Transcending the formula

I lost my job at the Essroc plant,
That was the start of my bad luck.
’Cos then I caught my woman,
With my best friend in my truck.

Okay, you can relax. That was just my own feeble attempt at writing a formula Nashville-style lyric. The formula hasn’t changed much over the years. As far as I can see, it has to feature at least two themes:

• working for the man
• working for the lady
• blowing off steam in bars (a.k.a. honky tonkin)
• drinking as a refuge from life’s troubles
• being faithful
• thinking about being unfaithful
• being unfaithful (a.k.a. tomcattin’ around)
• discovering another is unfaithful (a.k.a. two-timin’)
• having a trusted companion, such as one’s dog or truck
• wrapping oneself up in the flag
• being a good old southern boy
• liking Hank, Willie and Merle’s oldtime country hits
• liking the sound of rock and roll guitars
• learning life lessons from imprisonment
• catching a freight train out of town
• leaving the folks or girlfriend behind for the bright lights

How about this one:
Whisky mixed with lone star beer,
Is my hound dog’s favourite brew.
And since Roger Miller passed away,
That’s what I drink too.

As I think I have just demonstrated, any fool with a basic sense of rhyme and meter can turn out lyrics to that formula. Even a catchy simple tune and a two-minute time limit can’t turn a bad set of lyrics into gold. However, a good lyric, reducible to a single pithy expression, can rise above the corny and amount to true art. Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and John Prine have that gift. I’d like to mention two others as well, both deceased.

Hank Williams, the first, is the past master. “The moon just went behind a cloud to hang his head and cry”—absolutely magnificent. Past is the operative word, however. I used to think Hank, who died on New Year’s Day 1953, was universally known. No more: I recently heard Cold Cold Heart introduced by a performer as a “song by Norah Jones.” I shuddered and should have leaped up in protest.

“The moon just went behind a cloud to hang his head and cry”—absolutely magnificent. Past is the operative word, however. I used to think Hank, who died on New Year’s Day 1953, was universally known. No more: I recently heard Cold Cold Heart introduced by a performer as a “song by Norah Jones.” I shuddered and should have leaped up in protest.

Miller had his serious side as well. In 1985, he won a New York theatre award for best musical score for the musical BigRiver, based on Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But for me, his particular speciality was building a memorable song around a single phrase. Let me give you a few examples:

• “That’s what happens when two worlds collide”
• “More and more I think about you less and less”
• “Oh what I’d give to be the wind”
• “Sorry Willie, I didn’t know you didn’t know”
• “I’ll forget you in a million years or so”
• “Yours is a world I can’t live in”
• “Received your invitation to the blues”
• “Don’t we all have the right to be wrong now and then” • “It’s my belief pride is the chief cause of the declinein the number of husbands and wives.”
• “Bless my life and grant me one old friend”
• “Don’t leave me, train of life”
• “I’ve got half a mind to leave you, but only half a heart to go.”

According to Miller’s official website, rogermiller.com, “the songwriters in Nashville would follow him around and pick up his droppings…because everything he said was a potential song.” I can well believe it.

When I was many years younger, we used to reserve the occasional musical evening exclusively for Hank Williams songs. I recently heard a performer say he does the same thing with Roger Miller songs. And from my standpoint, there are not many greater pleasures than singing “that’s what happens when two worlds collide”—unless, of course, it’s singing “I’m the King of Kansas City, no thanks Omaha, thanks a lot.”

Thanks a lot, Roger. And you too, Hank.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca