by Kevin Burton
We are well into summer now; what do you say we go on a road trip? How about a rock and roll road trip?
My wife and I had two mini vacations in late May and into June. The time on the road got my blood pumping. Could be another short trip or two before the snow flies. I’m all in!
And you would never have a road trip without your tunes, am I right?
A wide swath of rock music is about the road, sometimes loving it, glorifying it. Sometimes regretting it, when cold and loneliness creep in.
I haven’t made a formal study, but I want to say there are a lot more of the happy road songs.
“One more song about moving along the highway can’t say much of anything that’s new,” sings the great Carole King in “So Far Away.” So very true, but those road songs and that road feeling never get old to me.
The America that I grew up in was something to shout about and I have always wanted to see as much as possible. So this summer and maybe into the fall we’re going to highlight songs that mention a state or city in the USA. Through those songs we’ll shine a light on some music history.
We’ll call it “Coast To Coast” and by the time we’re through you’ll have a rock and roll road map, but with a beat you can dance to.
How about we start things off today with a few songs without a state or city in the title, but which move us around the country lyrically?
They say Martha Reeves sang “Dancing in the Street” angry because a technician accidentally erased her flawless first take. If so, that fire comes across as celebration, not rage.
Reeves took us to Chicago, New Orleans and New York City, then to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC before singing, “Can’t forget the Motor City!”
And we were swingin’, swayin’ and record playin’ the whole way. Sounds like a good time to me.
In November 1976 when the Steve Miller band had “Rock’n Me” at number one, one of the DJs on WNCI, Columbus, Ohio said, “I think that’s everybody’s favorite song right now.” It was true!
“The Billboard book of Number One Hits called it “an immediate audience grabber.”
Miller took us from “Phoenix Arizona all the way to Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, LA., to northern California where the girls are warm.” That’s coast to coast right there!
Huey Lewis and the News began their search for the heart of rock and roll in New York, then moved to LA. He later gave a shout out to better rocking cities “DC, San Antone and the Liberty Town, Boston and Baton Rouge, Tulsa, Austin, Oklahoma City, Seattle, San Francisco, too,” finishing with a flourish in Cleveland and Detroit.
The Allman Brother Band had by far their biggest hit with “Ramblin’ Man,” a song deep in the spirit of Coast to Coast. The singer’s father was “a gambler down in Georgia” and later mentioned that he was “on my way to New Orleans this mornin’, leaving out of Nashville Tennessee.”
Even better, he was “born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus rollin’ down highway 41.”
Another rockin’ birth came from the Stylistics whose “Rock’n Roll Baby” was “born in a theatre in Bluefield, West Virginia, his ma and I were travellin’ on the road.”
Then there is Hank Snow, who in terms of sheer volume outdoes them all in “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
“I’ve been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocopilla, Barranquilla, and Padilla.”
Rock and roll is part freedom. The road is part freedom. There are complications to both, no question.
But this summer let’s just have some fun on the road, Coast to Coast, with some favorite tunes from what Gerry Rafferty called “the days gone down.”
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