I was thumbing through Minnesota-based Farm Show magazine recently (like you do), checking out some of the DIY farm shop tips and useful “farm hacks” because I’ll admit that I was drawn in by some of the headlines: “Home-built Snowplow Pushes Lots of Snow,” “Pasture Water System Fills Itself,” and “He Built a Round Barn to Honor His Grandfather.”
There was something about these headlines that had me picturing them as taglines for 1950s pulp fiction titles. Mind you, those taglines tended to me more dramatic and sometimes lurid than the one about the guy building the round barn, but who’s to say his grandfather didn’t return later as a ghost and haunt the barn?
In the paperback edition of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon, the tagline read, “Sam Spade searched each article of the girl’s clothing.” When you think about it, that was also a DIY project, though probably not to honor his grandfather.
Going back to the start of the James Bond series, the first American paperback edition of Ian Fleming’s debut novel, Casino Royale, was given the alternate title, You Asked For It, and had this tagline: “She Played a Man’s Game With a Woman’s Weapons.” Other 1940s and ’50s paperback fiction taglines attempted to draw the reader in with lines like, “She had the face of a madonna and a heart made of dollar bills!” (Black Wings Has My Angel), or from the western Whip Hand by Joseph Chadwick: “He risked his own life recklessly for a girl who wasn’t worth it.”
Some of these were a little on the long side, and I question how many people were enticed to lay down their 25 cents for the book based on this wordy tagline from Paul Crane’s scary Killer Shark!: “Its grim savagery is horrifying but you will be compelled to remember the dreaded scavenger, hungry for human flesh . . .”
As I had suggested in an earlier column about movie taglines, these would be a great way to generate new interest in some of our bluegrass standards. Unlike movie taglines, which are primarily used on the movie poster, pulp fiction taglines appear right on the product itself, which if applied to physical music product, might even do something to spur in-person sales.
If a paperback-style tagline is added to a digital single cover, perhaps the song would be more likely to be added to some important Spotify playlist and eventually generate 18 cents in revenue.
Here are a few suggestions:
For Knoxville Girl, Banks of the Ohio, Down in the Willow Garden, and a handful of others: “She wouldn’t marry him . . . he tossed her into the river!”
For Windy Mountain: “He had only one request: to be buried on a mountain, but only if it’s windy!”
For Julie Ann: “He was willing to sacrifice his pride so she could dance all night in honky tonks and still come home!”
For Bringing Mary Home: “She seemed like just another child hitchhiker until she disappeared from the backseat!”
For Pig in a Pen: “He had it all: the pig, the pen, the corn. All he needed was a girl. That’s where SHE came in!”
For Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms: “Against the will of her parents, they lived a steamy life of hedonism while waiting for the mail train.”
For Long Black Veil: “She dressed in black and hung around his grave. How did he know that?”
For Down the Road: “He built an interconnected barn and hog lot to honor his grandfather. But the real money was still in mail delivery!”
