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SONG TITLE: SALUTE TO A SWITCHBLADE

PERFORMER: TOM T HALL

SONGWRITER: TOM T HALL

YEAR OF RELEASE: 1970

COMMENTS: What makes Tom T Hall so damned cool? The main thing is that he could take an involved insight or complex thought on the human condition and express it musically and lyrically through specific characters with unique personal style, all the while within the intellectualy unassuming demands of commercial country songwriting. He is, as my father would say it, "common as an old shoe." (Uh, this is a compliment.) He wrote simple stories about country folks doing country stuff, with rare emotional nuance: emotional effects are always going at least two or three directions at once.

 

The principal effect of "Salute to a Switchblade" is drunken giddiness, giving way to an underpinning of sobering fear, mixed with other minor shadings. It is the story of a drunken American sailor on leave in a German bar who gets into trouble through lack of language skills by accidentally hitting on another soldier's wife. He's so amused by how thoroughly buzzed he was, the clever things he said, and how he left through a window when the husband came after him with a switchblade knife.

 

The mood makes a big swing toward raw fear when he wakes up in the morning to find that the guy was close enough to have cut his coat, and Gets The Point: How fragile life is and how easy it is for a stupid young person to get dead unexpectedly just by being stupid and reckless. Also, note the shadings of humiliation, such as the outvamp comment about not telling Mother about the whole incident.

 

The song is somewhat unusual for its form. There is not really a repeating verse/chorus setup (such as the famous ABACAB form). It's more like AAAA; straight melodic repitition, with his little spoken words gimmick at the end of each verse. "The man looked up at me and said 'Mox nix.' Which meant that he was not overly con-cerned with my health."

 

Did I mention that this record jams? The whole song runs at a pretty good gallop, at an escaping-a-jealous-husband pace. There's some nimble country picking running under the whole record, with some tasty steel guitar fills for flavoring. It's good enough to make me play air guitar, something not common for country music under post-Hendrix standards. Gotta love it.

 

   

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