Story Songs

I have always loved songs that tell a story. I have always loved hearing them, and I have always loved sharing them. My first venture in sharing songs with others came when I was in fifth grade, when a buddy and I sang "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" in an outlaw-country-style duet for the school talent show.

To add to our performance, my buddy wanted to sing a controversial lyric he was sure would make us the stars of the show, but I cut in on his verse to keep him from singing an expletive in front of the whole school. I guess he was more outlaw than me. Well, even though we didn't become controversial elementary school outlaw country legends, we did enjoy sharing a song about Johnny and the Devil.

So, yes, I have always enjoyed story songs. Growing up, I loved songs like Marty Robbins' "Cool Water" and "Big Iron," and I was a big fan of "The Ballad of Jesse James." These songs, to a great extent, were my literature, and they engendered a love for the short form. In a sense, old songs with a narrative have had as much of an influence on me as a short story writer as Anton Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, and Jorge Luis Borges. 


Here is the cover of the Marty Robbins album I loved when I was knee high to a grasshopper.

Here is a song my brother and I liked to listen to while dressed in our cowboy garb and running around the house shooting toy pistols.