Nat King Cole – "Route 66" (1946)

Now you go through St. Louis

Joplin, Missouri

And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty!

Is there any more quintessentially American activity than hitting the road and heading west?  That’s why my third (and oldest) choice for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK is the ne plus ultra of road-trip songs.  

“(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” was composed in 1946 by Bobby Troup, a jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter who also starred in the seventies medical drama Emergency! along with his second wife, Julie London.  (Not surprisingly, Troup played a doctor and London played a nurse on that show.  Today, he’d probably be the nurse and she’d be the doctor.)

Julie London and Bobby Troup

Troup wrote the song after he and his first wife drove from his home in Pennsylvania to Los Angeles in a 1941 Buick, which used 75 quarts of oil on the ten-day trip.  

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The Troups started on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but most of their trip was spent on Route 66, which stretched almost 2500 miles between Chicago and Santa Monica, California.  

Along the way, they toured the Meramac Caverns in Missouri (“Jesse James Hideout” was the slogan on that attraction’s numerous billboards), visited the Will Rogers Memorial in Oklahoma, drove through a snowstorm outside Amarillo, Texas, and stopped to take a look at the Hoover Dam.

Troup came up with the idea of writing a song about their trip, but it was his wife who suggested the song’s title.  (I’m not sure who came up with the “Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty” lyric.  Having visited Oklahoma City, I can tell you that they threw accuracy out the window in order to make the line rhyme.)  

Troup took the song to Nat King Cole, who had a big hit with it.  Since then, it has been recorded by Perry Como, Louis Prima, Bing Crosby, Natalie Cole, Asleep at the Wheel, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode, the Cramps, the Cheetah Girls, John Mayer (for the soundtrack of the movie "Cars") and many, many others.

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I grew up in Joplin, Missouri, which was smack dab on Route 66.  So I was thrilled that Joplin was one of the cities mentioned in the lyrics of “Route 66.”

From the 2010 2 or 3 lines post that featured Cole’s recording of “Route 66”:

All Gaul was divided into three parts.  And all recordings of “Route 66” can be divided into two groups: the ones that say “Joplin, Missouri” (which is part of the original composition) and those that instead say “down to Missouri” or something similar.  

One of my first Rolling Stones albums had a live version of “Route 66,” but Mick Jagger disappointed me by not saying “Joplin, Missouri” when he should have.  (You can click here to listen to it.)  

A Route 66 mural in downtown Joplin

I’m surprised by that because I would have assumed that the Stones had heard the Chuck Berry cover of the song, which does mention Joplin.

One good thing about the song rhyming “Missouri” with “St. Louis”: it promotes the correct pronunciation of my home state.  (It's “Missour-ee,” not “Missour-uh.”)

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James Fallows was the only one of the contributors to the CBS Sunday Morning “Essential American Songbook” to make “Route 66” one of his picks.

Fallows got an early start as a big smarty-pants journalist and author at Harvard, where he was the president of the student newspaper.  After going to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, he became Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter at age 27.  He then wrote for Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and many other magazines, and has authored eleven books, one of which won a National Book Award.

So it should come as no surprise that Fallows chose to ignore Sunday Morning’s instruction to nominate no more than three songs for inclusion in the “Essential American Songbook” – instead, he named no fewer than twenty songs. 

James Fallows

A few of his picks – “California Dreamin’,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and “America” from West Side Story – aren’t bad.  But too many of his other choices were predictable in the extreme – e.g., “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and the Jimi Hendrix version of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”  (Of course, Fallows picked “This Land is Your Land” – which was the song named by more of those queried by Sunday Morning than any other.  )

“Hotel California,” “Sounds of Silence,” and the very odd “Nature Boy” are interesting songs.  But what about them is quintessentially American?

The same could be said about the jazz instrumentals (like “Take Five” and “Giant Steps”) on Fellows’s list.  Dave Brubeck and John Coltrane are great American jazz musicians, but I’m not sure that instrumental records really qualify for the “Essential American Songbook.”

And while I give Fallows kudos for choosing “Route 66,” why did he pick the John Pizzarelli Trio’s cover of the song instead of the Nat King Cole original or the Chuck Berry cover?   (If Fallows wanted a super-swingy jazz version of “Route 66,” he could have chosen Bobby Troup’s.) 

Click here to listen to Nat King Cole’s cover of “Route 66.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Creedence Clearwater Revival – "Fortunate Son" (1969)

But when the taxman comes to the door

Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale

I don’t know much about Jelly Roll other than that he has a goofy name and a lot of disturbing tattoos.  (If I’ve ever heard one of his records, it was purely by accident.)

Jelly Roll

But of the 90 actors, athletes, authors, businesspeople, comedians, filmmakers, journalists, musicians, and politicians who were asked by the CBS Sunday Morning show to name three essential Americans songs, Jelly Roll did the best job.

Yes, he ignored CBS’s instructions and picked two songs instead of three.  But as we learned in the previous 2 or 3 lines, it’s very American not to do what they tell you to do.

And the two he picked – Rage Against the Machine “Killing in the Name” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” – exemplify quintessential American character traits as well or better than any other two records I can think of.

That’s why those two records were unanimous choices for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK.

So kudos to Jelly Roll for a job well done.  You f*cking nailed it, dude!

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There’s a scene in the 1971 movie Big Jake where John Wayne yanks a mouthy young whippersnapper off his horse and shoves him down into a big mud puddle.  “It’s time you learned to respect your betters,” the Wayne character snarls at the smart-ass kid.

Generally speaking, Americans don’t believe they have any betters.  We’re not intimidated by the rich and powerful.  (After all, we plan to be rich and powerful ourselves someday.) 

When our so-called betters try to throw their weight around and get away with something they shouldn’t, we call them out for it.

That’s what John Fogarty did in “Fortunate Son,” which he said was about David Eisenhower – who was the grandson of one President and the son-in-law of another one.  

The sons of the rich and powerful – like Eisenhower – always seemed to be able to find a way to avoid the draft, and the working-class families whose sons were sent to fight (and sometimes die) in Vietnam didn’t like that one little bit.

Eisenhower may have avoided being sent to Vietnam, but he did serve three years in the U.S. Navy (most of which he spent in the Mediterranean on a guided-missile cruiser).

As for Fogerty, he managed to avoid the draft by getting into an Army Reserve unit.  He was stationed stateside for the entirety of his six-month tour of duty.

So maybe Fogerty’s scorn for Eisenhower and all the other “fortunate sons” who knew how to game the system and stay out of harm’s way was a bit hypocritical – that’s what he did, after all.  But being full of sh*t is another quintessential American character trait.  

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Here’s a lightly-edited excerpt from my original 2010 post about “Fortunate Son”:

“Fortunate Son” is near-perfect two-minute-and-twenty-second work of art.  The words, the music, and the performance are all just right.  (Everyone and their brother has covered the song, but there’s nothing like the original.)

Most importantly, the attitude of this song is just right.  John Fogerty is pissed off at the powers that be, and he’s not afraid to let everyone know it.  That attitude makes it not only a quintessential rock-and-roll song, but also a very patriotic song – the Founding Fathers had some issues with the powers that be as well. . . . 

I remember my mother expressing exactly the same sentiment expressed in the lines quoted at the beginning of this post when I was a kid.  (People around here say “garage sale” or “yard sale,” but my mother always said “rummage sale.”)

It may have been possible to cheat on your personal property taxes back in the day by hiding your more valuable possessions when the tax assessor made his yearly visit to your house, although I doubt that many people were able to get away with very much.  But my mother was convinced that the richer people in town were beating the system one way or the other. 

My parents grew up during the Depression, and both of their families had barely enough to get by on.  Not surprisingly, they were somewhat resentful (envious?) of the “silver spoon” types.  

Also not surprising was their frugality when it came to spending their hard-earned money.  We lived in a very modest house – we all had to share one bathroom, which is a horror that my fortunate sons (and daughters) have never had to experience . . . .

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Click here to listen to “Fortunate Son.”

Click here to buy “Fortunate Son” from Amazon.

Rage Against the Machine – "Killing in the Name" (1992)

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

(Am I coming through loud and clear?)

2 or 3 lines usually spends its September presenting the newest members of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME, while October is devoted to the newest class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.

But not this year.  (2 or 3 lines is nothing if not unpredictable!)  

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Those of you who get up early enough to watch CBS’s Sunday Morning program know that program polled dozens of notable Americans earlier this year to create a list of what they’re calling the 250 most essential American songs.

Click here to see that list.

A lot of the allegedly “notable” Americans who were polled are notable mostly for their high degree of cluelessness.  While some of the songs that made the CBS list do belong there, the vast majority don’t.

To show CBS how it should have been done, 2 or 3 lines has sifted through hundreds of songs and picked the 13 that exemplify quintessential American attributes.  Each of my upcoming September and October posts this year will feature one of those songs – and trust me, my choices for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK pone the mostly sucky choices of those dumbasses that CBS talked to.

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A Supreme Court justice once admitted that he couldn’t intelligibly define exactly what constituted hard-core pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it.  

Like that justice, I know quintessentially American character traits when I see them.

First and foremost, Americans are independent to the point of orneriness – we don’t like to be told what to do!  When we’re kids, we resist doing what our parents and teachers tell us to do.  And when we’re adults, we resist doing what the government tells us to do.

(I have a friend who keeps telling me that when I say “the government,” what I’m really saying is “us” – that the American government is nothing more than the American people.  I beg to differ.) 

The 13 colonies didn’t like the British monarchy telling them what they could and couldn’t do, so they went to war in 1775 to achieve their independence.

King George III

The Americans who settled in Texas didn’t like the Mexican government telling them what they could and couldn’t do, so they revolted in 1835 to achieve their independence.

And the Southern states didn’t like the Northern states telling them what they could and couldn’t do, so they seceded from the Union in 1861 and started the Civil War to achieve their independence.

Hey, I didn’t say that every time Americans revolted against the government, it was a good thing.  I’m just saying that Americans don’t like being told what to do.

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No song better demonstrates this quintessentially American character trait than Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name,” which was released in 1992 on the band’s eponymous debut album.

It’s such a perfect choice that I can’t believe that the singer/songwriter Jelly Roll was the only one of the 90 actors, athletes, authors, businesspeople, comedians, filmmakers, journalists, musicians, and politicians that CBS surveyed picked “Killing in the Name” as one of their choices.  (We’ll have more to say about Jelly Roll in the next 2 or 3 lines.) 

Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha sings “F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” 16 consecutive times on the record (which is why I typed that line 16 times at the beginning of this post).  If I had to pick one line from a song that captured the quintessence of what it means to be an American, that’s the line I would pick.

Given that, you might wonder why I’m featuring “Killing in the Name” in the first of my series 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK posts.  I don’t believe in saving the best for last, boys and girls – I believe in getting down to it right off the bat.  

If you tell me that I should have done things differently, you can probably guess what my reply to you would be:

Click here to listen to “Killing in the Name.”

Click here to buy “Killing n the Name” from Amazon.