I'm Running Out Of Love /
Dolly Parton
HELL HATH NO FURY WEEK

In all the hoopla over the tragic death of Whitney Houston last weekend, I must've heard "I Will Always Love You" twenty-five times.  Whitney's version was stellar, but I prefer Dolly Parton's version -- after all, she wrote it.  That fact seems to surprise a lot of people, judging from internet chatter over the past couple of days.  Why should they be surprised?  Everybody knows Dolly for her pneumatic hourglass figure, overdone blonde hair, and sugary little-girl twang, but behind that Barbie doll facade is a serious songwriter and a force to be reckoned with.  I'm sorry to hear that her recent movie with Queen Latifah, Joyful Noise, was supposedly dreadful -- those are two women I'd really love to hang out with.

So here's Dolly in prime Hell Hath No Fury mode...

It's an early track, from Dolly's second album, released in 1968; still working to establish herself as more than just Porter Waggoner's "girl singer," she sticks to a tried-and-true Nashville sound, with nimble guitar picking, tick-tock percussion, and hoedown fiddle. Like many of her early songs, she wrote it with her uncle, Bill Owens, who was her earliest mentor, teaching her to play the guitar and taking her to Nashville when she was still a teenager. (Uncle Bill is still a Dollywood regular.)

That subject matter is classic country too -- I'll guess that at least fifty percent of all country songs in this era dealt with infidelity. Growing up in the Midwest, I was convinced that all country music fans were wife-swapping cheaters and whorers. But perky, sassy Dolly didn't come across as a victim -- if her man was going to cheat on her, he'd be sorry.

A barely veiled threat runs through this song. "Better learn to resist temptation / Or someday you'll wake up and I'll be far away." "I ain't gonna let you take my heart and break it." "How long did you think I'd stay quiet and take it?" "Someday you'll pay for the wild seeds you're sowing." She's not moaning, she's not feeling sorry for herself -- she's got her fists planted firmly on those curvy hips and her big blue eyes are shooting sparks of fire. I love the confident swings of her voice on those upward climbing phrases, how she curls her twang around certain words with just a hint of spite.  She's got a vibrato, but it's quivering with rage, not with sorrow. (Listen to the menacing shiver on "running out of patience.") This isn't a woman who'll take anything lying down.

Okay, so he seems to "get worse every day" and keeps on "doing me wrong" -- is he really cheating on her?  The most we know is in verse three: "You come and go just any time you want to / And you never bother to tell me where you're going." That's enough to plant suspicion in her mind -- "I wonder if there's anything you don't do" -- but actual proof is almost irrelevant.  He's not there for her, he's not being honest with her, he's not really sharing their life together.  And Dolly's put her finger right on a big truth:  How careless behavior can eat away at love, until there's none left. Men, take note.

The fictional world of country music may be full of unfaithful wives and husbands, but that runs hand-in-hand with a sense that marriage is sacred.  Dolly's character in this song isn't getting back at him by fooling around herself (though there's plenty of "revenge cheating" in other country songs -- listen to Loretta Lynn's "The Shoe Is On the Other Foot Tonight" or Dolly's own "I Wish I Felt This Way At Home").  She believes in marriage, which makes his straying all the worse.  Dolly herself has been married for over 40 years to the same man, who almost never appears in public with her and has absolutely no celebrity profile of his own.   Maybe she knows something about how marriage is supposed to work -- something that the rest of us could learn from.

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Can't shuffle during the week these days, with electric drills and hammering going on all day every day.  (I HATE this renovation.) Thank god for the weekend!

1. Mean Mr. Mustard / The Beatles
From Abbey Road (1969)
One problem with the shuffle: It's always jarring to hear one isolated section of the great Side Two medley on this album. (Read my You Never Give Me Your Money post for the full version of how much I love this "musical mosaic"). Every time I hear John sing that Mr. Mustard is a "dirty old man," I think of Paul's grandfather -- "such a clean old man" -- in A Hard Day's Night.  And "his sister Pam" -- is that Polythene Pam, whose song we'll get next?  (And is Polythene Pam the roommate of Lovely Rita Meter Maid?) Yeah, I know, I listen to too much Beatles music. But I love that Mr. Mustard "keeps a ten bob note up his nose" -- perfect Lennonesque detail. 

2. Why Why Why Why Why / Brinsley Schwarz
From Nervous on the Road (1972)
Another throwaway Nick Lowe country rock gem, featuring one of his standard lonely losers.  Miserable in love, miserable out of love, moping around the house -- sound familiar?

3. The Thrill / Alan Price
From Alan Price (1977)
The cynical side of Alan Price, the side that made his O Lucky Man! soundtrack so brilliant. "Oh I just love the thrill of rock and roll / It gives release unto the darkest soul / The thickest yob can get a job / Rock and roll can keep you off the dole."  And is it sung like a rock anthem? No indeed -- it's a chirpy little music hall ditty, sung over a ragtime piano. So there!

4. Space Oddity / David Bowie
From Space Oddity (1969)
One of the great eccentric rock songs of all time, inspiring one of my earliest posts here.

5. I Wish I Felt This Way At Home / Dolly Parton
From Just Because I'm a Woman (1968)
Adultery, one of the great themes of country music. That tremble in Dolly's voice is super-saturated with guilt and desire; yet she still has an innocent, forthright quality. (This is from her first solo album, when she was still Porter Waggoner's "girl find.") She really does wish she felt this way about her husband, that's the kicker.  She means to be good... 

6. Pressure / The Kinks
From Low Budget (1979)
This album marked the Kinks' US comeback with a vengeance.  Just to prove they weren't British Invasion fossils, here comes this proto-punk anthem, given Ray Davies' special fragile neurotic twist: "Pressure, pressure, I've got pressure! / Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah..."  Was Ray mocking punk, or trying to keep up with the times?  Both, no doubt. 

7. You're Wondering Now / The Specials
From The Specials  (1980)
Ah, the lo-fi charms of the Specials! That knock on the door, the muffled "You can't come in!" And then the mopey shuffling reggae begins, brooding over how he's going to get by now that he's on his own. At last the instruments pack up, and he's singing alone, still wondering how... 

8. She's Going / The English Beat
From Special Beat Service (1982)
Perfect segue!  So it's going to be a ska Saturday -- I can live with that. Hear how the English Beat jacked up the ska tempo, made it more frantic, more urban.  Different drugs, I guess.

9. Take the Money and Run / Steve Miller
From Fly Like An Eagle (1976)
The tempo just got laidback again; we're far away from the Brixton streets, loping around in sunny Texas.  Yahoo! I wasn't living in the US in 1976, so I missed the radio overload of this song, thank goodness. Remember all those anarchistic 70s movies about wild young couples on crime sprees? Badlands, The Getaway, Sugarland Express (with True Romance and Natural-Born Killers their 1990s offspring)?  This song should have been the soundtrack for all of them.

10.  Hey Jude / The Beatles
From Past Masters, Vol, 2 (compilation)
So we begin and end with the Beatles -- that's fitting. Does this song go on too long?  Maybe, but I always, always, end up singing along with the "la la la la-la-la-las," which I'm sure was what Paul McCartney intended. My private theory: this is Paul's comeback to "All You Need Is Love"; he wanted the swaying crowds to be chanting along to his song, dammit.  And now they are.