The Rushed Album Filler “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town”

First Edition Don't Take Your Love
On a tribute show in honor of Kenny Rogers, one of the members of the First Edition described how Kenny Rogers and the First Edition came to record “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” in 1969. It’s a story about how a classic recording came together through circumstances and time pressure.

“You Have 10 Minutes”

The band was in the studio and learned that they only had ten minutes left when the producer asked them if they had anything they could quickly record. The album needed one more song, so the producers just wanted a song to use as filler on the album.

Kenny Rogers replied that they knew a Mel Tillis song called “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” So the band played the song, and producers completed the recording with just a couple of takes. Rogers, who was in his early 30s, had a voice that captured an older man’s weariness at a frustrating relationship with his wife.

The completed song went on the album. And then it became a huge hit.

Themes in the Unusual Song

It is not surprising that the song became a hit because it is so unusual. The disturbing lyrics are sung by a disabled man fearful of his wife going to town for love. He pleads for her not to cheat on him while he is alive, reminding her he will be dead soon.

In addition to the sexual innuendo in the song, there is violence too, as the man’s injuries are from “that crazy Asian war.” And his begging and understanding turns to anger toward the end: “And if I could move I’d get my gun / And put her in the ground.” At the end, the wife is leaving and the singer prays for her to turn around.

In the hands of Kenny Rogers and the New Edition, there is something disturbing about the song. Outside of country music and hip-hop, you rarely hear similar dark themes in pop songs.

When listeners first heard the title of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” many of them might have sensed something familiar, recalling the 1958 Johnny Cash hit about a mother begging her son to avoid violence called “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” The new song took the violence of the Cash song and added sexual anguish, reflecting the openness of the 1960s for discussing such topics.

Although “Ruby” is a traditional country song, this recording was loved by young people too. Perhaps they connected with the young band, or perhaps they saw an anti-war sentiment underlying the tale.

Other Recordings of “Ruby”

Kenny Rogers and the First Edition were not the first to have a hit with “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” Two years earlier in 1967, Johnny Darrell had a hit country recording of the song.

Darrell’s version is sad without being as disturbing as the Kenny Rogers version. The author of the song, Mel Tillis, performed the song too.

Other workable country versions include ones by rock and roll legend Carl Perkins, Bobby Bare, and Roger Miller. Jerry Reed and Dale Hawkins went for more rocking versions.

For you Star Trek fans, there is Leonard Nimoy’s version.

But the Nimoy version is not the oddest recording of the song. For the weirdest version, check out the one by actor Walter Brennan.

Jon Bon Jovi recorded a different song with a similar title, apparently acknowledging the “Ruby” song with his title, “Janie, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.”

For another modern interpretation, check out a live performance of “Ruby” by The Killers.  The band often perform the song and included it on their CD of rarities and B-sides, Sawdust.

What About the Other Side?

Finally, lost in the discussion of the song is the woman’s viewpoint. Geraldine Stevens, also known as Dodie Stevens, recorded an answer song in 1969.  In her song, she takes the woman’s point of view, using the same music with the title, “Billy, I’ve Got to Go to Town.”

In the “Billy” song, Ruby tells her side of the story, explaining that her husband is still her man but bemoaning his jealousy. She does not explain why she has to go to town, though: “You’ve given all you had to give and now it’s up to me . . . Billy for God’s sake trust in me.”

Is she going to work? Prostituting herself to get money for them to live? We do not get an answer in this answer song.

All of the different versions of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” have their merits. But none of those recordings quite capture the unusual and disturbing nature of the song or reflect the turbulent era in which it was recorded in the way that Kenny Rogers and the First Edition did in those ten minutes when they rushed to fill an album.

And that is the story behind the song.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The End of Maryland’s Death Penalty and “Green, Green Grass of Home”

    Maryland 1795 On Thursday, May 2, 2013, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a bill passed by the state legislature to make Maryland the eighteenth state (along with Washington, D.C.) to abolish capital punishment. In the last decade, six states have recognized that the death penalty is applied unfairly and that it does not make us safer than other punishments. Additionally, the discoveries of innocent people on death rows have illustrated the risks of the punishment, and studies also show that the death penalty is more expensive than a sentence of life in prison.

