Songwriters

I have always admired songwriters. Think about Dolly Parton’s song, “Jolene.” You can listen to the lyrics and see the green-eyed beauty named Jolene who is taking away the singer’s lover. (Never mind the fact that Parton says she saw a little girl with green eyes, who was named Jolene, who inspired the song.) Or think of Clayton Delaney, by Tom T. Hall. When I interviewed him (many years ago), Hall said a lot of his music came from his surroundings.

One of Hall’s most famous early releases was “The Year that Clayton Delaney Died.” As with “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” the song was gleaned from a true story; the song is a tribute to a drunken guitar player who fell on hard times and taught Hall how to play the guitar when he was a boy. Hall said, “It started out with just me sitting down with a guitar and thinking, ‘Well, I want to thank Clayton.’” Another of Hall’s acclaimed songs, the philosophic “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine,” was drawn from a conversation he enjoyed with an elderly black man in a Miami bar. Hall’s own favorite song was “I Love” in 1974, which lists all the things in life that he holds most dear.

Photo from Unsplash by Mohammad Metri