Top Ten Ruby Songs: Ravishing Ruby (#6)

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Today is beautiful and the sun is shining. Then you step outside and BRRRR! Oh, well, no sn*w. But there is a severe country music waring in place for people who don’t like country music. Lots of them, actually, in the coming days on this countdown of songs with “Ruby” in the title. Here we go! #6: Ravishing Ruby - Tom T. Hall They called him The Storyteller. Country music has a reputation (unfairly, in my opinion) of being nothing but story songs. You can thank/blame Tom T. Hall for that stereotype. Because he truly was The Storyteller. Here you have a girl who’s looking for the father who abandoned her. She knows noting about him except he’s a truck diver named Smiling Jack. She lives and works at a truck stop, hoping one day she’ll be reunited with the man she doesn’t know (“she wants to see him, she wants to touch him, either way, dead or alive”). As for why Tom T. Hall had such a great reputation as a songwriter, just consider the line, “All the time she’s been waiting on him she’s been waiting on you and me.” Ooh, that’s a great line. Now, back in the early 70s Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass were very popular, so that might explain the mariachi trumpet (which is jazz trumpeter George Tidwell, not Danny Davis) in this song. Maybe it’ll take a little of the “country” edge off for the non-country fans. The story is great, regardless. Ravishing Ruby Written by Tom T. Hall Recorded by Tom T. Hall From Rhymers and Other Five and Dimers, 1973 You’ve poured a lot of hot coffee in your day: