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Get out…

The New Neo Posted on by

…a big box of Kleenex if you’re going to watch this one:

I like country music because I really like lyrics, and country music songs often have schmaltzy but really fine lyrics, resembling short and accessible old-fashioned poems.

A few weeks ago I actually uttered the words (although I wasn’t knowingly referencing this particular song) “I don’t think even 100 is very old any more.” Meaning that, as I get older, I realize how quickly a life, even a very very long life, goes.

What’s up with the glass house in the video, though?

Comments

Get out… — 26 Comments

  1. Country music has always been a songwriters’ paradise and is especially lyric-oriented. Go all the way back to Hank Williams who wrote dozens of memorable songs despite dying before he reached 30. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is still one of the most haunting, beautiful songs ever written.

  2. I know this song so well that I long since used up all the Kleenex in the house….. even all those in those little cubes and tiny pocket sized packets.

  4. He’s now in the house.
    Came in from outside,
    Where the many routes
    To the same place lie.

    Creased and unbottled,
    Genie did deny
    The wish, so awful:
    Mortals shall not die.

    He’s now in the House!

  6. I don’t much like contemporary country music, but it’s true that those writers are still willing to tell stories and say solid things. So okay, tears duly jerked.

    Here’s a song by Steve Forbert saying pretty much the same thing, but to my taste more powerfully, even though I never have cared much for Forbert’s voice. (For those who don’t recognize the name, he was one of four or five then-young artists acclaimed as “the new Dylan” in the early ’70s.) “I Blinked Once”:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok8TjUU1ml8

  11. You have to distinguish, though, between the country music of Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn and the junk on country radio today. I always think of there being two Great American Songbooks-the sophisticated songs done by Cole Porter andthe like, and all the wonderful country/gospel/folk songs of our past.

  13. I grew up country and never has there been since Hank a better song writer as Fred Eaglesmith.

    http://tinyurl.com/p4w9hed

    Hank Williams, he came up from Montgomery
    With his heart full of broken country songs
    Nashville, Tennessee, didn’t really understand him
    ‘Cause he did things differently
    Then the way that they were done
    But when he finally made it to the Grand Ole Opry
    He made it stand still
    He ended up on alcohol and pills
    Elvis Presley, he came up from Jackson
    With a brand new way of singing, Lord
    And a brand new way of dancing
    And even from the waist up, Lord
    He gave the world a thrill
    He ended up on alcohol and pills
    Alcohol and pills
    It’s a crying shame
    You’d think they might have been happy with
    The glory and the fame
    But fame doesn’t take away the pain
    It just pays the bills
    And you wind up on alcohol and pills
    Janis Joplin, she was wild and reckless
    And then there was Gram Parsons
    And then there was Jimi Hendrix
    The story just goes on and on
    And I guess it always will
    They ended up on alcohol and pills
    Alcohol and pills
    It’s a crying shame
    You’d think they might have been happy with
    The glory and the fame
    But fame doesn’t take away the pain
    It just pays the bills
    And you wind up on alcohol and pills
    Sometimes somebody
    Just doesn’t wake up one day
    Sometimes it’s a heart attack
    Sometimes they just don’t say
    They pulled poor old Hank Williams
    Out of a Cadillac Coupe de Ville
    He ended up on alcohol and pills
    Alcohol and pills
    It’s a crying shame
    You’d think they might have been happy with
    The glory and fame
    But fame doesn’t take away the pain
    It just pays the bills
    And you wind up on alcohol and pills
    And you wind up on alcohol and pills

  14. Nut that I am, I ‘m fond of watching those Infomercials
    for Time Life Greatest country hits ! Little snippets of some favorites & not so favorite. The grainy black & white shots are interesting & amusing.
    All the while I was growing up my mom was fond of chirping around the house “H-Hey good lookin whatcha got cookin whaacha got cookin ?”
    She would tell me, “that song was popular when you were born “

