Today’s birthday boy is the grand-daddy of them all. Mind
you, I wouldn’t say that that point of view was one I held for most of my early listening.
Hank Williams? Wasn’t he that hick-sounding guy with the weird chortle and the
thin voice? That guy whose songs were all over the soundtrack of The Last Picture Show (1971) and made
you glad you weren’t from Texas? Country music, to me as a kid—and I’m meaning
well into twenties—was kind of embarrassing. I could accept when some band I
liked “went country” with pedal steel and some twang, but that’s only because it
was a “flavoring.”
Much of the embarrassment about Country, I came to find out
later when I looked into it a bit, was due to what’s been called the “Nashville
sound”—all those strings and choirs and saccharine productions. The sort of thing
that destroyed most of Johnny Cash’s recordings, after he left Sun. It’s tough
to take, to me, in the same way that most radio pop is tough to take.
Hank was well before all that. He’s got the sound everyone
who believes in real Country wants to harken to, he’s a honkytonker. So, when
I finally got around to some attention to his stuff—fueled by my brother Jerry
playing a ton of it one year at the beach as his personal soundtrack—I realized
he was a really good songwriter, even if I wasn’t always beguiled by his way of
moaaa-whoa-honing the blues. But wait, I already knew today’s song.
First I heard it was in the Grateful Dead’s cover of it on Europe ’72, where it’s not very bluesy
or very country, but has a nice easing-going mood. Groovy. Not only that, as I
discovered when I heard the song, winter of ’78, covered by John Kay, Jerry
Garcia doesn’t sing all the words. I’m not really in favor of abridging the
lyrics to a song this well written. I liked Kay’s respectful and kinda soulful
version much better anyway. And that’s the version that made one of the nadir
tapes I made back when I was experiencing some version of what this song is all
about.
Let me put it out there. When I was listening to Kay’s album
Forgotten Songs and Unsung Heroes
(1972), the words of this song nailed me. I was
addressed because, listening to it, I was hearing it define my situation. It’s
the point of view of a man in the unhappy position of knowing he’s been
replaced in his would-be beloved’s affections. She’s been seen a-running ’round.
He’s just moping around eating his heart out.
But the verse that floored me, and that Garcia dispensed
with, is: I’m sorry for your victim now /
For soon his head like mine will bow / He’ll give his heart but all in vain /
And someday say, “you win again.”
The “you win again” idea keeps coming back (who d’ya think
Dylan learned his way with a title/refrain from?) as the admission that, no matter
what this poor fool thinks about her, no matter how clear it is that she doesn’t
care and probably never did nor ever will, she “wins” because he can’t give it
up. He can’t move on. And for some reason that sentiment works better in
Country than it does in rock. Rock is supposed to be about sex more than love,
but it’s also supposed to be about a world where hip chicks abound. Why keep on
darkening the door of this Jezebel?
But that’s the point. When you hear that ol’ Hank Williams
honkytonk groove coming across (and maybe this is The Last Picture Show talking), it’s easy to imagine some little
one pony precinct where there is like, exactly, one babe who can name her price, and rope in who she will—Cybil Shepherd
plays her in the film. Where I was coming from (or rather where I was stewing)
in 1978 was about a blonde too.
Anyway, how about those lines of pity for a current rival
who, it’s perceived in a kind of camaraderie, is also a victim? (Like the two
hicks played by Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms.) Neither is going to really
have her, y’know. She’s got a winning hand that beats the time—and smacks the
faces—of all these local suckers. And that’s what I like about the Hank version
even more than Kay’s version: Hank’s really singing for the sadsack suckers
everywhere. Seems like the song should never vanish from local bar jukeboxes,
ever.
The other bit that made me shake my head at the late Mr.
Williams’ sagacity was the part with which it ends (keeping the best for last
is another trick only the best are capable of), about having “no heart, no
shame”—that’s just the booze talking, the guy’s probably a mean drunk by now—and,
acing it, “you take true love and give the blame.” This is where the masochistic
streak lowers its shamed face. The lover is apt to be humiliated because his
love—which he feels and she doesn’t—is never “good enough.” So she can take him
to task for anything. He’s got to take it: “I guess that I should not complain
/ I love you still—you win again.”
And never so much as when you’re stronger.
I had to go with this Williams song because of my attachment
to it way back then. Another I’m in awe of is “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”
which the Cowboy Junkies do right proud by on Trinity Sessions (1988). And then there’s “Alone and Forsaken,” and
“Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do,” and the two songs of his I do
remember vividly from childhood: “Hey, Good-lookin’” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart”
and a bunch more . . . .
Just trustin’ you was
my great sin
No comments:
Post a Comment