Past Tunes — Timeless Music, Unforgettable Stories
Rediscover the voices, songs and stories that shaped the 1970s & 1980s.
Memory Lane Music 
Pexels, free licence Released in 1975, Dreaming My Dreams is one of the central albums of Jennings’s career: a record made after he had won creative control from RCA, and it sounds like it. The production is lean, the band is his own road band, and the songs move between honky-tonk, balladry and the kind … Read more
Pexels, free licence “Amanda”, from the 1974 album The Ramblin’ Man and later a single in its own right, is Jennings at his most tender. The song addresses a woman who has stayed through hard seasons, and it does so without grand language, trusting a simple melody and a restrained vocal to carry the feeling. … Read more
Pexels, free licence Recorded with Willie Nelson for their 1978 album Waylon & Willie, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” turns a piece of parental advice into a wry country anthem. The duet works because the two voices sound like men who know exactly the life they are warning against, and … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Ovation Glen Campbell Bluebird 12 string electric guitar body — CC0 1.0 Universal Trent Reznor wrote Hurt about addiction and despair. Johnny Cash, at seventy, sang it about a whole life, and made it his own. The story behind the song Cash’s version of Hurt, recorded for American IV in … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Ovation Glen Campbell Bluebird 12 string electric guitar body — CC0 1.0 Universal Shel Silverstein wrote a comic poem about a boy given a girl’s name, Johnny Cash performed it live in a prison, and the result was a number one hit that nobody, least of all Cash, expected. The … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Ovation Glen Campbell Bluebird 12 string electric guitar body — CC0 1.0 Universal Ring of Fire sounds like a celebration, but it was written about a love that felt like falling, and its mariachi trumpets were a gamble that paid off spectacularly. The story behind the song The song was … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Ovation Glen Campbell Bluebird 12 string electric guitar body — CC0 1.0 Universal Johnny Cash wrote I Walk the Line as a promise to his first wife, and it became a promise to his audience as well: a vow of fidelity, sung in a voice that sounded like it meant … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Ovation Glen Campbell Bluebird 12 string electric guitar body — CC0 1.0 Universal Johnny Cash wrote a song about a prison he had never been in, and then spent the rest of his life keeping the promise that song made. The story behind the song Folsom Prison Blues, recorded for … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Johnson electric acoustic guitar 1.jpg — Public domain (copyright holder release) If Astral Weeks was a dream and Moondance was a morning, Tupelo Honey is a love letter, written in honey and delivered with a full band. The story behind the song Tupelo Honey, the title track of Morrison’s 1971 … Read more
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons — File:Johnson electric acoustic guitar 1.jpg — Public domain (copyright holder release) Van Morrison wrote a song about another singer, and in doing so he wrote one of his most joyful songs about himself. The story behind the song Jackie Wilson Said, from Saint Dominic’s Preview, is Morrison’s tribute to Jackie … Read more