Quite a few years ago now, Pete Wernick came up with the concept of the pronoun/role reversal in classic bluegrass songs and suggested I write a column about it, which I promptly did. As I wrote about previously, one of his first examples that helped get this conversion process going was the Louvin Brothers’ I Wish You Knew, which when reversed becomes “You Wish I Knew,” which then contains this first verse:
If only half the things were true I said about your heart
Then you would have forgotten me since we’ve been apart
I said you forced your lips to kiss me when we said goodbye
I even said you forced the tears that came into your eyes
We have since exchanged quite a few of these, including “Can’t I Hear You Calling,” “You Wouldn’t Change Me If You Could,” “I Don’t Know Your Mind,” and my personal favorite, in the gospel category: “I Go to Your Church and You Go to Mine.”
Meanwhile, more serious efforts have been made in various genres of music to change the perspective of a song, most often so a woman can sing a song written from a man’s point of view or vice versa. This comes off better with some songs than others. Some songs are changed from first person to third to make this work, with mixed success.
In that first column on the subject, I had brought up Anne Murray’s fondness for this, which often worked well, but sometimes also necessitated sacrificing a rhyme here and there. This can sometimes sound awkward if you are familiar with the original.
Not as awkward as this first verse of “You Know I’m Married But You Love Me Still,” mind you:
The day you met me your heart spoke to you
It vowed to love me through eternity . . .
Still, some of these didn’t work out as well as they could have: As an example, Anne recorded a song by Prince Edward Island songwriter Gene MacLellan (who also wrote Snowbird) called The Call, which had a chorus with a “dollar/call her” rhyme:
Mister can you find it in your heart to lend me a dollar
For the times have been slow
I’m fresh out of dough
And I ain’t got the money to call her
Anne’s version:
Mister can you find it in your heart to lend me a dollar
For the times have been slow
I’m fresh out of dough
And I ain’t got the money to call him
Country singer Sammi Smith did a very interesting version of Long Black Veil, which she sang from the point of view of the woman who does the veil-wearing and grave-visiting (strictly when the night winds wail— no one likes to visit graves when there’s no wailing wind). This actually required no rhyme sacrifices at all, and had the added bonus of the story now being told by somebody who is living. In this version, the “me” in the line “nobody knows but me” is her, which actually makes a little more sense than the original.
The point I’m trying to make, if there is one, is that with a little flexibility and the occasional rhyme-sacrifice, we can sing a number of songs from a different point of view and have them work out reasonably well, especially when a sizable percentage of the bluegrass audience—as I’ve said here numerous times before—only hears about ten percent of the lyrics anyway. For example, to many people, You Don’t Know My Mind sounds like this:
Honey you don’t know my mind
Blah blah blah blah time
Something something drifter blah blah
Blah blah blah so long blah blah blah blah
Something something blah blah blah today
Now the fiddle break.
You can see how easy it would be to sing it like this without anyone noticing:
Honey, I don’t know your mind
You’re lonesome all the time
Born to lose a drifter and that’s you
With that in mind, here are some ideas for role/gender/perspective changes for well-known songs that might work, or possibly not, but you’re likely to get away with them anyway:
Dream of a MIner’s Child from the point of view of the dad:
I was leaving my home for my work
I heard my little child scream . . .
Perhaps you’d like to sing some of the classic murder ballads but feel uncomfortable singing them from the murderer’s point of view. Maybe you’re concerned this will lead to violent tendencies in your own life and a desire to legally change your name to “Willie.” That’s where the third person narration comes in handy:
He asked his love to take a walk
Just to walk a little ways
And as they walk oh may they talk
All about their wedding day
Or you might also rather not identify with the gullible victims in these songs, so you could just change Little Willie into third person:
When she was in her 16th year
Little Willie courted her . . .
Perhaps switching roles in Old Home Place is a little more problematic when sung from the point of view of the girl from the town, but worth a try anyway:
It’s been ten long years since he left his home, etc.
Verse 2:
He fell in love with me from the town (awkward)
He thought that I would be true
He ran away to Charlottesville
And did something-or-other in a sawmill that rhymes with “true”
Or what if we tried to sing Molly and Tenbrooks from Tenbrooks’ perspective:
Run Molly run, run Molly run
I’m going to beat you to the bright shining sun
(Now it just sounds like horse trash talk)
Verse 2:
I was a big bay horse, I wore that shaggy mane
I run all around Memphis I beat the Memphis train
Beat the Memphis train, Oh Lord, beat the Memphis train
Optional fourth line:
People are saying I’m the fastest horse they’ve ever seen; they can’t believe how fast I am
Verse 4 (or so), in which Tenbrooks is now the one speaking to Kiper:
Kiper, Kiper (sic), you’re not ridin’ right
Molly’s beating me clear out of sight . . .
Kiper, Kiper, old son
Just give me the bridle and try to let me run . . .
(The “you incompetent jockey, you!” is implied here)
Or just sing the original lyrics to songs. That’s probably better.
Next week: The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake from the point of view of the snake, and When You Say Nothing at All from the point of view of “old Mister Webster.”
