TT 244: Songs That Tell a Story

Country classics by Gordon Lightfoot, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson and Glen Campbell

Rest In Peace Gordon Lightfoot. My parents grew up on the North Shore, so “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is part of my heritage.

Indeed, when visiting my brother Spencer in Duluth, I still like to walk along Lake Superior and look at the shipping tankers. The “modern ship propeller” in Canal Park is a favorite destination. Here’s Spencer in 2021, not far from where the Edmund Fitzgerald began her final voyage:

My aunts and uncles all recalled those days in 1975 listening for news updates on the radio. Eventually there was no hope. All 29 men were lost at sea.

Lightfoot’s song is considered a country classic but in some ways the music is closer to a sea shanty. One of the stanzas never fails to raise goosebumps:

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya…"
At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
"Fellas, it's been good to know ya!"

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Modern country more or less surrounded me as a child, and the one song that I just loved was “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers.

There is not much in common between “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “The Gambler” apart from what I suspect is a modern country statistical rarity: Both lyrics are expansive descriptions of events unconnected to romantic love.

Don Schlitz composed the music and lyrics to "The Gambler," including this glorious moment of country noir:

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light
And the night got deathly quiet and his face lost all expression
Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right."

At one point The Bad Plus was trying to catch Kenny Rogers’s attention to see about making a record together. The Bad Plus Kenny Rogers was proposed as the follow up to The Bad Plus Joshua Redman. I really wanted Rogers to sing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as TBP supplied sounds of the ship going under.

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Those mid-century giants had breadth. Kenny Rogers could play acoustic bass and swing his vocals. He shared a basic knowledge of jazz with the great Willie Nelson, who is still performing at 90. (His birthday was this past Sunday.) There is precious video of Rogers and Nelson singing and playing Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” together. I don’t dig the big backbeat in the drums, but love it when Rogers takes a modest bass solo, prompting Willie to joke, “What are you doing New Years Eve?” — an allusion to all those long cocktail gigs with a lot of bass solos on the final evening of every year.

I occasionally teach Nelson’s big hit “On the Road Again” in a classroom environment, for the phrase lengths are asymmetrical. The A section is 14 bars, 8 + 6, and the B section is 14 bars, 6 +8. This is a throwback to earlier country music, bluegrass and the like, where phrase lengths are allowed to have breathtaking asymmetries.

(Years ago, Mark Morris played me original 1927 recording of “Will the Circle be Unbroken” by the Carter Family. The song has devastating power, perhaps partly because the phrase lengths are impossible to predict. More recent country versions, including Willie Nelson’s, tend to square off the phrases.)

“On the Road Again” also boasts an unusual rhyme scheme, where “again” and “friends” act as gentle repetitive chimes. On the page the lyric looks pedestrian, but aligned with the unusual phrase lengths — not to mention Willie Nelson’s gravelly voice — some other kind of magic is created.

On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is making music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again

On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again

Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world keep turning our way
And our way
Is on the road again

I just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again

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Glen Campbell’s hit recording of “Wichita Lineman” is notably sophisticated. Country music claims Campbell, and there’s usually a strumming guitar in the mix, but many Campbell hits have outsized string-heavy arrangements and jazzy harmony. In the case of “Wichita Lineman,” it seems that composer Jimmy Webb is trying to infuse as much of Burt Bacharach’s surprising harmonic movement into country that he can.

Webb, Campbell and producer/arranger Al De Lory intelligently enlisted members of the Wrecking Crew to help deliver subtle swinging ‘60s ethos. In fact, that’s how I came to be listening to “Wichita Lineman” recently: bassist Carol Kaye had turned 88, and that’s her own riff that opens the track. On drums is Jim Gordon, who just died in prison. (Richard Williams’s obituary in the Guardian is sensitive and informative.)

The unforgettable opening three lines of the lyrics are what make “Wichita Lineman” undeniably country.

I am a lineman for the county
And I drive the main road
Searchin' in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin' in the wire
I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line

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