Gotta Hear This #11

In the days before rock and roll there was a big guy from Waco, Texas called Hank Thompson. He sang songs about cheating and losing and drinking, loosely based on the Western Swing method. But while Bob Wills and some of the other operators preferred their music quite slick and musicianly, Hank was happy to wrestle the words back into the elemental dirt of the human condition. His massive song was 'Wild Side Of Life', but the song that's indelible for me is 'Blackboard Of My Heart'.

Released in 1956, it's a song about getting over the girl. The big metaphor relies on the idea that children were once taught to write on a simple slate, which they would routinely clean. Now in Hank's version, the heart is the item that needs cleansing, and this is done with the tears of the wretched lover. Hank sings it plaintive and intense like some honky tonk philosopher, turning a laboured idea into a classic.

My parents used to sing this tune together on summer drives around Millisle and Ballywalter, Cloughy and Comber. The journeys seemed endless and very often the windscreen wipers would keep time as they bleated out these fatalistic lyrics. Just play me a bit of Hank Thompson and I'm back there in the back seat, wondering just how many tears it took to clean that slate.