{"id":2742,"date":"2017-05-06T07:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2742"},"modified":"2017-05-08T09:00:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T13:00:20","slug":"last-truck-drivin-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/last-truck-drivin-man\/","title":{"rendered":"World&#8217;s Last Truck Drivin&#8217; Man (Shel Silverstein)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The World&#039;s Last Truck Driving Man\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RfnmtZrbByI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure how or when I first became aware of Shel Silverstein, but I&#8217;d already heard a bunch of his songs. &#8220;Cover of the Rolling Stone&#8221; was all over the radio when I was in high school, and of course I&#8217;d heard &#8220;Boy Named Sue,&#8221; and at some point during those high school years there was a <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2746 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Shel-Silverstein-in-cowboy-hat-264x300.jpg?resize=206%2C234\" alt=\"\" width=\"206\" height=\"234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Shel-Silverstein-in-cowboy-hat.jpg?resize=264%2C300&amp;ssl=1 264w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Shel-Silverstein-in-cowboy-hat.jpg?w=282&amp;ssl=1 282w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 206px) 100vw, 206px\" \/>big television special on venereal disease that included Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show singing &#8220;Don&#8217;t Give a Dose to the One You Love Most&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;but I didn&#8217;t make the connection back then, and I&#8217;m guessing it was Vince McCann in Paris who played me a full Dr. Hook album and pointed out Shel&#8217;s skills as a songwriter &#8212; not just for twisted novelty songs, but also things like &#8220;The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,&#8221; which I heard again in 1981, when Marianne Faithful sang a tear-your-heart-out version on the soundtrack of an amazing film, Du\u0161an Makavejev&#8217;s <em>Montenegro<\/em>. And then there was Loretta Lynn&#8217;s &#8220;One&#8217;s on the Way&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><em>They say to get her hair done Liz flies all the way to France<\/em><br \/>\n<em>And Jackie&#8217;s seen in a discotheque doing a brand new dance<\/em><br \/>\n<em>And the White House social season should be glittering and gay,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>But here in Topeka, the rain is a-fallin&#8217;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>The faucet is a-drippin&#8217; and the kids are a-ballin&#8217;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>One is a-toddlin&#8217; and one is a-crawlin&#8217;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>And one&#8217;s one the way.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Then I found the children&#8217;s books &#8212; <em>Where the Sidewalk Ends<\/em> and <em>Lafcadio, the Lion that Shot Back<\/em> &#8212; <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2747 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/now-heres-my-plan-1-224x300.jpg?resize=224%2C300\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/now-heres-my-plan-1.jpg?resize=224%2C300&amp;ssl=1 224w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/now-heres-my-plan-1.jpg?w=231&amp;ssl=1 231w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/>and the brilliant anti-children&#8217;s book,<em> Uncle Shelby&#8217;s ABZ Book for Good Little Boys and Girls<\/em>. And then Dave van Ronk turned me on to Shel&#8217;s Playboy cartoons &#8212; his favorite was the cover drawing of Shel&#8217;s cartoon book (at left).<\/p>\n<p>So I went on a binge and bought a bunch of Dr. Hook albums, and hunted up most of Shel&#8217;s own LPs, which tended to showcase the twisted novelty songs &#8212; &#8220;I Saw Polly in a Porny with a Pony&#8221; comes to mind &#8212; and then I found that Bobby Bare was including at least a half-dozen of Shel&#8217;s songs on every album he made, so I got those as well. I don&#8217;t know how many of Shel&#8217;s compositions I learned over the years, because most of them were birds of passage, coming and going rather than sticking in my repertoire, but on my first cross-country tour in 1983 I started playing this one for the bar crowds and my ex-half-sister-in-law, Hazel, who was traveling along as my road manager, declared it her favorite song.<\/p>\n<p>Hazel and I toured across country and back a couple of times a year for the next three years, so I played this pretty often. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2744 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Bobby-Bare-Drunk-and-Crazy.jpg?resize=260%2C258\" alt=\"\" width=\"260\" height=\"258\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Bobby-Bare-Drunk-and-Crazy.jpg?w=290&amp;ssl=1 290w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Bobby-Bare-Drunk-and-Crazy.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 260px) 100vw, 260px\" \/>I&#8217;ve never heard anyone else do it, except Bare on that record, and Bare&#8217;s records weren&#8217;t selling particularly well, so I don&#8217;t think a lot of other people know it&#8230; which is more testimony to Shel&#8217;s prolific versatility, because it&#8217;s a nice piece of writing, but just a footnote to his oeuvre &#8212; of which more in future posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure how or when I first became aware of Shel Silverstein, but I&#8217;d already heard a bunch of his songs. &#8220;Cover of the Rolling Stone&#8221; was all over the radio when I was in high school, and of course I&#8217;d heard &#8220;Boy Named Sue,&#8221; and at some point during those high school years &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/last-truck-drivin-man\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">World&#8217;s Last Truck Drivin&#8217; Man (Shel Silverstein)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>World&#039;s Last Truck Drivin&#039; 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I've already paid tribute to Shel's work in a previous post, so now on to Mr. Bare... Honestly, I'm not all that wild about Bare's singing--he's a solid country singer\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Bobby-Bare-Down-Dirty-LP-300x298.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2736,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/another-time-place\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":1},"title":"Another Time and Place (Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"One of Dave Van Ronk's loveliest compositions, this recalls his longtime lady, Joanne Grace, and also takes me back to my brief connection with the Speak Easy club on MacDougal Street. Joanne was a smart, dark, funny, and encouraging presence throughout my early years with Dave. The mid-to-late 1970s was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Dave-and-Joanne.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2117,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lord-got-tomatoes\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":2},"title":"Lord, Got Tomatoes (Blind Blake Higgs)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This song was first recorded by the Bahamian Blind Blake\u00a0 and his Royal Victoria Hotel Calypsos, but a couple of the verses were current when I was in elementary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Actually, to be strictly accurate, one of his verses (the sheep one) was current in my school,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Blind-Blake-Higgs-and-band.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":296,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/what-did-you-learn-in-school-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":3},"title":"What Did You Learn in School Today?","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A protest song by Tom Paxton that, oddly enough, changed my life.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"jonathan kozol","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/jonathan-kozol-253x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":820,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/euphoria\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":4},"title":"Euphoria (The Holy Modal Rounders)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My take on an early psychedelic hillbilly favorite from the Holy Modal Rounders, with thanks to my uncle Sascha, and love to Peter Stampfel.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Fantasy blues sampler","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Fantasy-blues-sampler-e1459388602923.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2189,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/my-baby-and-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":5},"title":"My Baby and Me (Bill Morrissey)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My baby and me, we know a good time when we see it, Mid-November -- So long, fall -- as warm days go, this is last call. 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