Country Titles Not in the Songs: Juanita (#3)

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Into everyone’s life a little country music must fall. That thrills me, but I know a lot of you feel it’s raining cinder blocks. That’s the joy of music, though: one person’s poison is another person’s ice cream! Here’s some country music “ice cream” that doesn’t have the title in the lyrics. #3: Juanita - Flying Burrito Brothers This is one of my favorite FBB songs....and one of the most hideously-mixed songs in history. Truthfully, this is one of those songs you use to explain to aspiring sound technicians how to NOT do something. (I’d add to that Jim Reeves’ “A Railroad Bum” and Elton John’s entire Empty Sky album.) But maybe Gram Parsons wanted it to sound like this. You never can tell with people the way things were in the late 60s and early 70s. At any rate, it’s a terrific song from the catalog of authentic country-rock, the things that influenced acts like the Eagles and Firefall. We don’t know who “Juanita” is: either the “mama, sweet mama” who abandoned the narrator or the 17-year-old girl “in a dirty old gown with a conscience so clean.” The guess would be the latter, but you never know with songwriters. Otherwise, this song would be called “Oh Mama, Sweet Mama”! Juanita Written by Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons Recorded by the Flying Burrito Brothers From The Gilded Palace of Sin, 1969 That’s where I found myself: