If you’re not watching Ken Burns’s PBS series, “Country Music,” you’re making a mistake: almost every reader who’s seen it, including those (like me) who aren’t huge fans of country, have found it mesmerizing. And you can see all the episodes free online.
When I was exercising this afternoon, and listening to my iPod Nano (a great accessory that’s no longer made), this song came on, and I realized how good it is. The words are simple but the tune is terrific, and they meld perfectly.
“Here You Come Again” (recorded by Parton in 1977) is not really a country song, though Parton is a country singer. It’s a pop song, with the only nod to country music being Parton’s voice and the line “Here you come again, lookin’ better than a body has a right to.” (The phrase “a body”, meaning “a person” is definitely Southern country argot.)
When I looked up the song on Wikipedia, I discovered that it was one of the few Dolly Parton hits not written by her: the writers were the famous duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who planned it as a “comeback song” for Brenda Lee. Lee rejected it, and the rest is history. As Wikipedia reports, “”Here You Come Again’ was the centerpiece of [Parton’s] now famous pop crossover move in the late 1970s.”
Mann and Weil were writers of pop songs, not country songs (see here for an astonishing list of their hits), and so we have violins instead of steel guitars. (Wikipedia says the recording does have steel guitar, inserted to but I can’t hear it on the original recording.:
[Parton’s] producer, Gary Klein, who had heard the song on B.J. Thomas’s recently released self-titled album, reported that Parton had begged him to add a steel guitar to avoid sounding too pop, and he called in Al Perkins to fill that role. “She wanted people to be able to hear the steel guitar, so if someone said it isn’t country, she could say it and prove it,” Klein told journalist Tom Roland. “She was so relieved. It was like her life sentence was reprieved.”)
Regardless, it’s a great performance, and rose to #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart. It’s my favorite song by Dolly Parton:
You continue to amaze me with the scope and knowledge of your interests. Keep up the very good work!
Sub
Re: “a body”: Some several years later attending the same high school as Ms. Parton, as I recollect often enough locals would pronounce the word as “abidy” (a-bEYE-dee), from my observation typically using it as the rough equivalent of the third person impersonal singular, “one.”
Years later I finally came across Robert Burns’s “Comin thro’ the Rye.” Perhaps this was Weil and Mann’s connection to the locution “a body.”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43801/comin-thro-the-rye
It’s a shame Ms. Parton had to worry so much about the musical style predispositions of country fans and possibly alienating them. (As a a bumper sticker I once saw declaimed, IIRC, “If it (you?) ain’t Country, it (you?) ain’t nuthin’.”) Why shouldn’t she or anyone else sing/record what they please, as if they should give The Herd a quitclaim deed to their lives?
I don’t know about Weil and Mann and the word “body” but I’d wager that “body” in the south, meaning a person, is Scots-Irish. In Appalachia, the language, the music, and the dancing can all be traced back to the British Isles. And with language, there are locutions that are anachronistic in current American and British English (I don’t know about Scottish) and the use of “body” might well be one. And one would hear blacks in Appalachia use these same words and phrases. Also, the dancing, especially buck dancing, is a form of clog dancing amalgamated with black dancing.
It’s not just country fans of course — Blondie copped all kinds of abuse when they stopped being punk enough for punk rockers; Neil Young got hated by half his own fans for making a kind of country album in 1973, and by the other half for making a proto-punk album straight after it.
Let us not forget Bob Dylan at Newport Folk Festival Festival in 1965.
Great pop tune. Her own best song was “I will always love you”. I didn’t care for the Whitney Houston version.
On the subject of iconic country singers: Tammy Wynette taking the lead vocal on mad British techno band KLF’s “Justified and Ancient”
https://youtu.be/RPjggN-KByI
Their music were mostly terrible, though influential. They were appropriately Discordian — especially their famous “Ladies and Gentlemen, the KLF have now left the music business” incident.
At their peak, they were supposed to play for the British Grammy-equivalent “Brit Awards” 1992, but hired a crust punk band appropriately named “Extreme Noise Terror” to perform for them with a cover song of their single. While they did just that, the KLF singer Drummond fired machine gun blanks into the crowd and when they stormed off, with the announcement made, they left a sheep carcass backstage. Now that I think of it, this exit would later be topped by the Brexit in british eccentricity.
Anyway, they reunited later, for exactly 23 minutes, obviously.
Burned a million quid too (literally).
Still, great song.
I remember Brian Molko, infamously obnoxious lead-singer of 90s Sonic Youth-wannabes Placebo, saying how much he admired the artistic statement the KLF made by burning that million quid. He typified the kind of person who thought it was a cool thing to do.
It’s the kind of act that soulless, contrarian twunts think is a ‘radical artistic statement’. Ask them what the statement actually meant and you’d see their empty eyes glaze over as they ramble on about capitalism and…stuff.
But the truth is they just burned a million quid that could have been spent on saving a human being’s life with medical aid.
Of course, you could say the same about someone who buys a Bugatti Chiron, but at least they’re not claiming their obscene purchase is an artistic statement.
As relates to country music, I have a recollection of reading about a certain singer from the 50’s/early 60’s lighting his cigar with a $20 (if not a $100) bill.
I was surprised to learn from the documentary that “I will always love you” was created by DP. It is certainly another highly iconic song in popular music.
Still, it was Whitney’s version – and the writer’s royalties from it – that made Dolly a wealthy woman.
And she wouldn’t have been nearly so wealthy if she hadn’t turned down (!) Elvis’s request to record it when she found that Tom Parker (Elvis’s manager) always demanded half the rights to any song that Elvis recorded. That took nerve.
cr
I gather that Elvis/Parker (unlike Garth Brooks, IIRC) did not also demand co-songwriter credit.
Re: “a body”: Some several years later attending the same high school as Ms. Parton, as I recollect often enough locals would pronounce the word as “abidy” (a-bEYE-dee), from my observation typically using it as the rough equivalent of the third person impersonal singular, “one.”
Years later I finally came across Robert Burns’s “Comin thro’ the Rye.” Perhaps this was Weil and Mann’s connection to the locution “a body.”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43801/comin-thro-the-rye
It’s a shame Ms. Parton had to worry so much about the musical style predispositions of country fans (of course also true of other styles) and possibly alienating them. (As a bumper sticker I once saw declaimed, IIRC, “If you ain’t Country, you ain’t nuthin’.”) Why shouldn’t she or anyone else sing/record what they please? (As if they should have to give to The Herd a quitclaim deed to their to their lives, musical or otherwise.)
I read the first part and was going to respond that it’s probably from the Scots dialect. I’ve also heard that “youse” (plural of you) is heard somewhere in the south. Still used in Scotland
Re: “youse”: From my experience/observations growing up in E. Tennessee, the local plural of “you” was (and to a great degree remains) “you uns,” reflective of the Appalachian Southern dialect, apparently to distinguish plural “you” from singular “you.” (“Y’all” seems more indicative of Plantation Southern.)
“Yore” is how the possessive “your” was typically pronounced. Working in a restaurant one summer, I heard the hostess/dining room manager tell the wait staff, “You uns need to fill up yore-en-is waters.” (I.e., have a certain minimum number of glasses of ice water ready for the rush.) I’ve spelled “yore-ens-is” phonetically as best as I remember hearing it. To my ear it is an effort to clarify that the speaker is talking to more than one “you.” Possibly an apostrophe should go somewhere in the word. I’ve never seen it spelled.
“You’uns” (no idea how to spell it), meaning “y’all” was used in Pittsurgh, Pa., in the late ’60s and ’70s and, I’m sure, before then. But I never heard “yore-ens-is.”
I started watching the PBS series last night, and now I’m hooked.
Some years ago I talked to someone who grew up in the Lehigh (sp.?) Valley/Sharon, PA area. IIRC, he stated that folks there say “y’uns.”
They say you-uns near Pittsburgh.
If you’ve ever sung harmony (it’s the most intitmate thing thing you can do with someone who’s not having sex with you)), it’s fun to think about all these singers..and the times they lived in!
How many of you have sung harmony?\
I absolutely recommend it!
Googling a bit “Youse/Yous” seems to have a very scattered use. I’d guess it’s heritage goes back to Scots/Irish settlers.
“Yous(e) as a plural is found mainly in (Northern) England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, northern Nova Scotia, parts of Ontario in Canada and parts of the northeastern United States (especially areas like Boston where there was historically Irish immigration) and in Mexican-American communities in the southwest. It also occurs in Scouse.”
Note. Scouse is the Liverpool “dialect”.
This song will get you going too- https://www.facebook.com/irene.galindoboone/videos/2122294247801156/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDYxODAzMjgxMToyNTQyOTMyNjA1NzM3MzE2/?__tn__=%2CdlCH-R-R&eid=ARCXH7-K-IgaK3MEfzDzbamGvvKotm5mxZxcbbKJ3nKXMRoFzS48bKzAQ8H7PUy5P3y-Ukl9N-KutMiw&hc_ref=ARQYNAgx8NN2m5AK5b5x9rxBg0YC1vIieu_03JFVGRRuD7ekwc6DNO8_nnPVWKCx-9A
The past tense reference to Mann and Weil is a bit disconcerting. They are alive.
(And I hear the steel guitar in the original version of “Here You Come Again.” It’s especially noticeable starting at ~1:10.)
It is OK to to like a country song, and to admit it.
“Does a body good,” is one of the rusticisms Ms. Molly Ivins used to use when writing about her home state of Texas.
Damn, but I miss that woman right about now, bless her heart.
Yes.
Ask and ye shall receive, though sadly, not in the flesh. Just out and soon (or now) in a theatre near you: “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/movies/raise-hell-the-life-and-times-of-molly-ivins-review.html.
You’re right, we could really use Molly Ivins right now.
This movie and “Where’s My Roy Chon” I must see as soon as they’re in a local theatre.
Funny you should link to the NYT review, Jenny. Molly parted ways with The Times over a story she wrote about a town out west (in Oklahoma, IIRC) that held a festival every Fall where chickens were slaughtered and prepared for freezing for Sunday dinners during the winter. She referred to it as a “gang-pluck.”
Molly said Punch Sulzberger himself took exception to that terminology, bless his heart. 🙂
This classical music fan is glad you enjoyed the newest Ken Burns series! He’s mentioned that he was NOT a country music fan but came to appreciate it making the series.
I was struck by how similar some singers’ lives were to the stories told in their music. And I’ll confess I shed a few tears over some of the tragedies they experienced.
I’d urge you to see it, regardless of whether or not you listen to country. Wishing you “Sweet Dreams,” too!
Of Ms Dolly’s I ‘ld ‘ve to state that
my most favored is a crossover with
her trio – collaboration engaging Ms Emmylou
Harris and Ms Linda Ronstadt called
“Lover’s Return” of thus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVpgycrjLHY.
CLOSELY followed by “Jolene” which in collaboration
with Pentatonix is wild ! Love it, too !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYCoyUxY2HY!
Thank YOU for this post, PCC(E). A perfect one
for a Saturday night, Boss !
Blue
O, the line within “Lover’s” at where is sung “God doesn’t give us back our youth,”
I dub / substitute in its .first. word as “Life” instead. And just continue on … …
Blue
That trio was great!
Great song!
Sadly the performance appears lip-synced by Parton.
A forgotten pioneer of Country Music is Carson Robison. Here are three links:
I’m Goin’ Back (to Whur I Come From):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ9ciodD0kU
I’m an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvkm6_MnhHw
Life Gets Tejus
Note that there is a taste of soft sarcasm in all these songs. Also, there’s a version of “I’m an Old Cowhand” that has lyrics that mention a Ford pickup (IIRC), but these appear to be instrumentaled-out in the above version, and I can’t find the original right now.
Re: Life Gets Tejus
The narrative uses the trick of the “unfulfilled expected rhyme.” The only other song I know of that uses this trick is “Paperback Writer” by the Beatles.
I never heard that old Carson Robison version of “I’m an Old Cowhand” before! Thanks.
I know the song from hearing the Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks version. (Which is, perhaps, less slapstick.)
I look forward to seeing whether the documentary features Moe Bandy’s “Here I Am, I’m Drunk Again.” And, whether it reflects on some rather humorous titles characteristic of country songs. E.g., Travis Tritt’s “Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares.” (Perhaps the day has already arrived when certain smartphone users have no concept of the pay phone.)
It’s hard not to love Dolly Parton after listening to her interview with Neal Conan on NPR Talk of the Nation (Nov 2012).
https://www.npr.org/2012/11/27/165946279/after-decades-of-dreaming-dolly-parton-says-dream-more
Just listening talk about how poor she was and how she followed her dreams is heartwarming. Around the 5 minute mark, she talks about how she’d walk through the halls of the hotels around, and she’d get the food that people set outside the doors “because people throw out of lot of food” and there’s nothing wrong with cold or soggy french fries because they didn’t touch that.
They have a new podcast out called Dolly Partons America…It is wonderful and worth the listen https://noelliesplace.com/2019/10/15/the-boob-jokes-on-you/