Down Home Girl
Alvin Robinson
Red Bird
1964
This is what I found, last week, in America –
A bag of two hundred calling cards from the 1920’s.
A copy of Down Home Girl by Alvin Robinson.
A copy of Special Occasion by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
A bag of bowling patches from the 1970’s.
A copy of Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home by Joe South.
A hand carved hickory picture frame.
I found that, 35 years after leaving Missouri, nothing had changed.
I found that, 35 years after leaving Missouri, everything had changed.
I found that nothing ever happens the way you want it to.
Down Home Girl is one of the great Country vs. City records. Its familiar theme (predating the I’m Black And I’m Proud movement by nearly a decade) was I’m Country And I’m Proud. To be a ‘Down Home Girl’ was, to Alvin Robinson, a supreme compliment. Southern girls were prettier, simpler, more honest, less vain, humbler; and unlike their northern counterparts, they could cook fried chicken and dance barefoot. There were a raft of these records, in both the soul and country worlds, warning southerners who moved north not to get too citified.
SOME COUNTRY VS. CITY RECORDS
Don’t Get Above Your Raising – The Stanley Brothers
San Francisco Is A Lonely Town – Joe Simon
Home Is Where The Heart Is – Bobby Womack
We’re Gonna Bring The Country To The City – Tony Mason
Synthetic World – Swamp Dogg