Today’s classic song of the day is an album cut from my favorite Elton John album, 1970’s Tumbleweed Connection. (Well, it was released as a single in Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand, but not in the U.S., the UK, or elsewhere.) The song is “Country Comfort” and it’s one of Elton’s best.
“Country Comfort” was written, as all but one of the songs on that album were, by Elton John (music) and Bernie Taupin (words). It’s about going home to the gentle life of a small town somewhere in the American countryside, likely sometime in the not-too-distant past. You can see it in the lyrics:
Soon the pines will be falling everywhere
Village children fight each other for a share
And the 6:09 goes roaring past the creek
Deacon Lee prepares his sermon for next weekI saw grandma yesterday down at the store
Well, she’s really going fine for eighty-four
Well, she asked me if sometime I’d fix her barn
Poor old girl, she needs a hand to run the farm
And it’s good old country comfort in my bones
Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known
Just an old-fashioned feeling fully-grown
Country comfort’s in a truck that’s going home
True to its title and content, “Country Comfort” has a definite country feel, led by Elton’s honkytonk piano playing. The other musicians on the track include Caleb Quayle on acoustic guitar, Les Thatcher on 12-string acoustic guitar, Gordon Huntley on steel guitar, Ian Duck on harmonica, Johnny Van Derrek on fiddle, Herbie Flowers on bass, and Barry Morgan on drums. Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson (soon to be Elton’s full-time drummer) provided backing vocals.
Tumbleweed Connection was a kind-of concept album about the American Old West, although neither Elton or Bernie had yet visited our country. Bernie said he was actually inspired by the Americana songs of Robbie Robertson and the Band, and you can kind of hear that. The album reached #5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and #2 on the UK Albums Chart. Uni, Elton’s U.S. record label, didn’t didn’t release any singles from the album here in the States, even though it included terrific tracks like “Burn Down the Mission,” “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun,” “Where to Now St. Peter?,” and “Amoreena.” Like I said, it’s my favorite album from Mr. John, and rightly so.
