This third post in my songs of the ’70s series describes what it was like to grow up on the farm during what I consider to be the toughest time of year, winter, as well as the song I most associate with that memory; Wildfire.
Wildfire is a classic song originally written by Michael Martin Murphey and Larry Cansler in 1968. Murphey ultimately recorded and released the iconic tune in February 1975 as part of his seminal album Blue Sky – Night Thunder. The single subsequently reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in June 1975. During his career, Murphey recorded six gold albums producing eight hit singles. In addition to Wildfire, hits include “Carolina in the Pines”, “What’s Forever For”, “A Long Line of Love”, “What She Wants”, “Don’t Count the Rainy Days”, and “Maybe This Time”.
According to Murphey in a 2008 interview, “The night Wildfire came to me, Larry went to bed and I went to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor. I dreamed the song in its entirety. I woke up and pounded on Larry’s door and said, “Can you come down and help me with this song?” His wife got up and made us coffee and we finished it in two or three hours”. The song’s poignant lyrics combined with the haunting piano introduction and ending coda played by master jazz pianist Jac Murphy make it one of the more memorable songs of the 1970s.
For me, the lyrics represent the ruminations of a 19th century midwestern homesteader who has become disillusioned with farming and obsessed with the ghost of a young woman said to have died searching for her pony, “Wildfire”, during a blizzard. The homesteader hopes to catch up with the ghost mounted on her pony and ride away with them to escape farm life, which he bitterly calls “sodbusting”. Murphey himself has said that, while he doesn’t totally understand the lyrics, he believes the song to be, in essence, about escaping hard times whatever they might be.
Although I’m pretty sure farming during the 1970s was not as difficult as during the 1870s, hard times is still a good description of what it was like to be a farmer during a long, cold winter! I remember first hearing Wildfire on the small, single speaker radio located above the barn’s concrete driveway during the winter of 1975. Listening to that radio was one of the few pleasures to be had while working in a drafty barn on a cold day. Although the barn itself was enclosed, it was not heated with the exception of the warmth generated by the 25 – 30 cattle we tended to on a daily basis.
You were always working in heavy coats, gloves, wool hats, and whatever else you could find to keep out the icy chill. Every now and then we’d escape to the milk house where there was a small space heater and warm up before returning into the cold of the barn or stepping outside into the even colder winter air. One could especially feel winter’s wrath when up in the open silo throwing silage down the wind blown access tunnel to the feed room below. Or throwing hay from the upper level down to the lower level of the barn a couple of times a day to feed the cows.
However, the cold was never more penetrating than when you had to take off your gloves and chip away for what seemed like hours at frozen, rock hard manure whenever the barn cleaner not infrequently decided to jump off its track. Perhaps listening to that song and remembering those days in some way was responsible for my own desire to escape the hard times of farm life. Unlike my brother Jeff, I never wanted to remain on the farm any longer than it took for me to reach the age of 18.
For me, farming was far too hard with far too few rewards, particularly when you remember those times you saw your parents working 12 – 14 hours a day every day during all types of weather, trying to survive. To this day, I admire my parents, my brother, and all the others who came before and after for their tenacity and dedication to this most challenging way of life. It took, and in many ways still takes, a strong and courageous individual to make their living off the land!
To end this post, I’ve attached one of my favorite videos of Michael Martin Murphey singing Wildfire. In 2007, the Late Show’s David Letterman developed a sudden fascination with the song and its lyrics, particularly the line about “leave sodbustin’ behind”, discussing it with bandleader Paul Shaffer over the course of several weeks. This ultimately led to Murphey’s being invited on the show to perform his platinum hit. Letterman described it as “haunting and disturbingly mysterious, but always lovely,” and surmised that the performance would leave the studio audience with “a palpable sense of…mysticism, melancholy…and uplifting well-being”.
It certainly leaves me with that feeling every time I hear it!
As always, your feedback is appreciated!
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