    For these and other reasons, in recent years Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have stopped using capital punishment. Other state legislatures are considering bills to abolish the death penalty.

    “Green, Green Grass of Home” and Its Twist Ending

    Thinking about Maryland’s death penalty, I remembered a hit song from the 1960s called “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which is probably his biggest hit song along with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (he also co-wrote the George Jones song “He Stopped Loving Her Today”).

    “Green, Green Grass of Home” belongs in a unique group of songs that have a twist ending. The song begins with the singer talking about a trip home, but in the last verse, we learn that it was all a dream. Although there is no specific reference to the death penalty or executions, the verse makes clear that the singer will die at the hands of the state in the morning.
    green grass
    Then I awake and look around me,
    At the four gray walls that surround me,
    And I realize that I was only dreaming,
    For there’s a guard and a sad old padre,
    Arm in arm we’ll walk at daybreak,
    And at last I’ll touch                                                                                                                                        
    the green green grass of home.

    Putnam performs a clever sleight of hand in the song. He gets us to see the singer as a human being, one with feelings we can relate to, because everyone has been homesick. Only then does he let us know that the singer is on death row. Had the song begun by telling us the singer was condemned, we would have seen him in a different light and judged him as something other than human. But like Steve Earle’s “Over Yonder,” the song “Green, Green Grass of Home” lets us see the humanity even in the worst of us, which is pretty cool.

    Porter Wagoner Version

    Many have performed and recorded “Green, Green Grass of Home,” including Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead, and Gram Parsons. It was first recorded by Johnny Darrell.

    But Porter Wagoner was the first one to have a hit with “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1965. Check out this performance and note the subtle special effects where the prison bar shadows appear at the end.

    Tom Jones Version

    The next year in 1966, Tom Jones had a hit with the song.  His version went to number 1 on the U.K. charts.

    This TV rendition of the song goes for a less subtle approach than the Porter Wagoner shadows.  Here, Tom Jones sings from a jail cell. The setting of the song, though, kind of spoils the surprise ending.

    Jerry Lee Lewis Version

    Tom Jones was inspired to record “Green, Green Grass of Home” after hearing it on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 album Country Songs for City Folk. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.

    Here is Lewis’s version.

    Joan Baez Version

    Joan Baez gives a unique version by being one of the rare woman’s voices to tackle the song.  It is appropriate because there currently are approximately sixty women on death rows around the country.

    Baez does a nice job in this performance from The Smothers Brothers Show.

    Finally, in 2006, Lewis and Jones performed “Green, Green Grass of Home” together. While the lyrics of the song constitute a soliloquy that does not lend itself to being a duet, it was still cool to see the great Tom Jones singing with the legend who inspired him to record one of his biggest hits. [October 2014 Update: Unfortunately, the video of the duet is no longer available on YouTube.]

    Capital Punishment After “Green, Green Grass of Home”

    One may only speculate about the impact of the song on society or society’s impact on the song. But in 1965-1966 when the song was a big hit for Porter Wagoner in the U.S. and for Tom Jones in the U.K., the death penalty was at low levels of popularity in those countries.

    Great Britain would abolish the death penalty on a trial basis in 1965 and abolish it permanently in 1969. In the U.S., executions ground to a halt in the late 1960s as courts considered court challenges to the U.S. death penalty.

    Within a decade, after states passed new laws, the U.S. death penalty machine began chugging along in the late 1970s, even as other countries continued to abolish capital punishment. But more recently, since the turn of the century, several states have joined the other states and countries that have decided the death penalty is unnecessary, uncivilized, and wasteful of resources.

    Maryland has now joined those civilized states and countries. The end of the death penalty, unlike “Green, Green Grass of Home,” is not a dream.

    What is your favorite version of “Green, Green Grass of Home”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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  • Dylan’s “Julius & Ethel”
  • The Journey of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” From the Scaffold to the Screen
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