Sad Saga of Hard-Headed Young John Background
I met John Jenkinson soon after my family moved from Middlebury, VT, to Wichita in 1966. My dad had been teaching English, mostly English Literature, at Middlebury College, before he arrived at Wichita State University to direct its freshman writing program.
I began attending 9th grade at Wichita Brooks and got to know John in Typing class where I sat in the back row, I think, and John occupied the seat in front of mine. We soon began exchanging typewritten notes and it was not long before we began to hang out together outside of school.
John would go on to become a teacher of writing and a *published* poetic licensee by middle age, after studying and teaching Spanish literature, I think, and engaging in various low-paid jobs, including driving a cab.
After my family moved away from Wichita in 1970, to Wallingford, PA, near Philadelphia, I returned to Wichita the following year for several months, having dropped out of the University of Chicago after one semester.
The next time I was in Wichita was in November of 1987. I had been working for Penn Central and its successor, Conrail, for 13+ years and had taken a severance payment, which allowed me to spend four months camping through Canada to California and Oregon, then to Wichita, Arkansas, New Orleans, Birmingham and home.
I had been an aspiring (amateur) musician in my early years, mainly playing boogie-woogie piano, but in the mid-1980s I took up guitar and then mandolin. By the time I got to Kansas I had ripped up my right shoulder paddling the Snake River in Wyoming, and had begun to concentrate on the mandolin, because wrapping my bad arm around the guitar was too painful. I was still very much a beginner on the mandolin, but I could tremolo a melody well enough to enjoy singing along.
Jamming with John and Nick and others, I started a rendition of "The Streets of Laredo," expecting someone else to lead the next verse. But everybody laid out on the vocal and I ended up singing the whole thing. I got it on my cassette recorder, with Nick offering "Good singing, Dave!" at the end. Wow! High praise indeed — a first and only!
The next time I was in Wichita was in December 1993. I had contacted John late in the year, thinking I might arrange to fly to Wichita in 1994. When John told me that our old friend Gilbert Trevino would be getting married in a couple of weeks, I decided to make the trip right away. Since purchasing an airline ticket at short notice would be prohibitively expensive, I decided to travel in a sleeping compartment on AMTRAK.
I arrived in Newton, KS, the closest stop to Wichita, at around 4am and John was there to pick me up. He was then employed as a cab-driver on the early, early shift, so that he was normally on the road at that time. You can see a photo of John and his cab on the cover of his (first-published?) book of poems, titled "American Hack."
By this time, John had written a song about me(!), a first-and-only experience for me. He sang to me "The Legend of Dave," about a mandolin player who achieves fame and fortune. There was no jam session where he could not sit in.
Years later, I decided that I really ought to repay his kindness — in kind. But first, I would have to learn to play the mandolin.
At some time after the turn of the millenium, I became enamoured of Irish music, and I decided to find a little-known Old World tune that I might adapt to fit a lyric that I would write in honor of my old friend.
When I discovered "The Bard of Armagh," I was overjoyed to think that here might be the basis for "The Bard of Wichitagh." For a day or so I struggled to come up with a suitable lyric. But then I realized that this was not the "little-known" tune I was seeking. Rather, this was a tune recognizable to most Americans as "The Streets of Laredo." Back to the drawing board. Time passed.
In the spring of 2011, I had an extended break from work and resumed my search for a tune. I had gotten a hernia (my second!) and the surgeon recommended to me didn't have an available table for about six weeks. I decided to wait rather than settling for a second-best cutter. As June dragged into July, it was a typical Philly summer, with typical Philly heat and humidity to exacerbate my misery. A string of triple-digit days arrived with a slight reduction in the humidity. My air conditioning was working just fine, but I was spending a lot of time outdoors because I don't smoke indoors in my own home, and I really needed to smoke a lot to alleviate my misery.
Before long, I had discovered a minor-key tune which suited my mood, and I began writing lyrics to accompany a Dubliners' arrangement of a traditional English tune, "Ratcliffe Highway," named for an ancient road built by Roman invaders, and its red cliffs.
I composed dozens of silly verses that didn't give me much pleasure, but they were a welcome diversion from my pain. Most of them I wrote down, thinking them quite amusing at the time. Within 24 hours or so, I realized how bad they were, and was tempted to tear them up. But I persisted and saved them all, thinking that one or two might eventually inspire something more worthwhile.
By the time I returned to work following surgery I had whittled down 100+ songs to a couple of dozen songs of 3 to 6 stanzas each, a collection of songs titled "The Sad Saga of Hard-Headed Young John." I had dreams of returning to Wichita before long and performing some of the songs, accompanied by old friends, for an audience that would have to include John's mom. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — this was not to be. John's beloved mom died far too soon.
On my next visit to Wichita, I did attempt to share one of those songs in a jam session at Nick's, but I had not mastered the mandolin part and I had trouble remembering the words and my unamplified vocals were drowned out by the band and it all came crashing down when my dentures fell out in mid-verse and Ralph exploded in laughter.
Years would pass before I learned to play my mandolin arrangement well enough to play it (more or less) and sing the words (more or less) at the same time. By that time, I realized that most of the songs in the collection were un-singable or otherwise not ready for prime time.
In 2018, I found one song that I liked a lot, but I was having trouble remembering all five verses. I decided to break it into two parts so that I could study my lines in between. And so I was able to record "The Temptation of Young John" in two installments, after many unfinished takes.
In 2020, I selected two more, shorter songs, and recorded "The Comportment of Young John" and "The Revelation and Subsequent Redemption of Young John" — short enough that I could remember all the words in a single attempt, again with many unfinished takes.
— Dave Butler
Recordings and Lyrics
- Sad Saga of Hard-Headed Young John: Temptation of Young John A side, recorded Jun 1, 2018
- Sad Saga of Hard-Headed Young John: Temptation of Young John B side, recorded May 23, 2018
- Sad Saga of Hard-Headed Young John: Comportment of Young John, recorded May 12, 2020
- Sad Saga of Hard-Headed Young John: Revelation and Subsequent Redemption of Young John, recorded July 17, 2020
- lyrics