The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection 80

The song I featured last time was one in which, as I argued, familial embeddedness was merged with natural embeddedness. I mean to repeat the theme today. They say that variety is the spice of life, and I will not quarrel with that, but by its very nature the Momma 'n' Daddy series highlights continuity, and this gives me licence, I feel, to pursue a theme across two successive instalments. Here is John Denver singing 'Wild Montana Skies':

He was born in the Bitterroot Valley in the early mornin rain
Wild geese over the water headin north and home again
Bringin a warm wind from the south
Bringin the first taste of the spring
His mother took him to her breast and softly she did sing...

Chorus
'Oh Montana, give this child a home
Give him the love of a good family and a woman of his own
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild Montana skies'

His mother died that summer and he never learned to cry
He never knew his father and he never did ask why
And he never knew the answers that would make an easy way
But he learned to know the wilderness and to be a man that way

His mother's brother took him in to his family and his home
Gave him a hand that he could lean on and a strength to call his own
And he learned to be a farmer and he learned to love the land
And he learned to read the seasons and he learned to make a stand

Repeat chorus

On the eve of his 21st birthday he set out on his own
He was 30 years and runnin when he found his way back home
Ridin a storm across the mountains and an aching in his heart
Said he came to turn the pages and to make a brand new start

Now he never told the story of the time that he was gone
Some say he was a lawyer, some say he was a john
There was somethin in the city that he said he couldn't breathe
And there was somethin in the country that he said he couldn't leave

Repeat chorus

Now some say he was crazy and some are glad he's gone
But some of us will miss him and try to carry on
Giving a voice to the forest, giving a voice to the dawn
Giving a voice to the wilderness and the land that he lived on

Repeat chorus

Repeat chorus again

In the Canadian Journal of Musical Purism (Spring 2003, Volume XXXVIII, pp. 45-53) Dr D. Petna has argued that 'Wild Montana Skies' is not a genuine Momma 'n' Daddy song; it's just about a guy who comes to feel at home in the wilds of Montana. But in a crushing riposte by Sam Garroner (CJMP forthcoming) Petna is shown to have overlooked the thematic complexity of 'Wild Montana Skies'. Garroner doesn't limit himself to pointing out that both the mother and the father of the child being sung about figure centrally in the early part of the song. He emphasizes the linked facts that it is the boy's momma who appeals for him to be given a home in the natural habitats of Montana and that she then promptly dies so that her lapsed parenthood immediately passes into that quarter ('he learned to know the wilderness'). In case there should be any further doubt about the song's meaning, we are told that the momma's appeal calls for her son to be given 'the wild wind for a brother'. Garonner's conclusion brooks no further quibble - and I quote - 'If his brother is to be the wind, his momma 'n' daddy surrogates can only be those wild Montana skies themselves, or if not them, then something quite as elemental, like the clouds, or rain, or snows, or rocks, or other stuff like that.'

Drummond Petna's footling objections, if I may add a point on my own behalf, cause him to overlook the dialectical intelligence in the lines:

There was somethin in the city that he said he couldn't breathe
And there was somethin in the country that he said he couldn't leave

The contrasting attitudes to the city and the country are clinched by that final near-rhyme.

[The Momma 'n' Daddy Archive, containing all the details of the series, is here.]