Steve Earle: N. Y. C.

SONG N. Y. C.

WRITTEN BY Steve Earle

PERFORMED BY Steve Earle

APPEARS ON El Corazon (1997)

NOTE 1 The cover art is by the Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick. 2 That's  Buddy Miller playing lead guitar in the video.

"N. Y. C." stands as one Steve Earle's top rockers and most requested songs. It tells the story of a middle-aged, somewhat disillusioned man who gives a ride to Billy, a young and hopeful hitchhiker who wants to try his luck in New York City. After all, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, right?  Billy relates his adventures to a rueful, half envious listener, and summarizes his impression of all that New York has to offer in these words:

I heard the girls are pretty
There must be something happening there
It's just too big a town

The dual allure of sex and boundless opportunity being what it is, Billy shouldered his guitar, put his thumb in the wind, set out uncomplainingly through "a thousand miles of sleet and snow and rain."

The older man is skeptical, but keeps it to himself. He tried New York once, but struck out in a week. The girls, who by now represent opportunity itself, "wouldn't talk to me." Thus, Earle establishes a tension between youthful exuberance and optimism v. experience and disillusion. Look, the older man reasons to himself, at what Billy will go through just to take a shot at making it in the Big Apple. Coldness, dampness, and hunger are nothing in comparison; and very possibly disillusion is a fair price to pay for the paradoxical experience of youth.

So, the driver "slips the kid a twenty" because maybe -- just maybe -- Billy will be one who makes it, and the twenty will play apart. And no matter what, Billy is twenty dollars further down a meaningful road already filled with "a hundred stories."

LYRICS
He was standing on the highway
Somewhere way out in the sticks
Guitar across his shoulder
Like a thirty ought six
He was staring in my headlights
When I came around the bend
Climbed up on my shotgun side
And told me with a grim

I'm going to New York City
I've never really been there
Just like the way it sounds
I heard the girls are pretty
There must be something happening there
It's just too big a town

He was cold and wet and hungry
But he never did complain
Said he'd come a thousand miles
Through sleet and snow and rain
He had a hundred stories
About the places that he'd been
He'd hang around a little while
And hit the road again

I'm going to New York City
I've never really been there
Just like the way it sounds
I heard the girls are pretty
There must be something happening there
It's just too big a town

See I've been to New York City
Just like it was yesterday
Standing like a pilgrim
On the Great White Way
The girls were really pretty
But they wouldn't talk to me
I held out about a week
Went back to Tennessee

So I thought I'd better warn him
As he climbed out of my car
Grabbed his battered suitcase
And shouldered his guitar
I knew I was just jealous
If I didn't wish him well
I slipped the kid a twenty
Said "Billy give 'em hell"

I'm going to New York City
I've never really been there
Just like the way it sounds
I heard the girls are pretty
There must be something happening there
It's just too big a town

The Marshall Tucker Band: 24 Hours At A Time

SONG 24 Hours At A Time

WRITTEN BY Toy Caldwell

PERFORMED BY The Marshall Tucker Band

APPEARS ON A New Life (1974); Where We All Belong (1974); Stompin' Room Only [live] (2003); Anthology: The First Thirty Years (2005)

NOTE The lyrics are from the original studio version of "24 Hours." MTB altered them somewhat in performance.

The Marshall Tucker Band sang about men and women, not boys and girls. This conferred a sense of maturity and sexual awareness onto their college-aged fans, a sensibility that may or may not have been merited, but that was nonetheless appreciated, by a group that saw itself on the back end of coming of age. The band offered an arguably a maturing sound as well: Toy Caldwell's heroics met the needs of any dorm room air guitarist, while a subtle blend of rock, country, and jazz appealed to developing tastes in a way that, say, Lynyrd Skynyrd's testosterone drenched thunder could not. (Which isn't to say that Skynyrd was not a great band: In the southern rock pantheon, they're second only to the Allman Brothers.)

In "24 Hours at a Time," the singer drives headlong toward a relationship, as fast as legally permitted ("I've got this ride doin' 70 miles an hour").  The national speed limit was 70 mph when Toy Caldwell wrote "24 Hours," although there may be a nod to the pending change to 55 mph, which would slow his approach to the woman who is "always on my mind/24 hours at a time."

In any case, "24 Hours" attempts to balance out songs like "Gentle On Mind," in which the male singer expresses appreciation for a woman precisely she'll always be there no matter how much he strays and rambles. In "24 Hours," by contrast, the road is an inconvenience, something to disposed of as quickly as possible no matter how far the singer has come ("I've been drivin' about six hours") or how near the destination ("Texarkana's an hour ahead/And I've got to keep my wheels rollin'"). He's heading toward, he hopes, someone who loves him, and the romance of the road is a barrier.

For in the end, the singer drives toward hope ("I'm hopin' you feel the same way"), and that's the emotion most educed by the extended jam between Caldwell, Jerry Eubanks (tenor sax), and Charlie Daniels (fiddle), an improvisation that restates the journey musically and the reasons behind it. The end of the jam leads not to a reprise of the driving chorus, as one might expect, but a repetition of the singer's desire that she "feel the same way." We want that, too.

