Category: Words and music

Pay With Cash

Listen to the song:

The best advice I’ve ever given myself was to stay out of debt. “Self, always remember: The borrower is slave to the lender,” I told myself. But the lender’s siren call is awfully hard to resist: “Just buy this one thing on credit, and then when it’s paid off,  you’ll have everything you need.” That’s the foot in the door, and the next thing you know, debt service is a routine part of your monthly budget.

I thought I’d learned my lesson back in the mid-1980s. I dug myself a hole so deep that bankruptcy court seemed like the only option, and after that humiliating experience I pledged, “Never again,” and I wrote myself a little blues tune called “Pay With Cash” to remind myself.

It’s still the best advice I ever gave myself, and I sure wish I would listen to me. At least I got a nifty little tune out of it.

Save your money; pay with cash.
Put your plastic in the trash.
Take no credit; pay your dues.
Earn your interest; it’s yours to choose.
The loan man’s going to smile as he bites you with the lash.
Save your money; pay with cash.

You can have it here today;
You can have it, but you’re going to pay.
You can have it; it ain’t yours —
Till you pay them, it’s the store’s.
Till you pay them with your cash, you can’t have it your way.
Save your money; pay with cash.

There used to be a dreamer, never struck me as poor,
He said, “Boy, there ain’t no dream that ain’t worth working for.
You let them drop it in your lap, it won’t taste half as sweet.
You want to get from here to there, boy, use your feet.”

And save your money; pay with cash.
Put your plastic in the trash.
Take no credit; pay your dues.
Earn your interest; it’s yours to choose.
The loan man’s going to smile as he bites you with the lash.
Save your money; pay with cash.
The loan man’s got a whip, he’s going to bite you with the lash.
Save your money; pay with cash.

“Pay With Cash,” © 1986 w.p. bluhm. All rights reserved.

Song of the year

Ella Langley has been with Mary and me since the beginning. We love to tell the story about how Mary was interested in getting to know me but hesitant about whether to approach me after church, but then she heard the song where Ella says, “if you ever see a man … and you think to yourself, ‘I could use some of that,’ don’t waste your time, just give him this here line …”

The next Sunday morning, she said to me, “Everyone says I’m a hugger, would you mind if I gave you a hug?” and that hug was the beginning of something wonderful. We have followed Ella ever since, and we were tickled when she and Riley Green won a Grammy for “our song.”

And so we have been cheering this year as Ella’s “Choosin’ Texas” has become the biggest song of the year and then — by one key measure — the biggest song of all time. This week it is the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the 24th week, a feat that has never been done before. 

When the song passed Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” as the all-time chart topper last week, Langley got a lot of attention, not all of it flattering. I saw more than one comment online from people who had never heard “Choosin’ Texas,” and once they did they were not impressed. I even had one friend who checked it out and declared it “a horrible song.”

There’s inevitably going to be fallout when something hits on this scale. Back in 1977, I didn’t get around to seeing Star Wars until two or three months after it became a huge phenomenon, and my first reaction was, “It was pretty good, but it wasn’t THAT good.” Eventually I went to the movie theater to see it seven more times, so I guess it grew on me.

“Choosin’ Texas” isn’t my favorite Ella Langley song — that would be “Loving Life Again” — but it’s been a fun watching the song take on a life of its own. It’s a callback to classic country songs with its references to “Abilene,” “Smoky Mountain Rain” and “Amarillo by Morning,” and touches on the same country heartbreak theme as Dolly Parton’s immortal “Jolene.” It’s enough to leave you drinking Jack Daniels all by yourself.

Whether it’s your proverbial cup of tea or not, “Choosin’ Texas’ has made this Ella Langley’s year, quite literally: This is the 49th week that the song has been listed on the Hot 100, three weeks shy of 12 months. Good on you, young lady. 

The music place

Listen to this post:

I feel like traveling somewhere where music flows from every doorway and you can hear the dreams in the air wherever you step — not frustrated dreams but fulfilled dreams, because being in this place was the reason for dreaming. Money changers and merchants may think the music is about the money, but the value of music is in the music itself.

“I have a song, and I’m going to sing it,” the musicians declare. “Oh, I hope you love it and it touches your heart the way it touched mine, but the song exists to be heard, and now you can hear it, because I’m here to sing it and now it’s your song, too.”

Doorway after doorway, other songs emerge, until all the songs link together into one cacophonous song that shouts “Love” to all who have ears to hear.

“Music is God speaking,” one poet said.

“It soothes the savage breast,” said another.

I wish I could sing all day, and who’s to say that I can’t, or that I won’t? These songs are mine, your songs are yours, and they are ours when we share, and songs are meant to be shared.

And so the song-makers take refuge in every doorway and sing their songs, and people come to listen and join in.

I want to go to that place. I want to stay in that place all day and into the night, until I have all the music I need, and even then I will crave more, because music is love, and love is musical, and we all need love, and love is all we need.

What is that song you are singing?

Here is my song, too.

The words and the melody are dancing;

I can teach you the steps,

or you can make your own as they move you.

Funny, isn’t it, how just the thought of music has my fingers playing allegro across the page — the harmony may not be perfect but it feels just so; the illusion of perfect harmony is almost as good as the reality, or perhaps the off-key reality is as beautiful as the illusion, because it is music, and music is love, and love is all we need.

I want to make music and listen to music all day and every day. I suppose I should take time to eat and to sleep, but I want the music to keep going.

And so it does — there is music in the sighing of the wind, and rhythm in the turning of the clothes dryer, and music in the tires on the highway. The world is a symphony if we only stop to listen and hear what we’re hearing in its solemn and silly and somber and joyous totality.

What am I saying? What have I said? I will have to go back and read it, and perhaps it will look like nonsense, and perhaps it will look like common sense so obvious I should have felt it in my heart or thought it with my brain, because music is wizardly and holy and everywhere we go. 

And that is where I’m going today.