Ten Favorite City Vs. Country (Country) Songs: Country Comfort (#2)

Tweet

I'm almost finished with a series of discussions that pit the city against the country....not the lifestyle, but songs with "city" and "country" in the titles. Here's the penultimate song with "country" in the title. #2: Country Comfort - Elton John Imagine that....the biggest rock singer of the 70s did a song so country that country music radio stations today wouldn't touch it. Featuring fiddles and Gordon Huntley's lovely steel guitar, it certainly sounds as "country" as the picture the lyrics paint. Bernie Taupin, Elton's primary lyricist throughout his nearly 50-year career (ouch, does that make me feel old!), has always been enamored with the western U.S. (I think he has a ranch in Idaho now, where the cover of The Captain and the Kid was taken. But that's from memory, so don't quote me.) That was on display from nearly start to finish on what I consider Elton's first classic album, Tumbleweed Connection. There were songs like "Ballad of a Well-Known Gun" and "My Father's Gun" (the latter about a man going to join a Confederate brigade to fight in the US Civil War) that certainly pointed that out. And then there was this lovely classic. For a Brit, Taupin certainly captured American small-town life quite well ("the 609 goes roaring past the creek, Deacon Lee prepares his sermon for next week, I saw Grandma yesterday down at the store"). I don't know if Elton read the lyrics and said, "You've gotta be kidding me, Bernie!" But he certainly delivered it with conviction. Country Comfort Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin Recorded by Elton John From Tumbleweed Connection, 1971 In a truck that's going back home: