"Guns Made America Great" / Thanks, Max!

I'm pumpin' dum-dum bullets through a hot .44
That my brother brought back from the Vietnam War
Last that he told me was you'd better shoot straight
Guns made America great

A semi-automatic with an infrared scope
Can come in mighty handy when it's gettin' hard to cope
When the neighbors start complainin' and the hour's gettin' late
Tell 'em guns made America great

Guns made America big and strong
No one's left to save us, John Wayne's gone
Everybody's pickin' on the N.R.A.
Tell 'em, guns made America great

If everyone wore pistols, the rate of crime would drop
And we could all sleep easier, no need to bother cops
So let's get armed and dangerous before it's too late
Guns made America great

Guns made America big and strong
No one's left to save us, John Wayne's gone
Everybody's pickin' on the N.R.A.
Tell 'em, guns made America great
Guns made America great

Lyrics, from Pinkard & Bowden's Guns Made America Great, found here.

Mr. Big Food tells me that the album on which this song was originally recorded is out of print and no longer available, but Sony has a free download of the song. Not a problem for us. The original Guns Made America Great is on #3 of The Redneck Collection.

Long before Mr. Big Food started working on Big Food, he began The Redneck Collection. 

It started as a set of seven CDs-- just an eclectic mix of American music. It's grown to over 50 CDs' worth of Americana. 

It's hard for me to describe the character of the mix. Old Texas tunes-- Willie early on and Red Stegall later. Classic Mojo Nixon (e.g., Amsterdam Dog Sh*^ Blues). A lot of old old sing-along Gospel. Jerry Jeff. Lynard. Conway. Young Dollie. I'm giving the impression it's all country-western, aren't I? Bruce brings Blueneck to the Collection. Geeze, there's even some Kid Rock in the original Collection, and a cameo by the Stanford Marching Band! Duh. Elvis. Cash. Carter-Cash. Tom Petty. Janis & Me & Bobby McGee. 

[Gosh dang it. I just had to repeat the same argument Max & I made to Mr. Big Food years and years ago. There is only one repeated-- perfectly repeated, same exact-- song on The Redneck Collection. AND IT STAYS THAT WAY. We settled this years and years ago.]

More than anyone except Mr. Big Food himself-- and several others have been involved, A. Leland comes to mind-- Max has been there through all the years of  The Redneck Collection. Back in the day, he contributed more than one CD's worth of songs, somewhere in the late teens to twenties, if I'm not mistaken. (It's in our will. Kat gets Big Food. Max gets The Redneck Collection.) It's because of Max's research and help that Mr. Big Food is now transferring all of the music on these CDs to an mp3 player. Emphasis on now.  Which is why I am waxing so nostalgic now, looking at the "playlists," as Mr. Big Food goes through the numbers. 

Redneck #1: "Our kind of music"; Little did we know.

We had all manner of "rules" about The Redneck Collection when it grew beyond 13 CDs. No exact duplicate songs, with one exception (17. "Slow Train Bound for Georgia"). As you can see, we named the individual CDs but the rule was that the name had to be a lyric, not a title. That rule soon changed. #26 was named "Jesusland."

Back in the day, a lot of us had great fun with The Redneck Collection. One year, I devised a board game: Redneck Collection Trivia.  Here's a sampling of the questions:

Q: How many versions of Poncho and Lefty are there? 

A: 2

Q: If one were to seek true salvation, where would one look? 

A: Jesusland #26

Q: The “hardcopy” of CD #24 went missing. Where would you go looking for it? 

A: Memphis

Q: What is the saddest song on the RNC? 

A: Doug Stone’s, "Slow Train Back to Georgia"

Q: What is the most pathetic (pathos) song on the RNC? 

A: Gary Allen’s "Bourbon Boarder Line" (alt. answer "Hillbilly Heaven")

Q: As luck would have it, song 1 on CD 1 couldn’t have been a better lead-off song for the RNC. What is its title? [In the beginning, Mr. Big Food allowed some music program to randomize the order of tunes, and turns out-- swear to God-- this was the very first randomly selected song.]

A: "Redneck Games" by Jeff Foxworthy. I've quoted from this before. Faleen done got herself an electric dryer.

Q: What CD is informally titled “Max grows up”? 

A: 22

Q: Who was the first Professor of Philosophy to contribute a song? 

A: Tom Polger

~~
And a new Q: What song carried Mr. Big Food and I through 2009?
A: Jerry Jeff  Walker's "Mississippi you're on my mind" 

~~

There are times when Mr. Big Food puts a # in the CD player-- he knows just what one-- and we dance. Not often. But it happens a few times each year. 

Big Life.