Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town

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“Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town”
Single by Johnny Darrell
Writer(s)	Mel Tillis

“Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town”
Cover of the 1969 single
Single by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition
Genre	Country
Writer(s)	Mel Tillis

"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" is a song written by Mel Tillis which was made world famous by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition in 1969.

Contents 1 History 2 The First Edition 3 Meaning 4 Covers 5 Further Reading 6 Footnotes

[edit] History

Ruby was originally recorded in 1967 by Johnny Darrell, who scored a top ten country hit with it that spring. Waylon Jennings cut a version and had a minor hit the same year. Other singers, Roger Miller and Leonard Nimoy among them,^[1] also cut the song, but no one had a major hit with it.

[edit] The First Edition

In 1969, after Kenny Rogers and the First Edition's success with the hits "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" and "But You Know I Love You", Rogers wanted to take his group more into a country music direction. They recorded their version of the song (with Rogers singing the lead) in one take. The record was a major hit for them. It made #1 in the UK on the New Musical Express (#2 on the BBC chart) staying in the top twenty for 15 weeks and selling over a million copies by the end of 1970. In the United States it reached #6 and also sold more than 1 million copies by 1979. Worldwide, the single sold more than 7 million copies.

In 1977, now a solo act (following the First Edition's split in early-1976), Rogers made re-recordings of this and a number of other First Edition hits for his greatest hits package Ten Years Of Gold (later issued in the British Isles as The Kenny Rogers Singles Album), which topped the US country charts and was just as successful in the United Kingdom.

Rogers re-recorded the track for a 1990 collection of hits, issued in the USA as 20 Great Years (issued in Europe as The Very Best Of Kenny Rogers). It also appeared on live albums, other hits collections and compilation albums. All inclusive, sales of Rogers' own recordings of the song are above 140 million.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Meaning

The song is about a disabled, dying veteran of "that old crazy Asian war" (the Vietnam War), who begs his lover not to cheat on him. Tillis based the song on a couple who lived near his family in Florida. In real life, the man was wounded in Germany in World War II and sent to recuperate in England. There he married a nurse who took care of him at the hospital. The two of them moved to Florida shortly afterward, but he had periodic return trips to the hospital as problems with his wounds kept flaring up. His wife saw another man as the veteran lay in the hospital. Tillis changed the war to the more recent Korean War in the song, and departed from the ending that happened in real life: the man killed his wife in a murder-suicide.^{[citation needed]} This is however alluded to in the song, with the singer avowing, "If I could move I'd get my gun and put her in the ground."

At Kenny Rogers's shows since the 1970s, the song has often been cheerily clapped along to, or joked around with. However, in 1969, telling the story of a crippled veteran was more timely, as the Vietnam War was expanding.

[edit] Covers

• Carl Perkins cut a single in 1974 on his album My Kind of Country^[2]
• Gary Holton and Casino Steel's version was a number one hit in Norway at the beginning of 1982.
• In 2004, the band Cake recorded a version that can be found on their promo CD titled Extra Value, their EP "Wheels" and the album titled B-Sides and Rarities, released in October 2007.
• The Killers recorded a live version of this song on a Radio 1 show in the UK. A final cut appears on their B-sides and rarities album Sawdust.
• German synth-pop band Wolfsheim included an electro cover of the song on their 1987-1995 compilation of singles and unreleased material called 55578.
• The Danish band Sort Sol included a cover of the song as the final track on their 1983 release Dagger & Guitar.
• Pop band Right Said Fred covered the song on their third album, 1996's Smashing!.
• Colorado pop-punk band ALL, featured it on a split 7" with Judge Nothing released on Chicago's Thick Records.

Cult irish punk band The Outcasts recorded a live version of the song on their 12" record "nowhere left to run".

[edit] Further Reading

• Rule, Ann (1999), "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town". A Rage to Kill and Other True Cases. Simon and Schuster p. 291. ISBN 0743424042

[edit] Footnotes