Favorite Story Song contest
Popular music has stopped telling us stories.
The story song used to be a staple of pop, occasionally rock, certainly country. But since the advent of “singers” enslaved to Auto-Tune and “songwriting” done by marketing committee (not to mention the whole “bro-country” movement), the story song (along with other forms of good music) has vanished from the mainstream airwaves.*
Yet there’s a need for those, not least because I have to sing something to my daughter at bedtime. Currently she loves Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” and Springsteen’s “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).”
So in the comments below, tell me your favorite story song, and why it speaks to you. You’ll be entered to win one of three advance reader copies of the upcoming fifth Tufa novel, Gather Her Round. The deadline is midnight Sunday, January 29th. Assuming we haven’t been destroyed in a nuclear war by then.
*I’m not one of those cranky old-timers who says there’s no good new music. There’s tons of it. You just won’t hear it on the radio.
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"Timothy" from The Buoys in 1970 is a happy little bouncy tune that tells a nice story about culinary adventure!
I adore "Timothy." I especially love the cheery Latin horn riff, which is so ridiculous in context.Craig wrote: ""Timothy" from The Buoys in 1970 is a happy little bouncy tune that tells a nice story about culinary adventure!"
Oh God, there were so many story songs that I adored as a child. "Teddy Bear" by Red Sovine, C. W. McCall's "Convoy", "Roll On 18 Wheeler" by Alabama ... it was the 70's and Truckers were cool. Don't judge me! ... not to mention about about 3/4 of Ray Stevens' discography.My favorite isn't a trucker ballad. The one I love even beyond "Shriners Convention" or the "Ballad of the Blue Cyclone" is "The Legend of Wooley Swamp" the Charlie Daniels Band.
Wooly Swamp tells is a ghostly story about some mean "white trash" boys robbing and killing a greedy recluse but getting sucked down into quicksand as they try to make their escape while the the ghost of the old man laughs at their demise.
