![]() “What is it about lapsing into narration in a song that makes you think the singer is suddenly revealing the truth?” Dylan writes.īare later recorded other hits like “Drop Kick Me, Jesus (Through the Goal Posts of Life),” “Marie Laveau” and “I Drink.” One of his writing collaborators was Shel Silverstein, better known to some audiences as the author of the classic children’s book “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”īare was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. “… I rode the freight train North to Detroit City / And after all these years, I find I’ve just been wasting my time / So I just think I’ll take my foolish pride / And put it on a South-bound freight / And ride …” That train trope echoes on the narrated bridge spoken by Bare in “Detroit City.” proved too much for the man / He couldn’t make it / So he’s leaving a life he’s come to know.” “I left my home in Georgia / Headed for the ‘Frisco Bay / I have nothing to live for / Looks like nothing’s gonna come my way.”Īnd Gladys Knight struck the same chord in that same era with “Midnight Train to Georgia” because “L.A. Like Bare, Redding sang of cognitive dissonance after leaving the South. With a much different style, the soul singer Otis Redding delivered it with his posthumous hit “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” that was released five years later. Of course, such themes are not limited to one musical genre. In other words, it is an ideal country-western lyric. “I thought it was the greatest song I ever heard in my life.” ‘Drop Kick Me, Jesus’Īt its worst, a critic might pan “Detroit City” as a lachrymose and maudlin expression of self-pity and overwrought sentimentality.Īt its best, its fans know it is a realistic depiction of honest emotion about real-life depression for some folks who lived around here. “I heard Billy Grammer’s record of `Detroit City’ while I was driving down the street one day and I damn near wrecked my car,” Bare said on his website. The record found little success when first recorded and released by Billy Grammer in 1962, but Bare loved it. The song was originally titled “I Want to Go Home,” a phrase that dominates the chorus. “At the time, there were a lot of people a long way from their homes in the South, going up to Michigan and Chicago and things like that.” agreed, and he cited the same, recurring sentiment in other songs, like his father’s exquisite version of “500 Miles.” ![]() Cars came off the assembly lines and straight into our hearts.”īut some of those hearts were broken in the men who left the gentle fields, streams and woods of the mild, rural south for the concrete streets, sidewalks and alleys of the cold, urban north.ĭylan opens his essay with “In this song, you’re the Prodigal Son ” and he ends it with “Like thousands of others he left the farm, came to the big city to get ahead, and got lost.” Bobby Jr. According to Dylan, when “Detroit City” was written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis, “Detroit was a place to run to new jobs, new hopes, new opportunities. ![]() In addition, Dylan’s essay cites “Detroit, the home of Motown and Fortune Records, birthplace of Hank Ballard, Mitch Ryder, Jackie Wilson, Jack White, Iggy Pop, and the MC5.” ‘I Want to Go Home’Īnd with the migration from Dixie, Detroit also spoke with a country accent. “And Dad called me and said `Hey, we have the best picture I’ve ever seen of our family in this book.’ ”īobby Sr.’s big hit came early in a musical decade best remembered in Detroit for Motown’s assembly-line brilliance for the raucous rock-and-roll concerts at the Grande Ballroom and for young Canadian artists like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young clubbing their way to fame around the Motor City. “Dad got a message from Bob Dylan’s management that it was going to be in there and they sent Dad the book,” Bobby Jr. The photo appears to be from the early 1970s and is credited to the Country Music Hall of Fame and museum. Flashback: When Smokey Robinson met Berry GordyĮveryone is hugging and smiling.
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