In a previous Sing Me A Story I looked at Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler“, a short story about a man who meets a gambler and gets some advice before he cashes in his last chip. This is not the only example of a good musical narrative, and it may not even be the best. Rivaling “The Gambler” is “Coward Of The County”, a single off his 1979 album Kenny. This was his second album and one of his crossover hits outside of country music.
As I’ve noted in quite a few previous Sing Me A Story articles covering country music there’s just something about this style that allows for a full on traditional narrative. Rather than just scenes from an incident or a series of incidents with a common theme this is a story on it’s own, which may be why, along with “The Gambler”, “Coward Of The County” had a movie. In both song and movie, Rogers portrays the uncle of a boy named Tommy, whose father dies in prison. Wanting his son to avoid his mistakes he makes the boy promise not to follow in his footsteps, but that promise is challenged when…well, let’s let the song tell the story.
BW Media Spotlight 
BW’s Daily Article Link> Good Guys, Nice Guys, Paladins, and White Knights
One of the complaints made by people who don’t know any better is that nice guys are boring characters. They aren’t complex enough, not three dimensional. Well, that’s not really true at all. Author Caroline Furlong discusses a number of “nice guys” in fiction, including a couple from our neck of the proverbial woods, who are actually quite interesting because of how they approach their beliefs and either succeed or fail…though who decides which is which isn’t always the hero.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 15, 2022 in Book Spotlight, Comic Spotlight, Movie Spotlight and tagged commentary, writing tips.
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