DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (11)

By: Erik Davis
February 2, 2023

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite Country singles from the Sixties (1964–1973). Series edited by Josh Glenn. BONUS: Check out the DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM playlist on Spotify.

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON | SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN | 1970

We’re too programmed by the Gregorian calendar to notice, but it’s a total Christian mindfuck that the rowdy peak of the week is followed immediately by the day of worship. Baking in a Puritan prejudice against partying, the schema arms the trap of shame, placing the time for spiritual reflection, and maybe even some healthy remorse, at the exact moment your body and brains are losing ground against the poisonous backdraft of the night before. And for all you heathens who ignored church that day, well, there’s still a reason you feel like shit.

Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” leaps, or rather drifts, into that temporal breach between sacred and profane, and becomes thereby perhaps the most reverent of godless American ballads. The humor of the first two verses, which crystalize the oafish chagrin of hangover, disappears once the singer hits the street. A kid swears as he kicks a can, becoming a bored avatar of the void. The singer is reminded enigmatically of something he has lost somewhere, but if that something was God, his traces are still everywhere in the scene: in the Sunday school hymns, in the distant tolling bell, even in the smell of frying chicken, the “Sunday cluck” so wedded to Black church life. Yet the singer wanders outside the circle of salvation, and its human manifestation as social love, his body haunted by the loneliness it will face when it comes to its dying day. So the singer petitions the Lord, but only for something, presumably weed, to get stoned on — still a faintly blasphemous sentiment when Kristofferson wrote the line, and one that Johnny Cash took the liberty of uttering against the wishes of his producers when he sang the tune on The Johnny Cash Show.

Now we can hear a zeitgeist bell in the song as well, born just as the Saturday night of the 1960s gave way to the Sunday morning of the 1970s, when a lot of things came down. Ray Stevens souped up the tune the year before, but 1970 was when Kristofferson’s song broke, covered by Lynn Anderson, Roy Clark, and Cash, whose own relationship to Christianity was, like Kristofferson’s, vexed but earnest. But the best version is Kristofferson’s own, from his debut album that same year. With some Lee Hazelwood gravel in him, Kristofferson sings his hit more like a songwriter than a singer, but as with Townes Van Zandt, the modest powers of his voice only underscore the fragile affect that animates the words, which speak for and as a deeply American type that Cash called, in his televised intro to the tune, a “drifter of heart.”

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DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton’s WE FOUND IT | Lucy Sante on Johnny & June Carter Cash’s JACKSON | Mimi Lipson on George Jones’s WALK THROUGH THIS WORLD WITH ME | Steacy Easton on Olivia Newton-John’s LET ME BE THERE | Annie Zaleski on Tammy Wynette’s D-I-V-O-R-C-E | Carl Wilson on Tom T. Hall’s THAT’S HOW I GOT TO MEMPHIS | Josh Glenn on Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen’s BACK TO TENNESSEE | Elizabeth Nelson on Skeeter Davis’s I DIDN’T CRY TODAY | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ TOGETHER AGAIN | Lynn Peril on Roger Miller’s THE MOON IS HIGH | Erik Davis on Kris Kristofferson’s SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN | Francesca Royster on Linda Martell’s BAD CASE OF THE BLUES | Amanda Martinez on Bobbie Gentry’s FANCY | Erin Osmon on John Prine’s PARADISE | Douglas Wolk on The Byrds’ DRUG STORE TRUCK DRIVIN’ MAN | David Warner on Willie Nelson’s WHISKEY RIVER | Will Groff on Tanya Tucker’s DELTA DAWN | Natalie Weiner on Dolly Parton’s IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS (WHEN TIMES WERE BAD) | Charlie Mitchell on Stonewall Jackson’s I WASHED MY HANDS IN MUDDY WATER | Nadine Hubbs on Dolly Parton’s COAT OF MANY COLORS | Jada Watson on Loretta Lynn’s DON’T COME HOME A DRINKIN’ (WITH LOVIN’ ON YOUR MIND) | Adam McGovern on Johnny Cash’s THE MAN IN BLACK | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Dick Curless’s A TOMBSTONE EVERY MILE | Alan Scherstuhl on Waylon Jennings’s GOOD HEARTED WOMAN | Alex Brook Lynn on Bobby Bare’s THE WINNER. PLUS: Peter Doyle on Jerry Reed’s GUITAR MAN | Brian Berger on Charley Pride’s IS ANYBODY GOING TO SAN ANTONE.

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DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (11)

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