AD.

Smith’s telling me all kinds of stuff this morning…

I’m thinking of Sunday Morning Coming Down right now and it’s quiet, it feels like Sunday morning.

Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar, which means you have to be pretty fricking smart. After he graduated in England, he came back to the U.S. and with all this college education and everything, he chose to get a job at Johnny Cash’s recording studio as a janitor because he figured he’d get a chance to slip Johnny Cash a copy of his songs he’d written.

And one of the the songs he slipped to Johnny Cash was Sunday Morning Coming Down which is one of the saddest, most heart-evocative songs I know.

Johnny Cash was gonna sing the song on his show. His TV people came to him and said, “We don’t want you to say this line On the Sunday Morning sidewalk wishing Lord that I was stoned/ cuz there’s something in a Sunday makes a body feel alone.” We don’t want you to use the word stoned on TV.”

And Johnny Cash turned to Kris Kristofferson and said, “How do you feel about this? You wrote the song. What do you want me to do?”

Kristofferson said, “It’s your TV show. I would totally understand if you don’t want to use the word stoned.”

Everybody left it at that. And Johnny Cash went out there and sang it the way it was written.

I can’t believe Smith has all this shit in his brain, but I sure do enjoy it.

Sunday Morning Coming Down by Kris Kristofferson

Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

I’d smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
‘n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken.
And it took me back to somethin’,
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.

On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.

In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin’.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.

Do do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do.

To fade…

5 Responses

  1. love it… he is a fountain of wisdom that man is.. with a memory sharp as a knife.

  2. Why do I think this song was happining in Minneapolis? Must be because I was there the first time I heard it walking down the sidewalk looking for a church to go hide in. 1956. That’s a long memory. Maybe I’m just imagining it.

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