I feel like it is time for one of those.
I have been resisting reading The Cartel (affiliate link) for reasons. I actually started to type those out here, but then reconsidered.
Anyway, I have been sort of flipping through it before I go to bed, and Winslow used a line from this song as an epigraph for one of the chapters. I had not heard of it, or Tom Russell, before, so I looked it up on Apple Music and liked it.
Tom Russell also did a cover of this song with Joe Ely, but I thought I’d throw up a version with just Ely. As Lawrence once put it, this is the greatest song ever written about a rooster.
I feel sure I have mentioned this song before, which I picked up from another blogger (I don’t remember who) but a search does not turn it up under the title or singer. In any case, I feel like it is worth mentioning here, because it seems to have recently become available digitally on Apple Music and Amazon (affiliate link) in “The Legacy Collection Volume 3: Damron Sings Henderson”. Previously, I could only find it on YouTube, and the CDs were unavailable.
“Pull your sights up to 800 and hold a yard left for the wind” makes me smile every time. It also reminds me of Lindy Cooper Wisdom’s poem, “Grandpa’s Lesson“.
…But ain’t many troubles that a man cain’t fix
With seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six.