Favorite Bruce Who Songs: The Valley Road (#4)

Tweet

What? We’re supposed to thaw out in the next couple of days? And temperatures near 60???? I hope the weathermen know it’s January and not April, so they aren’t playing an April Fool’s joke on us. And speaking of jokes, here’s another song on my list of favorites from people named Bruce or bands with “who” in their name, inspired by an album by someone named “Bruce Who” that JJ got in the mail. For the fourth day in a row, here’s an obvious entry. #4: The Valley Road - Bruce Hornsby & the Range Wow, in 1988 we had a song like this?? The subject matter probably flew right over most younger people’s heads (not that I was 80 when it came out or anything....). Plantation worker gets girl pregnant?! And she leaves to have the baby somewhere else? That was what happened back in the days when out-of-wedlock pregnancies were considered taboo. (Other things happened, too: I found a newspaper article in 1937 where a woman paid a 21-year-old to marry her 14-year-old daughter because the girl was pregnant.) Right about the time the pregnancy was confirmed there was either a wedding or the girl went out of town for six-eight months “to visit relatives” or something. “Somebody said she’s gone to her sister’s, everybody knew what they were talking about.” No kidding. The video for this song was filmed at William & Mary in Williamsburg (brought back great memories: the assembly hall shown early in the video is where I saw Tom Petty and the Clash [not together, mind you]). Although the video is hokey, the song tells the truth about how, contrary to what some religious folks would want you to believe, America hasn’t always been a “sexually moral” place. The Valley Road Written by Bruce Hornsby and John Hornsby Recorded by Bruce Hornsby & the Range From Scenes From the Southside, 1988 While no one was lookin’ on the old plantation: