Story Songs

Earlier this week I was using "the facilities" at a restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland (side note-If Somalia is wondering where all of its citizens disappeared to, they're in Silver Spring, MD, Columbus, OH & driving Taxi's in NYC) and what's playing on the in house play list but "Convoy" by CW McCall! In Southern parlance I'd been "talking to a man about a dog" and now my mind was racing! Now granted Convoy is an extraordinarily stupid song but it was a hit, mostly due to the rural/ truck driving culture that was a fad of sorts in the 70's and early 80's. People flocked to the theater's to watch artistic gems such as Convoy (yes it was a movie, so was Harper Valley PTA!), "Breaker, Breaker" (starring a young Chuck Norris) & "Smokey and the Bandit"! Clint Eastwood was "Philo Beddoe" and beat the crap out of many a meat packer and left Pacoma littered with the bodies of Black Widow's in his "Any Which Way but Loose" movies (still entertaining), this was spun off for TV with "BJ and The Bear" because there's nothing more amusing than the combination of long haul truck driving and sidekick apes.

I guess I've been wondering what has happened to the "story song" genre (Rap doesn't count)? When I was really small I loved Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John" and Marty Robbin's "El Paso" ("Big Iron" is great too!). Johnny Horton had big hits with "The Battle of New Orleans" and "North to Alaska". The first one I really liked was Larry Verne's "Mr. Custer" (Hey Charlie duck your head!), that was a real classic! Kenny Roger's (props to Brian Gooch & Grandma Smart) was the last performer I can think of that could pull the "story song" out of his tool box and was able to make some made for TV movies as a result as well. It's sad we've lost this bit of Americana but maybe we don't have any stories to tell anymore, the music/entertainment industry is so crass and profane now maybe it's a good thing.