When I started work as a disc jockey in 1978, I was into rock music. Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin ruled my life, along with ELO, James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett albums thrown in for balance. The very idea of country music turned my stomach, due to the fact that I had heard snippets along the way of cheating songs and drinking songs and songs about Okies from Muskogee.
So imagine my surprise when I was hired to work afternoons and weekends at the local radio station WRJW-AM and WJOJ-FM. At the edge of town, along the highway to the coast, the building was set back in a grove of pine trees, the antenna tower rising above, with its blinking aircraft anti collision lights. It was a small building, about the size of a ranch house, with three offices, two on air studios and one main broadcast studio for the news desk, singing groups and preachers. Parked out front was a station van, used for live remote broadcasts, originally a VW microbus, and then later a full size Chevy van. The FM station was cool, but the AM station had been playing for thirty years the very music that I hated. I would work some afternoons on the AM side, sign off the station at sunset, and then babysit the automated FM system until 10:00 during the week, with occasional live stints on the weekend.
After learning the intricacies of operating the control board, I had to deal with the selection of music. It was not hard to ignore the music if I tried, due to the fact that there is much to do during the three minute average of the usual country song, but occasionally the opportunity to listen critically presented itself. For the most part, my low opinion was not altered. There were plenty of songs with titles such as “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed”, “She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed Anytime” and “Pittsburgh Stealers”. Yes the misspelling is correct, and no, it does not alter the quality of the song one bit.
But, occasionally something would sink in. It was around this time that I heard my first Bob McDill song, “Rake and Ramblin’ Man” by Don Williams. Don’s smooth, easy delivery drew me in, and the song took over from there. It was about a normal guy whose one night stand had resulted in a pregnancy, and his attempt to deal with the attitude adjustments and the practical plans. He says to his friend:
“Now she’s feeling sick in the morning and can’t get into her jeans
I spent my last ten dollars and bought her a second hand ring.
I start to work next Monday, ‘cause I just can’t let her down.
I’ve had me some good times, but that’s all changing now.
‘Cause you know I’m a rake and a ramblin’ man, free as an eagle flies.
Well, look at me now and tell me the truth…
Do I look like a Daddy to you?”
So imagine my surprise when I was hired to work afternoons and weekends at the local radio station WRJW-AM and WJOJ-FM. At the edge of town, along the highway to the coast, the building was set back in a grove of pine trees, the antenna tower rising above, with its blinking aircraft anti collision lights. It was a small building, about the size of a ranch house, with three offices, two on air studios and one main broadcast studio for the news desk, singing groups and preachers. Parked out front was a station van, used for live remote broadcasts, originally a VW microbus, and then later a full size Chevy van. The FM station was cool, but the AM station had been playing for thirty years the very music that I hated. I would work some afternoons on the AM side, sign off the station at sunset, and then babysit the automated FM system until 10:00 during the week, with occasional live stints on the weekend.
After learning the intricacies of operating the control board, I had to deal with the selection of music. It was not hard to ignore the music if I tried, due to the fact that there is much to do during the three minute average of the usual country song, but occasionally the opportunity to listen critically presented itself. For the most part, my low opinion was not altered. There were plenty of songs with titles such as “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed”, “She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed Anytime” and “Pittsburgh Stealers”. Yes the misspelling is correct, and no, it does not alter the quality of the song one bit.
But, occasionally something would sink in. It was around this time that I heard my first Bob McDill song, “Rake and Ramblin’ Man” by Don Williams. Don’s smooth, easy delivery drew me in, and the song took over from there. It was about a normal guy whose one night stand had resulted in a pregnancy, and his attempt to deal with the attitude adjustments and the practical plans. He says to his friend:
“Now she’s feeling sick in the morning and can’t get into her jeans
I spent my last ten dollars and bought her a second hand ring.
I start to work next Monday, ‘cause I just can’t let her down.
I’ve had me some good times, but that’s all changing now.
