"Want to have my good time fun" - "White Lightinin'" and other favourite songs about booze

Despite having had to renounce alcohol almost a quarter of a century ago, it hasn’t affected my enjoyment of songs about booze and boozing one bit. If I spent every day pining for the bottle, it might be different – but I’ve never missed it that much (cigarettes are another matter altogether).

I know I promised to stop recording for a while, but I couldn’t resist doing a cover of The Big Bopper’s self-penned “White Lightnin’”, that hymn of praise to illicit moonshine whiskey production in the North Carolina hills. George Jones’s version sold more, but Mr. Richardson’s is incomparable. Here’s my attempt, complete with over-the-top sound effects:

                

Booze Songs fall into three categories: celebratory, regretful and observational. High in the celebratory column comes “Lightnin’ Bar Blues”, in which the singer just wants to be left alone to drink his Lone Star beer and “have my good time fun”. I love the Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen and Hoyt Axton versions: can't find the former, so here's the latter:

“Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee” was first done by Sticks McGhee, but was rapidly appropriated by a variety of Rockabilly perfomers, including Sun’s Malcolm Yelvington and the great Johnny Burnette:

It’s not to be confused with Gene Simmon’s rocking “Drinkin’ Wine”, another Sun recording. I often wonder whether Sun would have enjoyed such great success if so many of their artistes hadn’t recorded while under the influence - I hate to think what sort of condition Carl Perkins was in when he cut  “Dixie Fried”:

I remember once finding Willie Nelson’s "I Gotta Get Drunk" on a jukebox in a sweltering bar in Key West after I’d been travelling on my own for a while: it was like unexpectedly meeting an old friend and didn’t half cheer me up. I’ve always loved the lines: “I spend my whole pay cheque on some old wreck/And brother I can name you a few!” Unfortunately, the versions on You Tube aren’t a patch on the original, so here’s a version by Joe Carson:

I’m not generally a fan of defiantly feelgood anthems of a left-wing persuasion, but I’ve always been fond of  Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” (as is Homer Simpson). 

As for observational booze songs, my favourite is Sheryl Crowe’s first big hit, “All I Wanna Do”, which perfectly captures the sleazy horror of drinking beer in downmarket American bars while the sun’s blazing outside (“Billy likes to peel the labels from his bottles of Bud”).

Country music, of course, specialises in alcoholic regret. My two favourite self-pity masterpieces are Jerry Lee Lewis’s “What Made Milwaukee Famous” (what a singer he was!) and the terribly underrated Stonewall Jackson’s “Blues Plus Booze Means I Lose” (not available online, but deserves a mention). And if you’re not yet feeling bad enough, why not give The Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine”  - in which the singer described the hell of living with an alcoholic - a try. (“When you fell asleep with blood on your teeth” is an image that tends to stay with one.) 

As for what the Victorians used to call “the horrors of drink”, they’re memorably evoked in a version of the old classic, “Down Bound Train”, by Ken Collyer’s Skiffle Group – one of the high points of Britain’s skiffle boom. Chuck Berry’s version is pretty good too:

I’ll leave you with the Nick Lowe-penned “Milk and Alcohol” by Dr Feelgood. I’ve been listening to this for years without realising it was about getting drunk while listening to a sub-standard concert by John Lee Hooker:

If you’re feeling down after listening to this selection – please don’t take a drink!