Song Revived From A Not-Forgotten Past
Every so often, a gem is unearthed from the song vaults of time which immediately invites intrigue and fascination. The attention may focus on the original song and its composer or the distinctive interpretation of the cover version. It could even raise social issues from a past era.
“Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)” fits the bill in each of these categories. It was written and recorded by Tom T Hall, one of the finest singer-songwriters of his generation, so good he was known as simply “The Storyteller!” It was recently covered by one of the most polished country/bluegrass bands, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers. And perhaps the true fascination of the song lies in its origins.
For it is a song which invokes the tragedy of the Vietnam conflict, or, indeed, the futility of war itself – something now as pertinent as was in the early 1970’s when Hall included in his album One Hundred Children. Hall once again tells a wonderful story. This time a tragic ballad of a legless soldier narrating his return from the Vietnam War.
It somehow flew under radar when he wrote it in 1968. For - at a time of growing opposition to the war - the musical airspace was invaded by more popular anti-war songs across all the music genres, whether it be Pete Seeger’s folk standard “Bring Em Home” (1966); Richie Havens’ blues rendition “Handsome Johnny“ (1967); or Country Joe & the Fish’s infectious pop classic “ I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die” (1967). And this was a time when some radio stations across the U.S. were reluctant to play protest songs – none-the-least the conservative country outlets.
But now Hall’s beautiful lament has deservedly been brought to light!
Chris Jones & The Night Drivers released “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)” as a single in January last year when it topped the Roots Music Report Bluegrass Song Chart. And two months ago, it was one of the band’s five previously-released singles included in their 11-track Chalk Lines and Dust album. Jones has one of the best baritone voices in modern bluegrass and this - helped by soothing mandolin (Mark Stoffel) and fiddle (Carley Arrowood) - beautifully invokes Hall’s endearing sensitivity of the original.
Added to this, is the intriguing backstory to the song’s revival.
For Jones – a popular figure in his musical genre – was a long-time friend of Hall and his wife and songwriting-partner Miss Dixie Hall. (“They were my Nashville Mom and Pa.”) In fact, Jones and some members of the Night Drivers were invited to join Hall in his last public concert. Several years ago, when Jones was prepping his album Lost Souls & Free Spirits: The Rebel Collection Old & New, he told Hall he wanted to include his long-forgotten “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken).” But Hall persuaded him instead to use “A Hero in Harlan,” a song he and Dixie wrote for his 2008 - and last - album Sings Miss Dixie and Tom T.
Both songs are about soldiers returning from Vietnam. One is in a flag-draped casket and the other alive, but with no legs. Each reflects Hall’s uncanny ability to tell a story - and convey a message - in an understated way.
“He had a unique ability to incorporate bits of humor into a sad story, and this is definitely one of those,” Jones said at the time of the release of “Mama Bake a Cake ….” It is the first of Hall’s songs he has recorded since The Storyteller died in 2021, aged 85.
And while the song reinforces the true horror of war, the humor Hall injects is just down-right clever - from the very first verse:
People staring at me
As they wheel me down the ramp towards my plane
Th war is over for me
I’ve forgotten everything except pain
Thank you, sir, and yes, sir
It was worth it for the ol’ red, white and blue
And since I won’t be walking
I suppose I’ll save some money buying shoes
The bottle hidden underneath the blanket
Over my two battered legs
I can see the stewardess make over me
And ask, Were you afraid?
I’ll say, Why no, I’m Superman
And couldn’t find the phone booth quite in time
A GI gets a lot of laughs
He remembers all the funny lines
“The way this story is told, you’re completely inside his head, and inside his head is not just the tragedy of it, but some humor too. There are jokes and that’s another thing that really sets Tom T Hall apart as a writer. He can deal with these kind of tragic and dark topics but also have this lighter side,” Jones told Real Roots Radio when the single was first released. “This is a song that will definitely make you cry, but you’re right in the head of this guy. I think it is an amazing song.”
Tom T and Dixie wrote “A Hero in Harlan” almost 40 years after “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken). It is, as might be expected, a darker tale as here a young soldier will lay down his life in a war. But again Hall uses lyrical invention to contrast youthful innocence in rural Kentucky with the sad reality - and consequences - of war:
The world is a big place and maybe needs saving
But what can a country boy do with a gun
He used to win teddy bears down at the fairgrounds
When living was easy and shooting was fun
They fold up the stars and stripes for his mother
And gently they trade the flag for her son
A harder exchange never took place in Harlan
But it’s not the first time it’s ever been done
“We live in a sort of politically tense time, a divided time. I think hitting people over the head with a message is not a great thing to do in this day and time. We can learn a lot from Tom T Hall’s approach to social commentary and things like that. To do it subtlety, artfully and not in a condescending way,” said Jones.
