Story Song Structure (1): Della and the Dealer (instead of Viva Pancho Villa)

Well, this one didn't get off to the start I was expecting.

First, let me back up. I was listening to "Viva Pancho Villa" by Hoyt Axton, andn something struck me about the structure of story songs, and popular song form more generally, once I started really looking for it.

Sorry about not posting a link to the particular song, but there's no readily available online performance of it.

So I'll instead talk about another song of Hoyt's, "Della and the Dealer". Which is cool, because Della is actually my favorite of his. Plus, that means I can point to another contrast with Pancho's structure, which you can see in the lyrics, or if you're interested enough to go out and track down a for-pay version of it. They're both on Hoyt's album "A Rusty Old Halo", which is well worth it.

Ok, first, you know Hoyt Axton. As a songwriter? Greenback Dollar, The Pusher, Never Been to Spain, and most famously Joy to the World (i.e. Jeremiah was a bullfrog). Hell, if you're into hair metal from the 80's, Hanoi Rocks covered Hoyt's Lightning Bar Blues! So, songwriter. (Hoyt's mother co-wrote Heartbreak Hotel, so we're talking songwriter royalty here...)

And, you know his face. Actor: Alec's father in the original The Black Stallion movies, and the father in Gremlins, the one who brings our little beasties home as the world's best (and worst) Christmas present from a road dog father...

Right, that Hoyt Axton. Like I said, my favorite of his songs is Della and the Dealer, which has one of my absolute favorite lines in song:

If that cat could talk

what tales he'd tell

'bout Della and the Dealer and the dog as well

But the cat was cool

and he never said a mumblin' word

But let's talk about frames. In art, the frame's obvious, right? It's there in story, as well, the so-called framing device.

It's there in song as well. Most often? The chorus, the part I mumble along to and try not to offend too too many people by singing along in off-key accompaniment.

(if you're a musician, I'm eliding the technical descriptions here on purpose, sorry if I put it in a way that seems obvious or accidentally misleading..)

Basically, I'm thinking of the chorus as the way Hoyt sets the verses, the main through-line of story, frames them.

(here's a link for Della at youtube)

What's really cool in Della? Hoyt uses two different choruses, frames if you will, a static frame, and a dynamic frame.

The static one is the "...but the cat was cool..." chorus.

The dynamic one is how he opens and closes the main throughline:

Della and the Dealer and a dog named Jake

and a cat named Kalamazoo

Left the city in a pick-up truck

gonna make some dreams come true

The dynamic change is in the last statement of this frame:

Della and her lover and a dog named Jake

and a cat named Kalamazoo

Left Tucson in a pick-up truck

gonna make some dreams come true

A change of three words, but it tells us all we need to know about Della, who she's riding with now, and what dreams they're looking to make come true now. Three words that tell us who lost the fight in the main storyline; simple ain't it?

Try it and see.

Now, contrast that with Viva Pancho Villa, if you're interested enough to go looking for it: Hoyt uses a single static frame there, and it's almost a chorus that seems like it's only trivially connected to the song story he's after.

Well, one, if you're interested in ex-pat stories, Pancho is one, and their scheme never quite gets off the ground. The chorus is connected by one of the characters, and I suspect that Hoyt had the original song Viva Villa in mind, with the ex-pat's storyline now inverting the frame. I.e., which is the frame, and which the story?

That may be a step too far, I don't think it's quite there in this one because the implication is that the character's in this story sing "Viva Villa" as part of their bar-night celebration. But, there are other songs that do directly invert the frame and the story in a much more explicit way. I'll explore that later, but next time I'll talk about Al Green, a master of lover's lament story songs...