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 Now,
I'm no expert on music, unless you count tooting the trombone in the high school
band and learning to play the ukulele from a former Mormon missionary assigned
to my Army unit. But that’s
another story.
I
enjoy music of just about every kind, although I have to confess I have not
developed a taste for the type that could destroy my eardrums.
Among
my favorite choices for listening pleasure is country music.
I naturally would like it, being from Oklahoma, which has produced some
of the most successful performers of all time.
Country
music not only is enjoyable, it’s fun and full of down home philosophy.
Consider some of the songs that have been recorded over the years:
Pick Me Up On Your Way Down
You
Ain’t Much Fun Since I Quit Drinkin'
Here’s
a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares
I've Got the
Hungries For Your Love, and I’m Waitin’ in the Welfare Line
Thank
God and Greyhound She’s Gone
Don’t
Come Home a-Drinkin’ With Lovin’ On Your Mind
You
Stomped On My Heart and Mashed That Sucker Flat
If My
Nose Was Running Money, Honey, I’d Blow It All On You
It’s
interesting that drinking is a common theme in many of these songs.
In some independent research, I have found a predominance of a particular
drink, tequila, in country songs. For
example:
Tequila
Sunrise; Margaritaville; It Was Just the Tequila Talking; Straight Tequila
Night; Ten Rounds With Jose Cuervo; Tequila Mockingbird
A
recording by Joe Nichols, Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off, topped the
charts in early 2006. His video
revealed the subject of the song to be his grandmother.
My
fling into writing country songs sprang from a news item about a shortage of
canning lids. I penned this
plaintive ditty:
I
remember helping Mama can tomatoes,
We’d
cook and skin and pack ‘em in the jars.
I also
helped her canning sweet potatoes,
While
other kids were hanging ‘round the bars.
My
dear old Mama really loves her canning,
Since
pa passed on, it helps her pass the time,
It
also helps her cut down on the groceries,
And Ma
believes in saving every dime.
Though
she’s 88 my Mama is still canning,
But
they’re running out of lids down at the store.
And I
can just hear my dear old Mama saying:
“What
can I do when I can’t can no more?”
“What
can I do when I can’t can my peaches?
“They’re
too darned high to buy down at the store.
“What
can I do to while away the hours of my lonely day?
“What
can I do when I can’t can no more?”
As
wonderful as it is, this song never stood a chance of being a country hit
because it contained only one of the necessary elements:
Mama. David Allan Coe said a
good country song also had to include something about trains or trucks or prison
or getting drunk.
Lacking
knowledge in at least one of those areas, I became a newspaper columnist.
(Author's note: About a year after
this column was published, my wife and I went on an Elderhostel trip to
Nashville and Memphis. Participants
were invited to submit lyrics with the possibility that a professional
songwriter on the program would put them to music.
I had the pleasure of having a song, "Lonely Okie in LA",
selected and performed by Davis Raines at the famous Bluebird Cafe in Nashville.
But I'm still a newspaper columnist.)
Robert
L. Haught is a former UPI correspondent and bureau manager who took a detour
into politics and government and returned to writing. In 1987, Haught became the
first Washington-based editorial writer for The Oklahoman. Haught retired as
senior editorial writer in 1995 but continued to produce "Potomac
Junction", a political humor column, until December 2007.
In 2003 he created another column for self-syndication, "Now, I'm No
Expert", which was the basis for a book published in 2006.
He
has been recognized for his journalistic achievements by induction into the
Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. As a member of the National Society for
Newspaper Columnists, Haught was editor of the organization's newsletter, The
Columnist, for three years before becoming NSNC Secretary in 2004.
He organized and directed the 2007 Will Rogers Writers' Workshop in
Oklahoma City. Haught left the NSNC
board in 2007 but continues to coordinate the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award
program.
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