Gordon and Roger Miller are all goners.
AsRogerMiller says,
“Dadblame anything,
aman can’t quit.”
Forget about free will or
common sense. All these singers
acknowledgehowpowerless they are in the
face of their addiction (a rather strange
topic for a comedy routine) and in at least
one case (Tex Williams), they figure that
the problem is likely to follow them into
the afterlife. Baker Knight, better known
forhisworkwithRickyNelson, evenoffers
an environmental protest song
about the
effects of
Smoke
dating from nearly half a
century before protest songs were very
common.
Another approach to cigarette songs is
to turn theday’spopular advertising slogans
into love songs, or songs about love. We
have examples here by Autry Inman,Wilf
Carter and Homer & Jethro, although it
helps to know about popular culture of
the day to appreciate thewordplay. It’s not
always cigarettes that get taken for the
musical ride.MerleTravisworked this same
territory in 1947 with a ditty called
So
Round, SoFirm, SoFullyPacked
, and spent
14weeks at the top of the country charts.
But despite the title (a Lucky Strike ad
line that Travis cleverly applied to his
girlfriend), the song was much more
general, also including slogans from
toothpaste, soft drink and automobile ads.
In the case of Homer & Jethro’s deft
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