KENNY ROGERS – "Coward Of The County"

There’s a baroque quality about Kenny Roger’s work which means that the emotional ‘volume’ is always turned up to 11 and this is no exception. His songs are the musical equivalent of those tortured Hispanic statues of saints, writhing in pain and crying tears of blood. They have a kind of car crash quality that is initially fascinating but quickly turns rancid. The only way I can imagine this being interesting would be if it were do be remade in a cold neuromantic way perhaps by Marc Almond – although I’m probably hinting too much at greater things to come.

It might not be very good, but it is probably the most classical example of Robert McKee’s three act structure of Hollywood storytelling that we’ll come across on Popular. Consider;

It really does everything by the book. It establishes the protagonist’s handicap (“everybody knew that Tommy was the coward of the county”, none called him Tommy they called him Yellow), turns things around for him (when, at the age of ten, his father dies, he learns that he doesn’t have to fight to be a man), gives him a period of grace (“in the arms of Becky he didn’t have to prove he was a man”).

… And then the worst thing that could possibly happen happens! In what must be a first for a number one hit, Becky is gang-raped! (by the Gattling brothers “and there was three of them!”). He then must face his nemesis (those vicious Gattlings) in a bar. He looks at them, and then walks away (but “you could have heard a pin drop”) – then one of the Gattlings unwisely says there goes Yellow, and he turns round and (presumably) shoots all three Gattlings to the floor, reflecting that sometimes a man can’t turn the other cheek and has to fight. But nobody calls Tommy the coward of the county after that.

It is the sort of song that I can imagine giving George W. Bush ideas, but it really is formally perfect, if morally and musically dubious.

And bloody hell Tom, “Teddy Bear”? Eeeewww.

Someone at a Presidential debate did actually ask Michael Dukakis what he would do if his wife was brutally raped.

I like me some Kenny but I could never stand this, I think even Toby Keith would think twice about it. Ask me about it again when this election is over and I’m not so sensitive about the concept of redneck revenge.

I’ve always wondered how the Gatling Boys weren’t able to beat the shite out of Tommy – I mean, there were three of them, and they presumably had some fighting experience, unlike old yella.

He would have been better advised to seek legal redress through the proper channels.

But then again, maybe them thar Gatlin boys had the whole town in their pockets?

We will never know.

Another ropey moralistic tale told as only Country music (and Kenny Rodgers in particular) can. The backing is particularly bland and employs the truck drivers gear change after every chorus supposedly successively upping the ante as the story unfolds. Kenny doesn’t sound particularly engaged with his subject matter though which is odd for such an angst ridden tale and is probably what puts me off the most. Not a song I particularly enjoyed re-visiting. 2 is about right.

Heaven knows how this did so well. I’m also surprised so many of you are wound up by the story. I don’t think it’s a scary daily mail story. It’s not unlike so many other country songs – the bad guys get the shit kicked out of them not shot in fact and coward turns hero. You could hardly expect Rogers to sing about the gangbangers winning the fight. I just remain amazed that this outsoled everything else on the pop chart and knocked the specials off.

This wasn’t long after Reagan’s inauguration, was it?

I was going to say, Reagan won the election in November 1980 so took over in 1981. Why is there always a gap I wonder?

a few random thoughts on COTC
i. I feel i need to come to this ones defence somewhat- ok its tawdry and tasteless but fits in beside similar classics like Tony Christie’s “For Maria” or Porter Wagoner’s best work. Rogers’ fine vocal sells it for me and it has the “dear-god-what-were-they-thinking!”quality that i really enjoy in a lot of my country.

ii. Is this the only #1 apart from Yellow Subnarine to have a film made telling the story of the lyrics?

iii. Isnt there an obvious lyrical fluff by Kenny in the 2nd verse? Shouldnt it be “as HE heard those words again” rather than “I heard those words again”?

iv. My fave COTC memory was when Kenny performed it on (i think) Gloria Hunifords afternoon show in the mid 90s and due to the ‘sensitive’ nature of the lyrics removed the ‘rape section’ of the second verse- which had the unfortunate effect that the song became a tale of a man who renounced violence his whole life until one day he beat the living shit out of three brothers- for no reason whatsoever!…

Re 4: I remember really liking Captain Beaky at the time, but I haven’t heard it in the 28 years since. I’m always annoyed when Dale Winton passes over it. I’ve never knowingly heard ‘The Sheffield Grinder’ or ‘The Day We Went To Bangor’ since they were hits, either.

#26 – one of the sad side-effects of Popular is that I have become a dreadful miseryguts when it comes to records people think were #1 but weren’t. I always feel compelled to correct people in the pub and then feel like a) a pedant and b) a spectre at the feast.

I’m bridling gently at LondonLee’s “even Toby Keith” comment (#7) – it’s true that Toby made that “The Angry American” record at a very particular place in history, but Toby doesn’t make a habit of singing this kind of morally-repugnant stuff, really. It’s true that he’s a (Democrat-supporting!) tweaker of liberal sensibilities but he’s way more likely to treat you to a hymn to rugged domestic individualism or a good-old-boy community knees-up than indulge in the kind of murder balland which justifies vigilante violence! An interesting Toby counterpoint to COTC is the marvellous “New Orleans” off “How Do You Like Me Now?”, which I heartily recommend. I love Toby Keith. That is to say, I love a lot of Toby Keith’s records, even some I disagree with.

