My guest this week on Poetry from Daily Life is, for the second time, Randle Chowning, who lives in Springfield, Missouri. He was born in Howell County, Missouri and spent the first 10 years of his life there. Randle says, “I don’t apologize for being 100% Hillbilly.” At age 10 he was already writing songs. Two of his favorite songs are “Whippoorwill” and “My Old Band.” A unique fact about Randle Chowning is that he was founder of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. ~ David L. Harrison
Popular songs began in ancient times as prayer chants or story songs and sagas that would pass history down through generations. More recent examples of this evolution would be “The Ballad of Jesse James.” Coming forward to the protest songs of the 1960s whose lyrics told real stories of social/political injustice, such as Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town.” One of my favorites is from Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald.” Over the years I’ve written a few true story songs and I would like to humbly submit the lyrics for one which describes an actual event that took place during my childhood.
Tornado Alley
I saw my first at six years old when it took the barn but spared our home
It put a pile of limbs out on the porch and moved the house four inches north
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Chorus
The devil’s tail comes spinning down
The driving hail puts you underground
Like a locomotive tearing right through town
Sometimes there’s no peace in the valley
When the name of your street’s Tornado Alley
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Missouri and old Kansas too, have got Oklahoma’s, Texas blues
It’ll drive a straw through a steel plate, everything you own gets blown away
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Chorus
The devil’s tail comes spinning down
The driving hail puts you underground
Like a locomotive tearing right through town
Sometimes there’s no peace in the valley
When the name of your street’s Tornado Alley
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Bridge
Tulsa, Dallas, Wichita, Kansas City, Omaha, they’re watching every single raindrop as it falls, as it falls
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Chorus
The devil’s tail comes spinning down
The driving hail puts you underground
Like a locomotive tearing right through town
Sometimes there’s no peace in the valley
When the name of your street’s Tornado Alley
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I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened by this powerful tempest and as a kid thought it was all very exciting! I didn’t write the song until over 60 years had passed.
Take care and may God bless each and every one of you.
Randle Chowning is currently writing an autobiography and calls himself “more or less retired from music.” Even so, he has over a dozen CD’s and one live video compilation. For those interested, he can be contacted at [email protected].