tender, and resonant—wrapped into a bundle of memory. If the term "good ole boy" has a particular kind of red-state, pickup-drivin', beer swillin', shotgun packin' imagery for you...well, you've come to the wrong place. You won't find any pickup testicles here. Not a one.

[b] Immediate RF

Bob McDill and Don Williams are here to mess with easy preconceptions of what we now think of as territories of red and blue. Bob and Don are not, to be sure, urban liberals pretending to know what "country" is all about (that would be a good description of most country radio these days, and it is why most of it is no better than swill).

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 4:00 

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

[c] Past wince RF

What do you do with good ole boys like that? It's as though Mr. Williams is saying "take that and put it in your preconception pipe and smoke it." Uncle Remus and Stonewall Jackson are likely to have made knees jerk all over the countryside. Mine too; I think my knee knocked over the table. Back in 1982, when I first heard the song, I scoffed at the first verses and didn't take it seriously again until a decade later (when I finally "got it"). Mix in a little "washed in the blood," and we can tuck this little ditty right into our stereotype files, can't we?

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

I would take issue with anyone who can simply peg this song as back country-hokum, as many sophisticates do with all "country" music. On the other hand, don't be too hard on yourself if you don't understand what's the matter with Kansas or how one could go (sort of) deer hunting with Jesus. You might find it interesting that even the songwriter, Bob McDill, would not have written this song when he first started out in Nashville. Back then, he wrote what he thought was "country" music, and failed. He came to understand that the failure lay in running from his origins and from the genre.

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

So how do we combat this kind of "presentist" provincialism? There is only one way, it seems to me, and it lies in taking the past seriously, writing about it honestly, and letting partisans (of "either" persuasion) rant all they want. This is not new. Michel de Montaigne clearly understood that rich, layered detail always worked better in his Essais than prefiguring a story that would appeal readily to a perception of what readers "like."

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]

[g] Forgotten RF

These words have had a greater influence on personal writing than perhaps any other in the Western intellectual tradition. Bob McDill seems to channel them in the lyrics, and Don Williams brings them to life. Tell it (Rousseau had a comparative handle on stuff that made readers blush), craft it (it is your memoir, and you have choices), and mean it.

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

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.

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