This week's tune is another that I discovered thanks to the hundreds of promotional singles CBS used to send to record stores back in the day. Unlike some of the other songs I've featured from said promos, this one--like much of my life--is seen today through a little different lens than I saw it in the early eighties. Some of that is because of what I've learned about Haggard's politics, and some is from what politics in America have become....
To say that Merle Haggard's career did not follow the usual trajectory of most successful musicians would be something of an understatement. Haggard lost his father at the age of nine, and for the next fourteen years he would be in and out of trouble for crimes ranging from truancy to armed robbery. Haggard eventually ended up in San Quentin but had a come to Jesus moment while there and turned his life around. He taught himself to play the guitar at the age of twelve, and it would pay off in the early sixties when his career as a country singer began to take off. Haggard became one of Country Music's true icons, and through the years managed to rack up an impressive array of accolades: Country Music Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center Honors, two Grammys, and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. For his career, Haggard released sixty-six studio albums, with twelve of them hitting #1 on the Country Albums chart, and eighty-four singles, with a whopping thirty-eight of them topping the Country Singles chart. Haggard passed away in 2016 (on his birthday) at the ripe old age of seventy-nine from complications from double pneumonia, leaving behind one of the truly great legacies in the history of Country Music.
"Big City" was released in 1982 as the second single from his rather inventively named album, Big City. The single hit #1 (with a bullet!) on the Country Singles chart, while the album peaked at #3 on the Country Albums chart.
Fun Fact: Haggard was finishing a grueling two-day recording session in Los Angeles for this week's album when he took a minute to check in with Dean Holloway, an old friend and his tour bus driver. Holloway wasn't in much of a mood and told Haggard that he was "tired of this dirty old city." Inspiration struck and it became the first line of this week's tune. Haggard even stopped at one point to ask his friend where he'd like to be ("somewhere in the middle of damn Montana" was the answer and minus the word "damn" it ended up in the chorus). The best part? Haggard gave Holloway half of the writing credit, which netted the bus driver a cool half million dollars....
There's a line in the chorus of "Big City" where Haggard refers to America's retirement program as "so-called Social Security" which is a doubled edged sword. Even forty years later, there are questions as to whether the benefits we give senior citizens (disclaimer--I collect Social Security) are enough. But what can't be questioned is the millions of older Americans who have been kept out of poverty by the most successful government program in our nation's history. That being said, in the end the song is about being somewhere you don't want to be and having a dream of someplace you'd like to go...and those are feelings many of us have felt at one time or another in our lives. Throw in a little class warfare, a lot of one of the truly great Country vocalists, some slide guitar, and a catchy ass melody and you have one hell of a song to add to the annals that are Friday Night Jukebox.
Lyric Sheet: "Been working every day since I was twenty/Haven't got a thing to show for anything I've done/There's folks who never work and they've got plenty/Think it's time some guys like me had some fun..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
No comments:
Post a Comment