A Novel Name For a Boy

Once again, Dave from A Sound Day invited me and a few other fellow bloggers to share our thoughts for his monthly Turntable Talk feature, which has now run for more than two years. Following is my contribution, which first appeared on his blog on April 14. It has been slightly reformatted to fit the style of this blog.

Turntable Talk 25 it is, and the series is still going as strong as ever. This time, Dave’s proposition was to write about a novelty record we like. As usual, he was kind enough to give us some flexibility.

While I had heard the name “novelty song” before, I couldn’t come up with a great definition. Here’s how Wikipedia explains the concept: A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and with musical parody, especially when the novel gimmick is another popular song.

Based on the above, the first artist who came to mind is “Weird Al” Yankovic, but I figured he would be too obvious a choice or somebody might pick him. Then I strangely remembered a song titled Gimme Dat Ding, which my six-year-older sister had on vinyl. When looking it up in Wikipedia, I found it appeared in 1970 and was by The Pipkins, a British novelty duo.

Since it’s kind of an annoying song, I didn’t want this to be my pick, so I ended up doing some research. I was really surprised to see how many novelty songs there are, though the boundaries between novelty, comedy and parody songs are fluid. Finally, I decided to pick a song, which if I recall it correctly was the first I heard by Johnny Cash: A Boy Named Sue.

For some reason, I liked that song right away, even though I didn’t really get what it was about, since I didn’t understand English at the time. A Boy Named Sue was penned by American writer, poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, musician and playwright Shel Silverstein. The Man in Black first recorded the song during his February 24, 1969 gig at California’s San Quentin State Prison for his At San Quentin live album released in June of the same year.

Curiously, that live version of the song became Cash’s biggest hit on the U.S. pop chart Billboard Hot 100 where it peaked at no. 2, marking his only top 10 single there. It also topped the country charts in the U.S. and Canada and climbed to no. 4 in the UK – his best showing there in a tie with his 1971 single A Thing Called Love.

According to SecondHandSongs, there are more than 60 versions of A Boy Named Sue. Here’s the original by Shel Silverstein. Not bad, but it’s hard to beat Cash’s coolness factor!

Here’s another live version by The Highwaymen, a country supergroup featuring Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson – quite a quartet! Their live rendition was included on an album titled Live: American Outlaws, which came out in May 2016.

Following are some additional insights from Songfacts:

This is about a boy who grows up angry at his father not only for leaving his family, but for naming him Sue. When the boy grows up, he sees his father in a bar and gets in a fight with him. After his father explains that he named him Sue to make sure he was tough, the son understands.

Shel Silverstein’s nephew Mitch Myers told us [meaning Songfacts – CMM] the story: “In those days in Nashville, and for all the people that would visit, the most fun that anyone really could have would be to go over to someone’s house and play music. And they would do what one would call a ‘Guitar Pull,’ where you grabbed a guitar and you played one of your new songs, then someone else next to you would grab it and do the same, and there were people like Johnny Cash or Joni Mitchell, people of that caliber in the room.”

“Shel sang his song ‘Boy Named Sue,’ and Johnny’s wife June Carter thought it was a great song for Johnny Cash to perform. And not too long after that they were headed off to San Quentin to record a record – Live At San Quentin – and June said, ‘Why don’t you bring that Shel song with you.’ And so they brought the lyrics. And when he was on stage he performed that song for the first time ever, he performed it live in front of that captive audience, in every sense of the word.”

“He had to read the lyrics off of the sheet of paper that was at the foot of the stage, and it was a hit. And it wasn’t touched up, it wasn’t produced or simulated. They just did it, and it stuck. And it rang. I would say that it would qualify in the realm of novelty, a novelty song. Shel had a knack for the humorous and the kind of subversive lyrics. But they also were so catchy that people could not resist them.”

Shel Silverstein went on to write another song titled “The Father of the Boy Named Sue.” It’s the same story, but from the father’s point of view.

Johnny Cash performed this song in the East Room of the White House on April 17, 1970 when he and his wife were invited by President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s staff had requested the song along with Okie From Muskogee and a song by Guy Drake called “Welfare Cadillac,” but Cash refused to perform those songs, saying he didn’t have arrangements ready.

The Goo Goo Dolls named their 1995 breakthrough album A Boy Named Goo in a play on this song’s title.

In the 2019 animated film Missing Link, the main character, a male Sasquatch voiced by Zach Galifianakis, is named Susan.

Sources: Wikipedia; SecondHandSongs; Songfacts; YouTube