DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)
By:
January 8, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite Country singles from the Sixties (1964–1973). Series edited by Josh Glenn. BONUS: Check out the DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM playlist on Spotify.
GEORGE JONES | “WALK THROUGH THIS WORLD WITH ME” | 1966
If you have a George Jones greatest-hits album, “Walk through This World with Me” is likely on side A. You know the song right away by the plangent steel-pedal intro and find yourself compelled to sing along. The vocal performance is beautiful, as always, but it’s probably not your favorite. Apparently, Jones didn’t think much of the song and had to be talked into recording it. It’s easy to see why: no wordplay, no irony, no story. No lipstick on the cigarettes in the ashtray, no coffee that you poured and didn’t drink. Nothing to make it a George Jones song in particular. The lyrics would do nicely for a Hallmark card.
Walk through this world with me
Go where I go
Share all my dreams with me
I need you so.
The song is forever linked in my mind to a group of people I knew from hanging around Mass Art in the eighties and early nineties, and specifically, a few years we spent helping our friend Bill make a two-hour-long super-8 monster movie called Beach Beast. Let those words sink in: two-hour-long super-8 monster movie. It was not a spoof. Space doesn’t permit a proper description.
Working on the film was a fun, hilarious, at times very frustrating experience that just went on and on. No one but Bill understood the big picture, nor did we entirely grasp the significance of some of his props and motifs. At times, it was like we were helping him compose an epic work of loony confessional poetry. That’s how it was: we accepted one another as serious thinkers, artists — even I, even while meaninglessly insisting that I wasn’t an artist.
My only copy is on VHS, and I no longer have a way to play it, but if memory serves, “Walk through This World with Me” appears on the soundtrack twice. Early in the film our beloved Luther Price, who now lives with the immortals of super-8, performs the song as a troubadour — one of two roles he played in the movie. Then, somewhere in the second hour, our friend Neil plays an instrumental sax version. My credits included Town Selectman’s Daughter, foley artist, sound assistant, stunt double, and I also sang on the soundtrack (“Miracles” by Jefferson Starship).
Beach Beast had a few screenings over the years, including one on the experimental cinema program at Telluride, where it was properly appreciated. I found a listserv review in which a filmmaker who was there writes, not at all disapprovingly, “Beach Beast recalls the efforts of children in their imitation of the perceived adult world.”
And so it had to be “Walk through This World with Me,” that tenderest, most guileless of George Jones songs, whose words lie flat on the page — unless you know Jones’s performance, and then the memory of his aching voice animates them, makes them pulse with his supple phrasing.
In life we search
And some of us find
I’ve looked for you
A long, long time.
How fortunate we were, my friends and I.
DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton’s WE FOUND IT | Lucy Sante on Johnny & June Carter Cash’s JACKSON | Mimi Lipson on George Jones’s WALK THROUGH THIS WORLD WITH ME | Steacy Easton on Olivia Newton-John’s LET ME BE THERE | Annie Zaleski on Tammy Wynette’s D-I-V-O-R-C-E | Carl Wilson on Tom T. Hall’s THAT’S HOW I GOT TO MEMPHIS | Josh Glenn on Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen’s BACK TO TENNESSEE | Elizabeth Nelson on Skeeter Davis’s I DIDN’T CRY TODAY | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ TOGETHER AGAIN | Lynn Peril on Roger Miller’s THE MOON IS HIGH | Erik Davis on Kris Kristofferson’s SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN | Francesca Royster on Linda Martell’s BAD CASE OF THE BLUES | Amanda Martinez on Bobbie Gentry’s FANCY | Erin Osmon on John Prine’s PARADISE | Douglas Wolk on The Byrds’ DRUG STORE TRUCK DRIVIN’ MAN | David Warner on Willie Nelson’s WHISKEY RIVER | Will Groff on Tanya Tucker’s DELTA DAWN | Natalie Weiner on Dolly Parton’s IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS (WHEN TIMES WERE BAD) | Charlie Mitchell on Stonewall Jackson’s I WASHED MY HANDS IN MUDDY WATER | Nadine Hubbs on Dolly Parton’s COAT OF MANY COLORS | Jada Watson on Loretta Lynn’s DON’T COME HOME A DRINKIN’ (WITH LOVIN’ ON YOUR MIND) | Adam McGovern on Johnny Cash’s THE MAN IN BLACK | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Dick Curless’s A TOMBSTONE EVERY MILE | Alan Scherstuhl on Waylon Jennings’s GOOD HEARTED WOMAN | Alex Brook Lynn on Bobby Bare’s THE WINNER. PLUS: Peter Doyle on Jerry Reed’s GUITAR MAN | Brian Berger on Charley Pride’s IS ANYBODY GOING TO SAN ANTONE.
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