Today's Guest Blogger....Richard Elson

The idea for this playlist came from a remark made by someone hearing “Jack Straw” by the Grateful Dead playing in my office. “Ugh,” she said. “The Dead: they’re so chauvinistic.” “How so?” I asked. “’We can share the women/we can share the wine’!?!” she replied. I explained as patiently as I could that the song is a story about two shady characters named Shannon and Jack Straw and that it’s the characters who are talking, not Jerry and Bob and Phil…which got me thinking: which are the best story-telling songs I could think of? To pass muster, the songs would have to introduce characters and there would have to be a plot, or as much of one as could be developed in the relatively short time span of the song. A lot of songs come close, a lot seem story-like but in fact are actually more autobiography (or worse: confessionals) or slices of personal life so that the first person narrator seems indistinguishable from the songwriter himself or herself. For the moment, I’m interested in character, setting, conflict, and resolution; and in the really good ones, the music itself can play some key roles in creating a mood, developing the setting, even offering some foreshadowing (for example: think of the change of key before the last verse in “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan: the guitar sounds foreboding, the shit is about to hit the fan, and then sure enough Owsley and crew are clearing out as fast as possible: Is there gas in the car?/Yes, there’s gas in the car). So, no rock operas here; just short story-songs.

Many of the good ones are set in the South, as are many great American short stories. Faulkner had a theory about this. He said (and I paraphrase): ‘It’s because it’s so fucked up down here!’ The South and the cowboy West.  John Cheever set his short stories in the suburbs, though the only song I can think of that stands out from that setting would be Billy Joel singing, In a town known as Oyster Bay, Long Island…. Even there, he pulls it off by comparing/contrasting the NY ‘burbs to the wild wild west of Billy the Kid.

So here goes, with a small disclaimer (or two): Sal has already forgotten more about music than I’ll ever know, so writing this is a bit intimidating; and I confess to a certain degree of musical arrested development: I’m kind of stuck in a time period from long ago and far away, and know very little about more contemporary music, so I’d love to hear about other more recent story songs. This list is by no means definitive, just some that I really appreciate both musically and as narratives. In no particular order:

1.”Me and My Uncle” by John Phillips: Horse ridin’, card playin’ in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, headin’ to West Texas. There’s a true plot with conflict and resolution. The best part of the story, of course, is the plot twist at the end (I loved my uncle, God rest his soul/Taught me good, Lord, Taught me all I know/Taught me so well, I grabbed that gold/And I left his dead ass there by the side of the road).

2. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by The Band. Virgil Kane is the name/and I served on the Danville train: wow, an opening line that’s like the rock version of ‘Call me Ishmael’. The drama of the music, Levon Helm’s voice, the story line that lends sympathy to the Confederacy (he was just 18, proud and brave/but a Yankee laid him in his grave: those fuckers!): it’s pretty damn remarkable. Another good song set during the Civil War, again from the southern perspective, is “My Father’s Gun” by Elton John (I’d like to know where the riverboat sails tonight/to New Orleans, well that’s just fine, alright/’cause there’s fighting there and the company needs men…) Both songs are so evocative of the time period, and it’s a real tribute to Elton John’s voice that he sounds Southern when he sings it. And we know it’s a character who is telling/singing his tale, because we just can’t picture dear Elton marching into battle.

3. “The Dutchman” by Michael Smith (popularized, if you will, by Steve Goodman) This song touches on the issues of enduring love and aging and even Alzheimer’s, before we even knew what Alzheimer’s was:

The Dutchman still wears wooden shoes
His cap and coat are patched with love
That Margaret sewed in
Sometimes he thinks he's still in Rotterdam
He watches tugboats down canals
And calls out to them when he thinks he knows the captain
'Til Margaret comes to take him home again
Through unforgiving streets that trip him
Though she holds his arm
Sometimes he thinks that he's alone and calls her name

Softie that I am, this song is still capable of making me cry, even after 40 years of knowing it. It’s one of those songs that makes me think: Damn, I wish I’d written that…

4. “Red Dirt Girl” by Emmy Lou Harris. The music creates the mood for this remarkable story about a childhood friend named Lillian whose brother dies in Vietnam and whose life spirals downward through bad relationships, drugs, depression. That kind of story line sounds a tad too cheesy and soap operatic, but the deft lyrics and insistent rhythm save it from being a mess:

Me and my best friend Lillian
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon,
Sittin on the front porch cooling in the shade
Singin every song the radio played
Waitin for the Alabama sun to go down
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town
Me and Lillian
Just across the line and a little southeast of Meridian.

