I’m Gonna Be A Country Girl Again

Thursday 6th April

Why is that some songs just get under your skin and when the first few bars begin you simply cannot stop yourself from singing along with them.  Not without some embarrassment either at times.  For years I was affected by “Yellow River” – one of the most inane of melodies, but actually the simpler the melody the more I find I am drawn to sing-along.  And so it is with “Gonna Be A Country Girl Again”. Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote and recorded it for the 1968 album of the same name.  She had released a clutch of ‘folk’ albums earlier, but with an occasional country style jig, often played on mouth-harp by Buffy.  But ‘Country Girl’ was an all-out and fairly traditional country album,  which at the time seemed strange as Buffy, half Indian was better known for songs about Indian injustices.  We grew up with the notion of cowboys and ‘injuns’ killing each other but it was actually almost always the U.S. cavalry which caused the genocide of the Indian nations in the nineteenth century.  Cowboys were simply that, hired hands who drove cattle from the plains to cities like Chicago to be butchered.  But country music had become associated with cowboys too, as during the forties and fifties country stars donned chaps and cowboy hats to popularize this music.

Anyway, I bought the record and fell in love with it.  Full of great songs, haunting ballads and sing-alongs.  None more so than the title track

“The rain is falling lightly on the buildings and the cars

I’ve said goodbye to city friends, department stores and bars

The lights of town are at my back, my heart is full of stars

And I’m gonna be a country girl again”

….And it gets worse, or cornier still..

“Oh yes, I’m gonna be a country girl again

With an old brown dog and a big front porch and rabbits in the pen”

….rabbits in the pen????  What was she thinking of?  But somehow the dire lyrics don’t matter at all, the tune is all.  And as soon as it starts up, there I am dancing round the room and singing “Oh yes, I’m gonna be a country girl again”

Great stuff, listen to it on you-tube and your life will never be the same again….hahaha

I'M Gonna Be A Country Girl Again