Wanted Man

My favorite country song of all time (oh, I just lost most of my audience, didn't I? Well, that's okay, it's cosier with just the two of us). So, as I was saying, my favorite country song of all time is a number I've always thought of as "Bullet in My Shoulder" but which is actually called "Wanted Man," sung by the late, great Frankie Laine.

He died this week at the age of 93 and it was only through reading his obits I discovered that he, like all the best things Western, was Italian. And I mean Italian as in, "My dad cut Al Capone's hair":

Frankie Laine was born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio on March 30, 1913, the eldest of eight children of John LoVecchio, a barber, and his wife, Anna, both of whom had left Palermo, Sicily and settled in the Little Italy section of Chicago. (Al Capone was a customer of Mr. Laine’s father.)

I also discovered that his nicknames included "America's Number One Song Stylist," "Mr. Rhythm," "Old Leather Lungs," and "Old Man Jazz."

For me, though, he will forever be the man who sang "Wanted Man" on an eight-track cassette from a Reader's Digest boxed set of greatest country hits that belonged to one of my Aunts. During the summers, we kids played those cassettes so much we may have helped render the technology obsolete.

Here's where I should link to the song, and let you decide for yourself that it's the best country song ever, but Booger I mean Blogger won't let me do that (in case I've stolen the music I suppose, which is SO unjust; my version of "Wanted Man" was lovingly transferred from eight-track to mp3 by a little process called OSMOSIS, which I believe is still legal.)

Since I can't post a link, I'm going to walk you through the song as best I can. So, ahem, it starts with the spoken bit:

SPOKEN: Bullet in my shoulder.
Blood runnin' down my vest.
Twenty in the posse and they're never.
Gonna let me rest

Then the music kicks in, and it's really upbeat, considering the subject of the song is a potentially fatal bullet wound, and you hear:

Till I became a wanted man I never even owned a gun
But now they hunt me like a mountain cat
And I'm always, always, always on the run

But wait till you hear WHY he's on the run:

I killed poor Jed Kline in bad Laredo fight
Killed him with my bare hands for the girl I loved that night
Jed's brother's out to get me
He's comin' with a gang
But I'd rather shoot it out, by God
Than let 'em watch me hang

And then things really pick up, and you get horns, and backup singers, and I always picture the posse forming a kickline (Laine did sing the theme to Blazing Saddles, after all) and he sings:

Bullet in my shoulder!!
BLOOD runnin' down my vest
Twenty in the posse!!
And they're never gonna let me rest
Till I became a wanted man I never even owned a gun
But now they hunt me like a mountain cat
And I'm always (always), always (always), always on the run

But the VERY best part is yet to come, for even as he knows he's going to die for her, he expresses some rather serious doubts about "the girl he loved that night."

She had spangles on her red dress
She had laughter in her voice
When he tried to put his hands on her
My heart left me no choice
But was she really worth it?
Well, I guess I'll never know
She'll be drinking someone else's rye
When I'm six feet below

She'll be drinking someone else's rye. When I'm six feet below.

Ooph.

Repeat chorus.

A wanted man
A wanted man
On the run

Fade out.

As my cousin Catherine said, upon hearing of his death, "I suppose that at the age of 93 it's unlikely he went out in a hail of bullets, but that's the way I like to picture it."