geoLibro.org

This week’s track will invigorate my commitment to doing this Statler Brothers series. Because it’s one of the most frank, adult, almost dastardly songs they ever recorded. I came late to this one (it wasn’t on any of the LPs my parents had), and while it definitely has relatives in the Statlers canon, it’s a standout.

It’s “A Letter from Shirly Miller,” and it is not the only recorded work by this group about a titular character with the name of Shirley (the ball is in your court, Red Hot Chili Peppers). It is also most definitely fucking not the only one of their songs that mixes “Jesus and good singin’” with dirty, down-home, small-town adultury into a filthy, writhing mass of bell-bottomed, star-spangled jumpsuited deviltry. But this one twists the knife, so to speak.

It seems poor Shirley Miller got herself married to a preacher and now she’s living in a “Presbytarian home” in The Cleve. To which you’re saying, “awesome!” I know. But despite what we all know to be true about how great Cleveland is from watching 30 Rock, there are signs that Ms. Miller is feeling squirrely. For one thing, she’s writing letters to former lovers. And while her stationery evidently did not spontaneously combust in an explosion of Jesus tears and purple silk,* it’s still a letter that communicates plenty. She writes**:

1. she was too scared to phone
2. she still remembers “things she said she wouldn’t”
3. she asked about the protagonist’s travels and if Cleveland was on his route (hey-oh!)
4. she’s “chilly” in her cold Ohio weather
5. she’s happy and hopes P is, too
6. she didn’t expect P to answer, just wanted to get a few things off her chest

*Gulp*

I guess that’s what your proverbial booty call looks like in Presbyterian religiousville, 1974. But guess what — P isn’t having it. He’s leaving Margie at the Lincoln Park Inn again!*** In fact, in a remarkable twist from typical hypocritical sculduggery, P not only throws back the fish that jumped into his boat, he says a little prayer for…hm, the metaphor breaks down. Anyway, here’s how he replies:

1. [on Shirley's chilliness in Ohio winters] P thinks she’s “warmer than the hell her husband talks about”
2. [on her being happy] “but I could read between the lines knowing Shirly like I do”
3. P can tell her hand was shaking as she wrote the letter
4. P “tore up the letter” then “said a prayer for the preacher”
5. he intends to let the preacher and the good lord “take care of the rest” (good luck, fellaz)
6. finally, P’s glad Shirley “never wrote what she sat down to write”

Good guy, right? To be fair, there are lots of good guys in the Statler song book (okay, 96% of them are carpenters named Jesus, but that’s still a large population). But here again those goofy looking, key change-lovin’ muthaz are at their best when they’re acknowledging how sad and desparate adults can get. And it happens whether they drink the Jesus juice or not, evidently.

* not knowing, my guess is Presbyterians don’t indulge in the purple silk so much

** Actually, “she” doesn’t write. Or rather what she wrote is conveyed second hand. I just wanted to say “she writes” as an introduction to a fictional letter because Tom Waits once introduced “A Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” that way and it seemed a clever little tip-off to the conceit of the song.

*** That one is for the harder-core Statlervians among you.