LYRICS
I've been down around Houston, Texas
Where the sun shines most of the time
I've been drivin' about six hours
Tryin' to reach that Arkansas line

But Texarkana's an hour ahead
And I've got to keep my wheels rollin'

But woman you're always on my mind
24 hours at a time
So my woman I'm hopin' you feel the same way

Woman, you know that I miss you
'Til I can't miss you no more
I've got this ride doin 70 miles an hour
She's loaded, she's down to the floor

But I've got to reach that Arkansas line
Before the sun goes down

But woman you're always on my mind
24 hours at a time
So my woman I'm hopin' you feel the same way

Woman you know I need you
I've been on the road too much
Tired of lookin' at the highway
Got to keep in touch some way

I've been down around Houston, Texas
Where the sun shines most of the time
I've been drivin' about six hours
Tryin' to reach that Arkansas line

But Texarkana's an hour ahead
And I've got to keep my wheels rollin'

But woman you're always on my mind
24 hours at a time
So my woman I'm hopin' you feel the same way

Feel the same way...
Feel the same way...
Feel the same way...



The studio version, from the album A New Life:

Dolly Parton: Jolene

SONG Jolene

WRITTEN BY Dolly Parton

PERFORMED BY Dolly Parton

APPEARS ON Jolene (1973); The Essential Dolly Parton (2005); The Ultimate Dolly Parton; many others.

NOTE 1 "Jolene" is an essential Dolly Parton song. Any anthology without it is by definition incomplete. 2 The White Stripes' epic performance of "Jolene" appears on their album Under Great White Northern Lights.

Alarmed by the attention paid by her husband to a sexy bank teller and charmed by the name of a fan, Dolly Parton combined the two and wrote a classic country ballad of sexual envy and despair. Though lyrically simple on the surface, "Jolene" evokes a swirl of competing emotions that, though addressed exclusively to the eponymous temptress, raises question after question about the nature of the singer's devotion to her husband and indeed about her own state of mind.

Parton gets down to brass tacks immediately, invoking her rival's name repeatedly before casting off any pretense of pride to beg for mercy. She commingles flattery and abject submission, lauding Jolene's many physical attributes before admitting that "I cannot compete with you" and that Jolene could "easily take my man." Parton admits that her man dreams of Jolene and not her ("He talks about you in his sleep") and then comes out and says it: "My happiness depends on you." One wonders whether Parton takes a terrible risk by being so brutally frank: Might she not be tempting Jolene to aim her erotic power at Parton's man?

In any case, Parton lets us into the soul of a troubled and lost woman whose happiness depends on Jolene, on her man -- on anyone but herself. She has so lost control of her own life that she's willing to humiliate herself before a younger woman for the sake of a man who may be preoccupied with that woman. Indeed, that's all we really know about the husband, save that for some reason Parton believes "he's the only one for me."

Indeed, in many ways, "Jolene" is as interesting for what Parton leaves unsaid as for what she reveals. She absolves her husband of any complicity in the triangle, presumably because he could not possibly resist Jolene's siren song. Is it because men are that weak? Or has he strayed before, but Parton fears that this time he won't return? Why does Parton believe that Jolene's allure will overwhelm the substance of a relationship? Possibly, the relationship has faded or become loveless and routine, but she doesn't want to leave something that has its own comforts and because she fears that, whoever she is with, there will always be another Jolene.

Although she sings that "you don't know what he means to me," she never explains what just what he does mean to her. She's inviting us to fill in the blank with out our own experience, but it may also be that she can't recognize her own jealousy and possessiveness. We don't know what she means to him, either, although he comes across as aloof and easily led astray. Why would an emotionally healthy woman need such a man in her life?

In the end, the singer emerges as a troubled person whose life has become absorbed into that of her husband's, fears losing it and him, and can do nothing but beg mercy of the force seemingly bent on destroying her. In this regard, "Jolene" serves as a cautionary tale reminding us "to thine own self be true," because when push comes to shove, you don't want to jump only to find that Jolene holds the net.

LYRICS

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

I'm begging you please don't take my man

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Please don't take him just because you can

Your beauty is beyond compare

With flaming locks of auburn hair

With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green

Your voice is like soft summer rain,

And I cannot compete with you Jolene

He talks about you in his sleep

There's nothing I can do to keep

From crying when I hear your name, Jolene

And I can easily understand

How you could easily take my man

But you don't know what he means to me, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

I'm begging you please don't take my man

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Please don't take him just because you can

You could have your choice of men

But I could never love again

He's the only one for me, Jolene

I had to have this talk with you

My happiness depends on you

And whatever you decide to do, Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

I'm begging you please don't take my man

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Please don't take him just because you can

Jolene, Jolene

The White Stripes bring post-millenial angst to Parton's lyrics; the enthusiastic crowd demonstrates the crossover appeal of Parton's lyrics and the universality of her theme: