One of my favorite songs by Merle Haggard is “Kern River.” The song has one of the greatest lines ever written, “I may drown in still waters but I’ll never swim Kern River again.” The line tells you everything you need to know about the song about longing, sadness, loss, and memory.
Haggard wrote “Kern River” and released the song in 1985 as the title track of the album Kern River. The song was not a number one hit, but it went up to number 10 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. Haggard performs his classic below on Ralph Emery’s show as Porter Wagoner looks on, noting that Haggard “is a dangerous man with a song.” Check it out.
Wagoner is not the only fan of the song. Rolling Stone lists “Kern River” among the essential Merle Haggard songs. Allmusic claims “Kern River” is “one of Merle’s best latter-day songs.”
Other notable artists have praised “Kern River.” Bob Dylan loves the song, noting the song “is a beautiful lament, but let’s not forget it’s about his girlfriend dying.” Emmylou Harris has claimed that “Kern River” is her favorite Merle Haggard song, and she has recorded her own version of it. Check out her version with images of the real Kern River.
The real Kern River flows around 165 miles through California, draining around the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfield, a town often associated with Haggard for “the Bakersfield sound.” Also, Haggard grew up near Kern River, later building a mansion on the river. The Lake Shasta mentioned in the song is a real place too. Haggard owned a cabin on the still waters of the lake.
For these and other reasons, in recent years Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have stopped using capital punishment. Other state legislatures are considering bills to abolish the death penalty.
“Green, Green Grass of Home” and Its Twist Ending
Thinking about Maryland’s death penalty, I remembered a hit song from the 1960s called “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which is probably his biggest hit song along with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (he also co-wrote the George Jones song “He Stopped Loving Her Today”).
“Green, Green Grass of Home” belongs in a unique group of songs that have a twist ending. The song begins with the singer talking about a trip home, but in the last verse, we learn that it was all a dream. Although there is no specific reference to the death penalty or executions, the verse makes clear that the singer will die at the hands of the state in the morning. Then I awake and look around me, At the four gray walls that surround me, And I realize that I was only dreaming, For there’s a guard and a sad old padre, Arm in arm we’ll walk at daybreak, And at last I’ll touch the green green grass of home.
Putnam performs a clever sleight of hand in the song. He gets us to see the singer as a human being, one with feelings we can relate to, because everyone has been homesick. Only then does he let us know that the singer is on death row. Had the song begun by telling us the singer was condemned, we would have seen him in a different light and judged him as something other than human. But like Steve Earle’s “Over Yonder,” the song “Green, Green Grass of Home” lets us see the humanity even in the worst of us, which is pretty cool.
But Porter Wagoner was the first one to have a hit with “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1965. Check out this performance and note the subtle special effects where the prison bar shadows appear at the end.
Tom Jones Version
The next year in 1966, Tom Jones had a hit with the song. His version went to number 1 on the U.K. charts.
This TV rendition of the song goes for a less subtle approach than the Porter Wagoner shadows. Here, Tom Jones sings from a jail cell. The setting of the song, though, kind of spoils the surprise ending.
Jerry Lee Lewis Version
Tom Jones was inspired to record “Green, Green Grass of Home” after hearing it on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 albumCountry Songs for City Folk. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
Here is Lewis’s version.
Joan Baez Version
Joan Baez gives a unique version by being one of the rare woman’s voices to tackle the song. It is appropriate because there currently are approximately sixty women on death rows around the country.
Baez does a nice job in this performance from The Smothers Brothers Show.
Finally, in 2006, Lewis and Jones performed “Green, Green Grass of Home” together. While the lyrics of the song constitute a soliloquy that does not lend itself to being a duet, it was still cool to see the great Tom Jones singing with the legend who inspired him to record one of his biggest hits. [October 2014 Update: Unfortunately, the video of the duet is no longer available on YouTube.]
Capital Punishment After “Green, Green Grass of Home”
One may only speculate about the impact of the song on society or society’s impact on the song. But in 1965-1966 when the song was a big hit for Porter Wagoner in the U.S. and for Tom Jones in the U.K., the death penalty was at low levels of popularity in those countries.
Great Britain would abolish the death penalty on a trial basis in 1965 and abolish it permanently in 1969. In the U.S., executions ground to a halt in the late 1960s as courts considered court challenges to the U.S. death penalty.
Within a decade, after states passed new laws, the U.S. death penalty machine began chugging along in the late 1970s, even as other countries continued to abolish capital punishment. But more recently, since the turn of the century, several states have joined the other states and countries that have decided the death penalty is unnecessary, uncivilized, and wasteful of resources.
Maryland has now joined those civilized states and countries. The end of the death penalty, unlike “Green, Green Grass of Home,” is not a dream.
What is your favorite version of “Green, Green Grass of Home”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.