Speaking of "Backslider's Wine" . . .

Vernon Oxford

You Tube

. . . here's Vernon Oxford's version of Michael Martin Murphey's barroom lament:

Backslider's Wine

As the rain ruins my alibi,
I'm down to telling you my troubled mind.
It's not the sun-bright path
That bade me leave my home.
It's that fine Backslider's Wine.

My momma sings out in my memory.
Son, don't drink no red-eyed shine.
Fight for your rights
But just don't fight the past,
And do not drink Backslider's Wine.

I took myself to be a strong and loving soul
Till I found myself,
Face down on a barroom floor,
Crying o God what has become of me.
I dare not drink Backslider's Wine no more.

My momma sings out in my memory.
Son, don't drink no red-eyed shine.
Fight for your rights
But just don't fight the past.
Please don't drink Backslider's Wine.

And please don't drink Backslider's Wine.

This a bit different from my memory of the version sung by Jerry Jeff Walker, which I heard 35 years ago and loved but cannot locate on You Tube. I'm particularly uncertain of the line "But just don't fight the past," specifically "the past," which might be "the path" or even "to pass," and I'd appreciate any correction from some attuned soul with better ears than mine. But whatever the precise version, I reckon I can accept this honky-tonk one by Vernon Oxford since the fellow was born in the Arkansas Ozark town of Rogers.

Besides, I don't even know if Walker sings it like Murphey originally meant it . . .

Jerry Jeff Walker: "Little Bird"

Jerry Jeff Walker

(Image from Wikipedia)

Back in my own outlaw days, I listened to the outlaw country musicians -- Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and, among others, the lesser-known Jerry Jeff Walker, whom most of you might know only because of his song "Mr. Bojangles."

Walker's real name is Ronald Clyde Crosby, and he was born upstate from New York City in Oneonta during the Second World War (specifically, March 16, 1942). He first got into folk music, like Bob Dylan, and I believe that they knew each other during their time in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s -- for one of Dylan's early albums has a version of Walker's "Bojangles." He got interested in jazz in the late 1960s and moved away from folk music, eventually settling on a jazz-influenced country sound, and he came to associate himself with the aforementioned country outlaws in Austin, Texas, where he began making music in the 1970s. That's about the same time that I moved to Texas to attend Baylor University, only 90 miles from Austin, and began to listen to Walker.

I've not listened to him much in many years, but I still love his old songs, especially an obscure one from his 1973 Viva Terlingua album titled "Little Bird" that I used to play again and again on dreary, rainy days in Waco, Texas. Walker's got one of the naturally most melodic, rich voices that you'll ever hear -- just to listen to him talk is a treat -- and he does a wonderful job with this song. Open up a second browser, come to the Gypsy Scholar site again, click on this "Little Bird" link, and listen as you follow along with the words:

Little Bird

A little bird come sit upon my windowsill,
Sat there through the falling rain.
As I watched that little bird upon my windowsill,
I saw my thoughts of you go by again.

Picture of my face, reflected on the pane,
Is it tears, or is it rain?

Remember how we talked before we said goodbye,
Too young to know the world outside our door?
We laughed and said that love was free, birds that fly the winds,
Rainy day made me think of you once more.

Picture of my face, reflected on the pane,
Is it tears, or is it rain?

No regrets about the past, see how young we were.
The world was love, and time was but a thought.
But many things go many ways, and many times but once,
Till your life is past, and your love is but a thought.

Picture of my face, reflected on the pane,
Is it tears, or is it rain?

So as my thoughts go tumbling back, I wonder how you look.
I wonder if you’ve seen that little bird.
I wonder if he’s sat upon your windowsill.
I wonder if you’ll ever hear these words.

Picture of my face, reflected on the pane,
Is it tears, or is it rain?

Is it tears, or is it rain?

I love that image of the face reflected on a window pane, the rain dripping down the glass like tears, and the even more subtle wordplay as you listen and hear "reflected on the pane" become "reflected on the pain." Walker's a clever lyricist.

And he's still around, making music . . .

David Lynn Jones

David Lynn Jones

"Mixed Emotions"

(Image from Amazon.com)

I'm not finished with Blumenberg, not by a long shot, but abstract thought, despite its aeyrie heights, can get a bit heavy, perhaps from the thin air up near the aetherial realms where eagles and epicycles still wheel about in their majestic circles. Today, I'm bringing it all down to earth and back home -- or maybe back to earth and down home, 'cause I'm posting on a country musician from my neck of the woods (not Porter Wagoner this time). David Lynn Jones, whose photo you see above, grew up in the tiny Ozark village of Bexar, Arkansas, around where my own maternal Grandfather Perryman did many, many years earlier. Jones, whose father was a farmer and mother a preacher (if I recall), was born a few years before me -- in 1950 if we can believe Answers.com (but that site usually borrows from Wikipedia) -- so I didn't hang out with him, but he was a nephew of my step-Grandfather Archie Dillinger and sang at Grandpa Archie's funeral (or so I'm told, for I was living abroad at the time), and like Archie and me, Jones is part Cherokee. I don't recall ever meeting Jones, who would be about seven years my senior, until we were both grown men and my my brother John, who was pastoring a church in Viola, Arkansas, introduced us after a Sunday sermon. Jones seemed like a humble fellow despite his good looks and musical talent, and he must have settled down a lot from his youth, for I recall hearing a lot of wild stories that would seem to cast him as someone in the mold of such Outlaw Country Musicians as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, or Jerry Jeff Walker. My wife Sun-Ae met him as well back when she was still my fiancée, and at our country wedding in an abandoned old church on a country road not far from Bexar, we played his song "Nightingale Waltz" immediately after the (in)formal ceremony. I like what music of his that I've listened to, but I haven't heard much of it because it's difficult to find the albums despite his 1986 hit "Living in the Promiseland," which was covered by Willie Nelson and went quickly to number one on the country charts. For a few photographs of Jones, go to one or more of the following websites:

Ron Newcomer's Celebrity Photos: David Lynn Jones (as a young man) Amazon.com Site: Wood, Wind and Stone Image (from 1989) Michael Buffalo Smith, "2006 Americana Music Conference and Awards," Swampland.com (for a recent photo of an older Jones)

For the interested and intrigued, here's David Lynn Jones singing a song about his grown-up little sister, "Bonnie Jean." UPDATE: Larry Saidman has asked that I link this blog entry to a more recent entry on David Lynn Jones, and as I told him: "Sure, I can link to that blog entry of June 6th, 2008: 'David Lynn Jones: here in our hearts, too.' At that entry, I've linked to David Lynn's My Space site, where he sings his song 'Here in My Heart.'"

UPDATE as of December 2020:

Below are over 200 comments in what became an investigation of identity theft, with this blog entry playing an important role through comments that set some of us off in search of the real David Lynn Jones - was he living in Mountain Home, Arkansas, or Cave City, Arkansas?

When you reach the 200th comment, you'll have to click on the link "newer" to read comments 201 and up.

For greater ease, here is that link now.