‘Cause you know I’m a rake and a ramblin’ man, free as an eagle flies.
Well, look at me now and tell me the truth…
Do I look like a Daddy to you?”
On each record that we played, the title of the song was listed, along with the songwriter’s name in parentheses on the label. I noticed the name Bob McDill on that song, and most of the songs that I was really drawn to for many years after.
I don’t mean to imply that everything McDill wrote was literature, either. As a professional songwriter, he produced many ordinary tunes for others just, as they say, to keep the lights on. But Bob had the ability to turn out occasional songs that would make me shake my head in amazement. One such song, probably his most famous, was “Good Old Boys Like Me”, another great recording for Don Williams. I never really liked the title, as it seems to imply shallowness. But the song really delivers. It is a nod to growing up southern and literate, which happens more often than many people realize. It deals with longing and human frailty, and the absolute need for some to leave the south while being always inexplicably attached to it.
“When I was a kid, Uncle Remus put me to bed.
With a picture of Stonewall Jackson above my head.
Then Daddy came in to kiss his little man,
With gin on his breath and a Bible in his hand.
He’d talk about honor and things I should know,
Then he’d stagger a little as he went out the door.”
Good Old Boys Like Me is considered by many to be the greatest country song ever written, and it’s hard to argue the point. From the mellow delivery to the irresistible hook, to the depths of the lyrics, it is still my favorite McDill song.
Along the way I fell in love with an album by Bobby Bare called Drunk and Crazy. The songs were eclectic and seemingly written for Bare’s voice, deep, resonant and full of emotion. One of the songs on the album was “Song of the South” written by McDill, and later recorded by Alabama, making it a huge hit, but missing the mark by being too fast and unemotional. In it, McDill wrote about the south in the depression:
“Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch, we all picked cotton, but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a southern Democrat, said “They oughta kill a rich man to vote like that”
A line so evocative that Alabama wussed out and changed to “They oughta get a rich man to vote like that.”
Later in the song, he says
“I was eighteen before I ate my fill; we lived on the garden and the cow’s good will.
Winter was wet and summer was dry, and Momma was old at thirty-five.”
I went on to work at other stations after that, some country formatted, some not. At one station, I worked with Ted White, who had spent some time in Nashville and imparted some wisdom about country music, like Tanya Tucker’s nickname in the industry (it rhymed), and how songs got made. He told me one thing that has always stuck with me. He said that there was so much junk in Nashville that a good song stuck out like a sore thumb. He said “You can’t hide a good song in Nashville. Somebody will always find it.” That has always made me smile, and was always the basis for my respect for the genre. Until now.
Something happened along the way, as I began to sour on country again. I found myself being drawn to Album Oriented Rock stations as I grew older, occasionally drifting back to country stations and finding a gem along the way, such as “Time Marches On” by Tracy Lawrence and “I Hate Everything” by George Strait. As the rise of Country Music Television happened, we were overrun by the plastic artists. Young, good looking people singing other people’s songs while posing like rock stars. I call them the hat dippers. At any important line in the song, like where they shouldn’t be crossed, or she better know that he’s not kidding, or the bad guys ought to look out for an American boot in the ass, they strategically dip the edge of their hat and stare into the camera. As if they really, really meant that. Please.
And so it did not surprise me to learn that the great songs by the songwriter I loved had gone away for a reason. Bob McDill says that he retired from songwriting in 2000. Not because he lost the talent, or the desire to see good songs recorded, but because the people on whom he depended to interpret his words were gone. They are still around, they are still talented, but they are touring casinos and county fairs, and they don’t have an album out soon, or a video debuting on CMT this weekend. They are not hat dippers; they are not pretty boys or girls anymore. They have outlived their usefulness to whatever mega corporation has dipped its toe into the music business this year. Yet, they still trudge on, to their credit, and I for one hope that the industry crashes and comes back to them. But I won’t hold my breath, or bet the farm on it.
