I was going to do a long blog extolling Carson McCullers, Flannery O Connor (whose niece in-law I worked with for a decade), F. Scott Fitzgerald (whose Montgomery house I landscaped in high school and who plagiarized whole paragraphs from the weirdly brilliant letters of his native Montgomerian wife Zelda), Harper Lee (whose niece taught me American History), Walker Percy (who had a reading group with two of my colleagues), Tennessee Williams (whose table you can grace at Galatoire's in New Orleans), William Faulkner, etc. etc. etc.
But this is much less work and more fun:
One thing I should note is that the members of this band were actually really good friends with Neil Young, and were in fact going to go on tour with him prior to the fateful plane crash. This fact alone provided sufficient justification to get many a high school friend to jam on Neil Young songs with me (including "Southern Man"!). Once in a Montgomery, AL. Waffle House parking lot Southern Man and Freebird one after the other brought out such a crowd that after an hour the police ended up shutting us down.
Despite arduous efforts of many good people, Sweet Home Alabama has not yet been made the state song of Alabama. It probably never will be, and almost certainly because the lines about the governor are so blankedly anti-Wallace, which should go a long way torward letting us forgive them for the ignorant display of the confederate battle flag (further mitigating factors- (1) songs such as "The Ballad of Curtis Lowe," and (2) it was the 1970s). Maybe some day. . . though if you'd met Wallace (who lived in the subdivision "Zelda Place" next door to a high school friend of mine) decades after the shooting and seen what acute misery his life was (constant agony always threatening to break through the methadone haze) you might have a little sympathy. But still, as another great southern song says, the Devil's got a Wallace sticker on the back of his car. I can't argue with that. Lyrics after the jump:
Drive By Truckers: Wallace
Throw another log on the fire, boys, George Wallace is coming to stay
When he met St. Peter at the pearly gates, I'd like to think that a black man stood in the way.
I know "All should be forgiven", but he did what he done so well
So throw another log on the fire boys,
George Wallace is a coming…
Now, he said he was the best friend a black man from Alabama ever had,
And I have to admit, compared to Fob James, George Wallace don't seem that bad
And if it's true that he wasn't a racist and he just did all them things for the votes
I guess Hell's just the place for kiss ass politicians who pander to assholes.
So throw another log on the fire, boys, George Wallace is coming to stay
I know, in the end, he got the black people's votes, but I bet they'd still vote him this way.
And Hell's just a little bit hotter cuz He played his hand so well
He had what it took to take it so far
Now the Devil's got a Wallace sticker on the back of his car
[ Now the Mule-ettes walk out in devil horns and tails, raise their hands in the air and sing:]
"OH ------ ALABAMA…"
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