Maybe you've heard this song from another artist, a choir, a band. Elvis, for example, closed his Las Vegas shows as an ultimate highlight.

My first introduction to it was on a TV station in Lafayette, Louisiana signing off the air with it. That was when TV stations did sign off the air.
A buddy of mine had the wherewithal to record back then and to quite honest, what he gave me was probably one of the last two copies since I got a copy of a copy.

I finally got around to putting it to digital format and well, thought that I would share it here. I am sorry for the quality.



This was my first introduction to Mickey Newbury's music. I have made many good friends over the years due to him and his music.

One friendship that grew out of this was with the author that wrote the biography of Mickey Newbury. Below is an excerpt out of Joe Ziemer's book that tells how "An American Trilogy" came about.
It is a pretty interesting read.


An American Trilogy - how the song came to be

Peaceful moments on the river were interrupted by backlash from an insane political proclamation. President Nixon announced on April 30, 1970 that he had ordered American troops into Cambodia to take part in a major military action. The statement, for lack of a better word, bombed, setting off nationwide protests against the Vietnam War. Then on May 4, a demonstration by students at Kent State against the War ended in tragedy when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on protesters killing four students and wounding nine others. Protests occurred nationwide in response to the tragedy. As the counterculture movement shifted into high gear, nearly five million American students joined the national student strike. Former Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren said Kent State sparked the worst American crisis since the Civil War, and Business Week magazine warned: ”This is a dangerous situation. It threatens the whole economic and social structure of the nation."

Against this setting of social and political pandemonium, Elektra booked Mick at a new club in West Hollywood, just down the road from The Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard. “We were staying in Jac Holzman’s apartment in L.A. while Mick performed at the Bitter End West,” Susan stated. “Mick didn't know what he wanted to sing. We spent one entire rainy day sitting in the apartment while he played through every arrangement of every song that he was thinking about doing. He never went on stage with a planned set. He always let the 'spirit move him.’ He played three songs (Dixie, Battle Hymn of the Republic and All My Trials) that afternoon, but not together. He was pretty quiet, except for the music.”

Later that Saturday evening while backstage at the Bitter End, Mick was conversing with comedian David Steinberg about current headlines. Whites in integrated Southern schools, Mick explained, were insisting on using Dixie as the school-fight song, while blacks were protesting, as they saw it as an anthem of white supremacy. At the same time, the singing of Dixie had been banned in some Southern states, as a mistaken statement of the civil rights movement. Nothing in the song made it the exclusive property of bigots or extremists, Newbury protested. He then advised Paul Colby he was going to sing Dixie, as a protest against censorship. Fearing a riot, Colby turned white and pleaded with him not to do it. Mick told him to call the riot squad.

“It was one of those, kind of, happening nights, you know, where everybody in the business comes in. Joan Baez was there, and Odetta and Cass Elliott - bless her heart - and the Mamas and the Papas” and Mick’s wife Susan. “Streisand came by,” Susan remembered, “and tried to talk Kristofferson into leaving with her, before Mick sang. Kris declined and my admiration for Kris jumped a notch.”

“Originally, Mick continued, “I intended to do (just) Dixie. It had the connotation of being a strictly Southern song that was associated with racism... I thought it was unfair so... In the middle of the show I started to do Dixie.” “Everybody was holding their breath,” Susan recalled. “I was sitting next to Odetta, and I have to admit I turned a little green. What happened in the next seven or eight minutes was magic.”

The Dixie Mick presented that evening was not the rousing, rebel yell, battle march version, but the slow, heartfelt, melodious tune that we know today. Only by slowing it to a quarter-time ballad, could Newbury illustrate its true beauty and meaning. “I got through with the Dixie part of the song and I looked down and Odetta was sitting down in the front row and she had tears in her eyes.” As writer Dorothy Hamm would summarize, “He changed a song that some consider divisive into a song of unification.”

Only when he began singing Dixie, did it dawn upon him to add Battle Hymn of the Republic and conclude with the antebellum All My Trials. Mickey explained, “Dixie just continued on, you know... the other two songs just happened to find their way in the song... and it wound up being a trilogy.” The impromptu arrangement just came together on that magical night and in one moment of brilliant inspiration.

“When I got through with that song, the place was like completely silent... Seemed like it went on for 30 seconds... And then I mean to tell you they stood and screamed and hollered like you would not believe... It was the most electrifying experience I ever had in music...”

Grateful a riot had been avoided, Paul Colby would voice his recollection. “When he finished, he didn’t know if he was going to be applauded or if the stage was going to be rushed. The applause was thunderous.” And Susan would add the finishing touches: “By the end of the song, there was absolute silence in the club... not one clinking glass. Odetta was crying; Cass was crying, and then people were on their feet. A standing ovation that lasted at least two minutes. And that Newbury grin... he knew he could do it.”

“A lot of people,” Mick explained, “were not aware that President Lincoln requested Dixie to be performed on the steps of the White House the day the Civil War was over. Historically it goes a long way back... and it was written by a man (D.D. Emmett) from the North of the United States... Battle Hymn of the Republic was written by a man from the South. I know the song was written for a Broadway play. (Actually, music for Battle Hymn is credited to a Southerner from South Carolina, William Steffe in 1856. The lyrics were written in 1861 by Julia Ward Howe, a northern Transcendentalist from Boston, as a poem to compliment Steffe’s infectious melody.) And All My Trialsp was initially a Jamaican slave song... It was called All My Sorrows.”

“African-American slaves of the era adopted All My Trials as a song of sorrow. The Confederacy took Dixie[/] as a marching song, while the Union identified with [I]Battle Hymn of the Republic... So there were the three components of the Civil War.” In four minutes and fifty seconds, Mickey wove them into An American Trilogy, eternally bonding minority, Southern and Northern issues into a common lament; and in so doing, he helped diminish the Mason-Dixon Line. The song has become “the ultimate example of Americana,” Brian Hinton wrote. “It somehow evokes the birth of modern America.”

“I just put together songs from three separate factions in the Civil War, to show that they were all really fighting for the same thing,” Mick told Disc. “It’s not my triumph though,” he humbly added. “It’s the beauty of the songs.”



And of course, Elvis.

His recording of The Futures Not What It Used To Be is a brilliant bit of writing. I love that song. Ronnie Milsap does a great cover. Mickey Newbury died too young and unappreciated.

Thanks for introducing me to his music. Now I'm going to check out more of his music.

Here's a live version:

Great story. I'm of course, most familiar with the Elvis version, which is epic. Anybody who's ever been to the laser show at Stone Mountain here in Atlanta knows it well as out had been a central piece for as long as I've been going.

Someone also recently posted Glen Campbell doing it as a closer on his show.

I especially like how Elvis goas back into Battle Hymn for the big climax.

Man, Mickey could really sing.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mrbill345:
Thanks for introducing me to his music. Now I'm going to check out more of his music.

Here's a live version:
[/FLASH_VIDEO][/QUOTE] The violinist is Marie Rhines. The only word that I can use to describe her is "lovely". We've been friends for a number of years. Her website if interested is [url=http://www.marierhines.com]Marie Rhines[/url] Mickey also wrote "Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In" that was a big hit for Kenny Rogers and the 1st Edition. [FLASH_VIDEO]



Newbury's first big break was Funny, Familiar, Forgotten Feelings that Tom Jones recorded.




Kristofferson stated that if it hadn't have been for Mickey Newbury he never would've wrote, "Me and Bobby Mcgee" or "Sunday Morning Coming Down".