On Ruby, and Her Tendency to Take Her Love to Town

As a child, my Mum’s music confused and beguiled me. It contained strong themes and adult situations. There were jiltings, adulteries, crippled narrators whose wives, despite all pleading, still liked to take their love to town, hotels that you could check in to, but, for some reason, could not leave, and other scenarios that were beyond my understanding. We learn arguably as much about the world from our mother’s music as we do from her stern directives and gentle admonitions. Mum’s music was with us, always. We took it to town, to sporting fixtures, and on long journeys. The cassettes would warp and wrinkle in the heat of the car so that it sounded as if the band Air Supply was performing I’m All Out of Love while wearing space helmets full of jelly. What joy.

At home our Mum liked to turn her music up loud enough that she could listen to it while vacuuming. Sometimes it seemed to us as if we lived inside a giant stereogram. Her music would make the walls of my bedroom pulse. I remember, particularly, standing in a paddock, miles from home, on a beautiful summer day, watching the breeze shift the grass and toss the seed-heads, and hearing Born To Run wafting faintly over the hills to see me. There was no escape from Mum’s music.

My Pulitzer-winning analysis of the song Hotel California was so well received that I’ve decided to continue the series ‘Know Your Popular Country-Themed Music.’ This time I’ve chosen the Kenny Rogers classic: Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town, the aching, lovelorn lyric about a crippled war veteran and his wayward pet chimpanzee, Ruby. Please enjoy.

Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town