The plaintive acoustic guitar (backed by an electric guitar that is used ever so sparingly) creates such a strong impression that you can almost feel the humidity and hear the crickets chirping in the background. This song makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

5. “Madame George” by Van Morrison. I’m stretching it when it comes to true plot; it’s more like a dreamscape or a Fellini film, but some stories are like that: fuzzy-edged, swirling with some uncertainty, ending with no definite clarity. Chekhov’s “Gooseberries” is like that: wait,  what just happened? I better read it again. And again. I can listen to this song again and again. It’s a glimpse into a small underworld corner of Belfast with a mystery woman (drag queen?).

6. “Rocky Raccoon” by Lennon/McCartney. Now somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon. I love how so many of these songs lay out the setting in the very first line. Crisis, conflict, rising action, resolution, falling action—this song has it all, plus some piano playing straight out of a saloon in a western. A sympathetic, flawed character…and a plot in which the bad guy wins the gal, the good guy goes home defeated, though the last line gives the listener hope that things will eventually turn out better for our fallen hero.

7. “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” by Bob Dylan. Wow, where the hell did this song come from? Dylan just flexing his artistic muscles again? Another wild west setting. This song has the most complex plot and most extensive set of characters of any I know. The plot relies on a series of coincidences and card game symbolism, with a lot of quick cuts from one character to another then back again, to let the story unfold. The tempo of the music moves the action along very swiftly, and as many times as I’ve listened to it, there’s still plenty of room for interpretation on what exactly happens and what it all means.

8. “Sammy’s Song” by David Bromberg. A chilling coming-of-age story, set ‘somewhere in the south of Spain’ for 16 year old Sammy. His uncle takes him to a brothel to be with a woman for the first time. When the young woman reluctantly removes all her clothes at Sammy’s insistence, she reveals a body badly scarred from a fire. His first experience becomes memorable in a way neither Sammy nor his uncle could ever have anticipated. It reminds me of something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel.

9. “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobbi Gentry. Okay, this one is a little corny, but I love how the plot is revealed. We learn unfolding details in a family dinner conversation, while the girl in the song, the singer, sits silently, her appetite gone, unable to join in the conversation because, unknown to her family, she played a role in the events that led to Billy Joe’s decision to commit suicide. And I love how the opening line not only sets the scene, but actually pins it to a particular day: It was the 3rd of June, another sleepy dusty Delta day. As if the singer is saying, ‘This is the day my world got turned upside down, I will remember it for the rest of my life’.

10. “Me and Bobby McGee” by Kris Kristofferson. A memory of lost love, plus some reflection on the trade-offs involved with so-called freedom. Another opening line setting, though this song gradually travels all over the country: Busted flat in Baton Rouge/Waitin’ for a train/ feelin’ near as faded as my jeans. We learn right off the bat not just where the two characters are, but how they are: flat broke and emotionally washed out. Plus, one of the all-time great lines: I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday/To be holdin’ Bobby’s body next to mine…really good stuff.

A few Honorable Mentions: “Daniel and the Sacred Harp” by The Band; “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel; “El Paso” by Marty Robbins; “Wharf Rat” by the Grateful Dead; “The Holdup” by David Bromberg. And one curiosity: in thinking about which songs to put on this list, I kept dwelling on “She’s Leaving Home” by Lennon/McCartney. How old is this girl? She’s not really young because the lyrics mention, She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years. So if she’s adult, why does she have to sneak out? Why doesn’t she just tell her parents she met somebody? If it was written today, the parents’ response would be, ‘Finally! We thought you’d never leave!’ These are the questions that haunt me in the middle of the night. And in “Norwegian Wood” does he actually set fire to her furniture?