Skeeter Davis – "The End of the World" (1962)

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

Unlike Coke and Pepsi, Dr Pepper is not a cola drink.  (That’s not a typo – it’s “Dr Pepper,” not “Dr. Pepper.”)

I think that’s why my mother allowed me to have one small glass of Dr Pepper daily – she had the idea that colas were bad for you, but Dr Pepper wasn’t.

In any event, I’m still loyal to Dr Pepper.  I have some other strong brand preferences – when it comes to blue jeans, don’t expect me to see me in anything other than Levi’s – but there’s something more fundamental about my preference for Dr Pepper.  It’s partly a personal history thing, partly a tribal/cultural thing.  (I could ask my therapist to help me get to the bottom of this issue, but she has the same answer to just about everything I ask her: “If it makes you happy, that’s what you should do!”) 

I will drink Coke or Pepsi if Dr Pepper isn’t available, but only reluctantly.  But when I was young, Dr Pepper was very much a regional drink – it was big in Texas (where it was created in the 1880s) and nearby states, but very few restaurants on the east or west coast offered it.  So I usually had to do without when I went out to eat.

The closest I could come to Dr Pepper at restaurants that featured Coca-Cola products was Mr. Pibb – the Dr Pepper wannabe drink that Coke introduced in the seventies.  

But Dr Pepper is now the second best-selling carbonated soft drink in the United States, trailing only Coca-Cola.  So you can find it at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Sonic, Chick-fil-A, Subway, Jack in the Box and many other chains.  (Taco Bell is a notable exception – it serves only PepsiCo products.)

I haven’t had a Mr. Pibb in many years, and I can’t imagine what would drive me to drink one today – if Dr Pepper wasn’t available, I’d go with Coke or ginger ale rather than stooping to drink Mr. Pibb.

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I recently watched Hell or High Water, a 2016 film starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine.  That movie is set entirely in Texas, although it was actually filmed in New Mexico.  (The director of Hell or High Water is a Scotsman, so he probably has no idea that there’s a big difference between the two.)

The movie’s script was penned by Taylor Sheridan, who is best known as the co-creator of the Yellowstone series. Sheridan moved to Fort Worth – the most Texas of all Texas cities – as a child, and spent a lot on his family’s ranch near Waco.  He was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2021, and his favorite author is Larry McMurtry – who wrote a number of wonderful novels set in Texas, including The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove.

In other words, the man has some serious Texas cred.  

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There’s a scene in Hell or High Water that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Taylor Sheridan gets Dr Pepper.

In that scene, two brothers who are on their way to rob a bank in a small West Texas town stop at a convenience store to get some refreshments and fill up their car with gas.

The older brother (Tanner) asks the younger one (Toby) to get him a Dr Pepper, and is dismayed when he returns with a Mr. Pibb.  Here’s the ensuing conversation:

Tanner’s not wrong. 

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Skeeter Davis was born Mary Frances Penick in a tiny Kentucky town in 1931.  

When she was a child, her grandfather nicknamed her “Skeeter” (slang for mosquito) because she had so much energy.

As a high school junior, Skeeter and classmate Betty Jack Davis won a yodeling competition.  The two were billed as the Davis Sisters when they subsequently appeared on a local television station, and she used Davis as her stage name for the rest of her life.

Skeeter Davis didn’t have an easy life.  When she was a child, her mother attempted suicide more than once.  “I once slapped a bottle of Clorox she was drinking out of her mouth and sat on her hands to keep her from reaching for a butcher knife,” she wrote in a 1993 autobiography.  On another occasion, her mother attempted to leap from the family’s apartment window with Davis and her infant brother in her arms.

In 1953, the Davis Sisters released “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know,” which held the top spot of the Billboard country chart for eight consecutive weeks.  Later that year, a sleepy motorist crashed head-on into the car in which the duo were riding.  The collision killed Betty Jack Davis and seriously injured Skeeter.

After marrying Kenneth DePew in 1956, Skeeter realized he had married her for her money.  She divorced him in 1959 and married Ralph Emery – a famous radio DJ and TV host who was called “the Dick Clark of country music” – shortly thereafter.  

According to Davis, Emery became convinced that she was cheating on him: “Ralph accused me of being with everybody from guitar players to agents to producers to my hairdresser and believe it or not, to my brother and sister,” she wrote.  “Male or female, it made no difference.”  She divorced him in 1964 after learning that he had impregnated another woman.

Skeeter Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988.  She eventually died of the disease in 2004, when she was 72.  

“The End of the World,” her most famous record as a solo artist, was released in 1962.  It peaked #1 on Billboard’s “Easy Listening” chart, #2 on the “Hot 100” and “Hot Country Singles” charts, and #4 on the “Hot R&B Singles’ chart – the first and only record to get into the top five on all four of those Billboard charts.

“The End of the World” is a classic female weeper.  I decided to feature it in this post after stumbling across an old black-and-white video of Davis lip-synching the song on television.

Click here to watch that video and tell me if you’ve ever seen a woman with more amazing hair – Davis’s do is epic!

Click here to buy “The End of the World” from Amazon.