Mr. Hartford of the Mississippi

 

When I played music professionally, starting back in the 1960's, there were a couple of songs that all acoustic groups who did anything resembling country music had on their set lists...  One was Gentle on My Mind, a graceful tribute to either the double standard or the free life or both or maybe to the alcoholic delusion of a homeless bum that I recall as one of the great songs of the last fifty years.  It's great because it's catchy and it tells a story in rather more detail than the protagonist - not the author - wants to reveal, which is deep for a popular song.  It also is fun to sing, and works as spoken poetry.  It had the banjo drive that made it an effective opener and the heft to serve as a reflective piece deep in the set.  It had the gift of inspiring everyone to sing along, even at first hearing.  It was so popular we all got sick of it soon enough.  Too bad, because there is little in the Beatles, Dylan, Simon, Springsteen or Motown that matches music and lyric so perfectly.  An encapsulated mood of a guy talking to a woman, in memory, and we knew them both.  We did.  All of us.  Okay, not one of us … but we wanted to.

    

It also is rather long and has no actual chorus like its very different predecessor, Marty Robbin's El Paso.  I can think of no other lyric-heavy songs with the same characteristic that anyone ever wanted to hear again, never mind propel to the top of the charts.  The words are always different except for the phrases leading up to 'gentle on my mind,' a seeming throwaway phrase which doesn't exist absent the verse, which is why it doesn't qualify as a chorus.   It took a while to memorize the thing, and I can still recall snatches of verses thirty odd years later.

    

Glen Campbell sang it with John Hartford, the song's author, on the Smothers Brothers show before he took over as their summer replacement.  It was the first time I'd heard anything like it and I was mesmerized.  When Campbell got his own series, he started all his shows the same: there was an opening comedy skit, and when the laughter and applause were at their peak, John Hartford stood up from a seat in the audience with his banjo - which was initially quite startling - and began Gentle on My Mind.  And Campbell joined in, sang a verse and introduced his guests.  It is unbelievably corny in description, but by the standards of television in the mid 1960's it was an electrifying gimmick.  Campbell always ended his show with another Hartford song, the title of which I cannot recall but had a line that went "you say I'm changing, I can't say that's wrong...."  It was a great tune as well. 

    

Hartford only stayed for a year or two, I think, got bored, and then was replaced by another banjoist, technically better but lacking anything to resemble a personality.  At least in comparison with John Hartford, whose eyes looked a thousand years old in his twenties.  Hartford was a genuinely gentle guy who was, apparently, exactly what he seemed.  There was as little artifice about him as there definitely was vast talent. 

    

Hartford could be a cold performer.  I don't know why that was.  On his warm nights he could lead people off the pier, but sometimes the fire was banked.  No bad mood, no bad job, it just wasn't there.  Of course, it would take a certain energy and magic to sing and play the fiddle and dance on an amplified piece of plywood, as Hartford often did wearing a bowler, and not seem like a surreal out take of the Gong Show or a recently discovered subway performer to an audience not already composed of fans.  Over the years I saw him both ways often and I have no explanation of it, but the audience felt it and responded accordingly.  Of course, I didn't know he had cancer till later.  

    

Hartford probably annoyed a lot of people because he did what he damned well pleased, always well, and always seemed to enjoy himself.  He was a gracious guy and never seemed to resent it when his fame grew dimmer.  Of all the people who claim they never really cared a whole hell of a lot about commercial success, John Hartford is the one and perhaps the only one who I'd ever believe.  I never heard him say that, though.  I just assume it because it fits. 

    

Hartford, you probably know, died in June of 2001 after fighting cancer for about a quarter century.  He suddenly lost control of his hands some months previous, and finished his performing career sitting on stage with the fiddle in his lap, singing.   Like jazz giants, his influence was most huge among musicians anyway.  There had better have been a lot of quiet remembrances and loud appreciations during the acoustic festivals that summer, because most of the people giving them, and attending them, owe John Hartford big time.  He was a person you could not help but be affected by, and if you were a performer, you lifted some of his bits whether you intended to or not.  If you were merely in the audience, you could not help but think on him later, love him or not. 

    

His work will last far longer than most of his contemporaries because so much of his composition is not rooted in time.  You can easily imagine many of his songs being sung on the rivers during the Civil War or a hundred years hence.  Not The Golden Globes Award,  perhaps, but many of his others.  I've been on the fringes of show business for most of my life, and I may have heard all the stories but never once did I ever hear anyone say anything bad or less than respectful about John Hartford, even from those who you just know did not like his music.   What does that tell you?  Not enough, perhaps.

    

Six months after his death, Hartford’s wife passed away.  I don’t know what else that tells us.   But I’ll bet we all formulated the same poetic theory.