I too find COTC uncomfortable, though I can’t work out why I feel less discomfort with (for example) the Louvin Brothers’ version of “Knoxville Girl”, which is a murder ballad without justification *or* remorse. Maybe because COTC sounds musically like it’s in the present, and lyrically like it’s part of the old weird America?

(“Teddy Bear” is awesome, by the way! Tom, did I ever play you the Dutch version I havem “Teddy Beer” by Gerard de Vries?)

Re #26 – you go right ahead, Tom. I’ve been a noble pedant since that day in ’83 when I brought home the Guinness book and discovered that Mike Read wasn’t just a curiously standoffish DJ and Saturday morning telly presenter.

#24: “The Sheffield Grinder” wasn’t the hit track, it was “Capstick comes home” which was a take-off of the old Hovis advert (‘real butter’, “New World symphony”, etc)

the other side of the country coin:
“i killed a man/just to watch him die” <— hurrah! er, no, wait, that’s not a good thing to do, is it?

haha i got into a big FITE w. doctrahs becky and vick on fri, over the claim that if you make a historical film JUST BCZ you have a bonnet left over from the film before that you didn’t get to use, then the film with the bonnet as pretext will BY DEFINITION by poor

they were all: first you need a good script obv
i was all: bah! RONG! ect

anyway, ditto a film based on this song-plot — no need for it to be bad (haha it’s basically the plot of HAMLET after all)

In a happy turn of events, this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/19/toby-keith-praises-obama_n_119930.html is the top google return for the search “Toby Keith Obama” – herein TK expresses his admiration for Sen. Obama, and also talks about the forthcoming film, “Beer For My Horses”, named after the TK song of a few years back. Marvellous.

Not sure if they made it to # 1 , but ” Ode to Billie Joe ” was a movie ( made for TV ? ) and Kenny Rogers made a movie called ” The Gambler ” …..

Re 21: Bobbie Gentry’s Ode To Billie Joe was made into a film in the mid 70s, re-titled as Ode To Billy Joe. Bobbie re-recorded the same for the titles. Not sure if she renamed herself Bobby for the occasion.

Boyzone/Westlife number ones prob coincide w/Alex Feguson manager of the month awards, dammit.

Re 24: V shocked when I got the first Guinness book that T Rex’s Zip Gun Boogie and Ray Stevens’ Turn The Radio On, both huge Radio 1 spins, didn’t even make Top 30

re: #27, surely the difference between The Louvins’ ‘Knoxville Girl’ and Kenny’s ‘Coward of the County’ is that by the end of the song, the Louvins seem genuinely chilled by the full horror of what they’ve done, and the murder itself is ostentatiously given no justification (while the girl’s pleas are given full voice), so it seems a song about damnation, evil and horror. Whereas we’re supposed to clap Kenny on the back and buy him a drink for his act of vigilantism.

(Okay, not him necessarily, but then I always thought – re: #21 – that the ‘slip’ of ‘I heard these words again’ was deliberate to imply that secretly the singer’s singing about himself. A bit like Beckett’s ‘Not I’. Only with a beard. And a twang in the voice. And a grating series of key changes.)

This isn’t a murder ballad, because Kenny doesn’t think he’s murdered anyone, just punished or executed them.

Mind you, I love this when I was younger. I used to tape Top of the Pops with a battery cassette recorder and I would happily segue between The Specials and Kenny without batting an eyelid. The first time I remember making my brother laugh was because of this song. My dad used sometimes to drop us off at school in his custard-coloured Chrysler Sunbeam (oh they were classy days), and my joke to my brother as my dad drove off was the sing ‘Hey look ol’ yeller’s leavin”. A profound, albeit ludicrous, bonding moment.

I liked this a lot when I was a kid, and I certainly don’t mind it now. I can see that for the some the gap between the tone and the subject matter would jar, but for some reason it’s never bothered me that much. There are plenty of better Kenny Rogers songs, but it’s fine by me.
(Incidentally, at the time – aged nine – I was keen on both this Too Much Too Young).

Re: 22 & the US switchover – exactly. Remember, we’ve got a full-time shadow government who in theory should be ready to take over instantly, whereas Obama and McCain simply have campaign teams. Also, back in the day, it could take weeks for new elected politicians to even travel to DC from the far reaches of the Union.

We call it Priscilla hair in our household, and hold it in very high esteem.

Dan R at #41: “the Louvins seem genuinely chilled by the full horror of what they’ve done” – see, I don’t hear that at all and I never have. If there’s anything terrifying in “KG” the way I hear it, it’s a blankness where there should be horror and remorse (the tone of delivery doesn’t change through the song, for a start) and by the end the Louvin lads seem to be mostly a bit sour that they’re rotting in a boring, dirty jail.

Re: #45

I call it ‘astronaut’s wife’ hair, though they were never that glam really. I hold it in very high esteem too