  16. FOAF
    Country music has always been a songwriters’ paradise and is especially lyric-oriented.

    Charlie Parker, the great jazz saxaphone player, recognized the worth of the stories in country music:

    To many jazz musicians and listeners, however, white country music is dismissed as rather primitive musically and pretty much sounding all alike. An exception was Charlie Parker. He used to hang out at Charlie’s Tavern, a musician’s bar in midtown New York. There was a jukebox with jazz recordings and somehow, a number of country music sides. Bird would often play the country records to the astonishment and dismay of his fellow jazz players. Finally, one of them gathered the courage to say, “Bird, how can you listen to that music?”

    Solemnly, Bird turned to the questioner and said, “Listen! Listen to the stories!”

    As Charlie Parker said, listen to the stories.

    http://jazztimes.com/articles/20633-the-rainbow-of-american-music

  17. Molly NH
    All the while I was growing up my mom was fond of chirping around the house “H-Hey good lookin whatcha got cookin whaacha got cookin?” She would tell me, “that song was popular when you were born.”

    When I was a preschooler, I had use of a portable record player. One song I remember playing over was Kawlija – the Wooden Indian. I didn’t choose the record- one of my parents must have chosen it- or a grandparent. My parents were big classical music fans. I also recall a record which set Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty to lyrics, which I must have played about as often as Kawlija.

    Decades later, when I found out about Hank Williams, I suddenly realized that I had listened to Hank William’s song Kawlija when I was a preschooler.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_c1A8tmHuI Kaw-lija

  18. I enjoy all kinds of music; pop, rock, country, jazz, and classical. What makes me listen to any particular artist is what moves my heart or makes me feel the music in my core. Life would be very grey without music, no matter what genre.

    Here is one of my favorites from Art Pepper:

    http://tinyurl.com/pzfwnhz

    And another from Harvey Mandel:

    http://tinyurl.com/ppqhy5f

    My instructions are that both of the above, along with Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic be played at my funeral. I want no words spoken in eulogy, just these 3 pieces of music that in my mind stand the test of time and reverberate inside my core.

  19. Gringo, as you probably remember years ago there was no separation of music into genre, Country was just part of the pop music & on the Radio with early Rock and Roll & even stuff by Sinatra, or Como & Patti Page
    “How much is that doggie in the window”?

  21. I use pandora’s music genome. It’s pretty accurate in analyzing tastes, and it isn’t beholden to the MPAA either, even though they are taxed to such an extent that their advertisement needs to pay it off.

  22. Fascinating story about Charlie Parker, Gringo. Hard to think of a kind of music further from his than country, especially as it was still pretty country then.

  23. Gringo and Mac and parker, one of my favorite stories involves jazz legend Thelonius Monk. Monk was the epitome of the ultra-hip urban jazzman, a black man playing outré music replete with goatee and porkpie hat. Supposedly he was in Europe being interviewed by some journalist who asked him what kind of music the band listened to when they weren’t playing.

    Monk: “All kinds”
    Journalist: “What do you mean, ‘all kinds'”
    Monk: “I meant *all kinds*”
    Journalist: “B-but surely you don’t listen to country music!”
    Monk: “I guess you don’t listen too well either”

    As a musician myself I have found almost invariably that really good musicians do in fact appreciate all kinds of music and don’t make false category distinctions.

  24. Another example of “crossover” was the great Ray Charles. Charles had helped revolutionize pop music in the 1950s by bringing in a strong element of black gospel music to it. Then in the early ’60s he recorded a string of hits from country music including “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, “Born to Lose” and the beautiful “You Don’t Know Me”.

  25. I always liked Jerry Jeff Walker who did Mr Bojangles first. Alan Jackson is a solid country singer. Still a lot of great balladeers in country .

    They tell stories, they are not nihilists . Sometimes I am amazed by my daughters who discovered country in High school . More amazed ,they dumped hip hop and never looked back.

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