Two of Americana’s biggest names – John Prine and Emmylou Harris – did in fact “learn a lot” from Hall’s approach when they wrote probably two of the genre’s finest songs to traverse the personal heartbreak of Vietnam. For neither song is at all judgemental.
Prine wrote his classic “Sam Stone” for his 1970 debut self-title album. It is a tragic tale of a drug-addicted Vietnam vet with a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back and contains one of the best one-liners in music – there’s a hole in daddy’s arm/where all the money goes. The song doesn’t specify Vietnam, just serving in a conflict overseas. But Prine was drafted in 1966 and sent to Germany. A few of his friends in the same intake ended up in Vietnam and he often reflected on how they returned different men. The song revealed his genius as an inventive lyricist.
Sam Stone’s welcome home didn’t last too long
He went to work when he’d spent his last dime
And soon he took to stealin’
When he got that empty feelin’
For a hundred-dollar habit without overtime
And the gold rolled through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose
While the kids ran around wearin’ other people’s clothes
There is probably no one better than Emmylou Harris to write a song relating to war. Her father Major Walter Harris was taken prisoner after being shot down during the Korean War. She was a small child and her family did not know he had survived until he was released after many months in a POW camp.
Emmy’s signature song will always be “Boulder to Birmingham,” her tribute to Gram Parsons. But her finest composition has to be “Red Dirt Girl.” She was motivated to write it while travelling south from Nashville. “I was heading to New Orleans when I came across a sign which said ‘Meridian, Mississippi,’ and by the time I got there (New Orleans) I had the story inside my head.” It is a sad, melodic ballad about a “red dirt girl in a red dirt town.” Meridian actually sits on the border of Alabama, so it would not have been difficult for Harris – an Alabama native – to sensitively reflect on heartland America, where the loss of a brother in war is sadly woven into the social landscape.
She loved her brother I remember back when
He was fixin’ up a ’49 Indian
He told her, Little sister, gonna ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again
He never got farther than Vietnam
I was standing there with her
When the telegram came for Lillian
Now he’s lyin’ somewhere
About a million miles from Meridian
For many, all wars may seem like a million miles away. But not so for songwriters, who, since the American Civil War more than one-and-a-half centuries ago, have been inspired to write about conflict, whether it be seen as glorious or otherwise! And while no conflict has been more contentious for composers than Vietnam, contemporary battles still light a short fuse with many songwriters – the Americana genre being no exception.
So what if those who know war like no other – the soldiers themselves – can tell their own stories in song. Well that is exactly what Americana big-name Mary Gauthier enabled when she put together her 2018 album Rifles and Rosary Beads. It came about after Gauthier was invited to participate in a program labelled “Songwriting With: Soldiers.” The result is certainly the best of her ten albums and now considered a classic of the genre.
All the eleven songs were co-written by – “and for” – military veterans. Each song is a story, defined differently, but consistent with the emotion of trauma. And what makes this collection so distinctive is that it is truly contemporary. The forever changing nature of war, whether it be weapons or participants, is wonderfully dramatized throughout the album.
One song – simply titled “Iraq” - in particular says 21st Century war. For it gives a long-overdue female perspective to life in the fighting forces, given the percentage of woman in the armed forces has probably increased 10-fold since the Vietnam War era. Co-written by Gauthier and Brandy Davidson, it tells the tale of a female mechanic sexually harassed by fellow soldiers. The lyrical composition helps channel true emotion into the mechanic’s sad plight. The three-line outro says it perfectly:
A salute and a wink
A little pat on the back
My enemy wasn’t Iraq
But the song which cries out that war is everlasting is the appropriately-titled “The War After The War.” And even more appropriate, the co-writers, Gauthier and Beth Nielsen Chapman, teamed up with six military wives to complete the inspiring composition at the 2015 “Songwriting With: Soldiers” retreat in Virginia. It is a wonderful fiddle-fuelled lament about war never ending, not just for those who return but those who never went. And now, can never forget:
I get no basic training, I get no purple heart
I’m supposed to carry on, I can’t fall apart
People look at you and thank you for the sacrifice you made
They look at me and smile and say
I’m lucky you’re okay
Invisible, the war after the war.
Tom T would have been inspired!
Paul Cutler
Editor Crossroads - Americana Music Appreciation
Paul Cutler
Editor Crossroads – Americana Music Appreciation
Comments