The stories behind the songs:
#10 Last Child

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll remember that I mentioned that the great country songwriter Harland Howard was renown for having to have a title before writing a song.

The title to “Last Child” came from my bookshelf.  Literally, I was strumming for a melody and sort of free-form jamming off the titles in the bookcase next to my writing desk.  “The Last Child” is a novel by John Hart, a North Carolina writer.

As soon as I jammed the first lines:  “No more secrets, no place to hide,” I knew what “Last Child” was going to be about.  It had been a long incubation.

The last child is me, the youngest of four who grew up with an alcoholic father who was enabled by our mother.

I have often introduced this song as one that’s pure Southern gothic:  I was raised by a Bible-thumping mother who covered up for my alcoholic father.  She was raised and saved as a Southern Baptist.  But she raised us as Methodists because that was my father’s denomination, though he never darkened the doors of the church.

That only makes sense to those living it.  Which is why it takes those same people a long time to realize it made no sense. And it takes some longer than others.

Each of the short verses is based on actual experience.

This is another song I needed Melissa to validate.

When you write a song so personal, you don’t really know whether it is any good.  I was worried about that and also that the melody was perhaps too one-dimensional, too repetitious.  I also worried that it was too long.

Here again, I think the insecurity of putting something so personal out there creates reticence.

I suggested cutting this verse:

telephone rings,
middle of the night
you cross your heart,
and hope to die

Melissa said absolutely not.  She said that was one of the stronger verses.

(I can’t count all the songs Melissa has helped by suggesting more, or less, or simply affirming a song.  I trust her totally. It helps that she was an exceptional newspaper editor.  And when it comes to songs, she has a perspicacious sense of story and proportion and what people will hear and when they will want to know more.)

One of the best compliments I have received for “Last Child” came when someone asked me not to play it.

A songwriter friend, who I was going to do a writers-in the-round showcase with, asked me not to play it, as it had brought tears to his eyes and a lump to his throat the first time he heard it.  He didn’t want to struggle with singing with a lump in his throat.

Last Child   

no more secrets
no place to hide
doesn’t matter
you’re too old to cry

(refrain):
last child at home
last child to know
last child

read your Bible
say your prayers
don’t get caught listening
at the top of the stairs
(refrain):

(bridge):
they’re not fighting, just disagree
the question is the bottle half full
or half empty

telephone rings
middle of the night
you cross your heart
and hope to die
(refrain)

brother goes to college
sisters went to work
just a few more years
and you’ll be sitting on top of the world
(refrain)

daddy died from thirst
momma survived
God only knows
how i got out of there alive

(refrain):
last child, last child
last child

If you are interested in receiving email alerts about new postings on this site, please sign up below.

/Users/thomasoliver/Downloads/signature.png