Gram Parsons - "Streets of Baltimore"

Baltimore was definitely a bustling little harbor city when the steel industry was still active. The docks must have been packed with shipping and stuff like that.

I don't want to assume too much. But, the song, I believe, is talking about a backwoods rural couple, maybe from some failed farm near Appalachia (spelling?). So, they are new to city life and probably lived in a working class neighborhood there. It was not glamorous but they are working class and their expectations are modest. These two are talking roughneck bars and whatnot. I do not believe the two in this song were psyched because Baltimore had a good record shop or DJsm or an anarchist book shop.

It's like when Sissy Spacek's character in the movie Badlands says Cheyenne was the biggest and most beautiful city she had ever seen. It's all perspective and the perspective is hillbilly.

well, the woman proclaiming that baltimore is the prettiest place on earth is a woman who comes from baltimore and quite possibly has never seen any other city. it might mean loving the city life in general (or, conversely, hating the country life). or it might just mean loving the place you came from, no matter what it's actually like.

also, don't underestimate how easily baltimore fits into the meter and rhyming scheme of the song. it's a very musical name.

Helluva lotta folks from neighboring West Virginia came here to work in the factories, back when there were factories. In fact, many a young West Virginians still winds up moving here for "big city" purposes.

Plus "Baltimore" a little more melifluous than "Chicago," another three syllable industrialized big city that might have stood in.

yes!!

I have wondered about it meself, though I know not the lyric as well as you folk.

I suppose that I like the idea of irony in that she thinks Baltimore is the metropolis.

Perhaps, in a way, it is.

'Streets of Middlesbrough'

Maybe Baltimore is a big, bright, shiny metropolis compared to Spaulding, Nebraska.

The protagonist in the song is saying that he doesn't like the city life (because it corrupts). They could have gone to NYC, but that would have been too obvious. Everybody knows NYC corrupts. It has to be an 'any city' city, because the point is the contrast between country life/values and city life/values. Maybe Baltimore wasn't a glamorous city, even then, but it doesn't really matter. The point is that city life corrupts.

The Bats also did a good version of this song for their "Live at WFMU" EP. I'm not sure what the lyric meant to them, though.

the tragedy is written into the song no? not that parsons doesn't do very nice things with it.

Love this tune and this version, especially when you can hear Emmylou, also the Charley Pride and Bobby Bare versions. Authorship seems to be Tompall Glaser AND Harlan Howard, who I didn’t see mentioned upthread. It’s kind of perfect and precise, lyrically and arrangement-wise, little details and rhymes that really stick out like “machine” and “neighborhood serene,” the guitar intro figure, which seems to vary from version to version, doesn’t quite seem to have a traditional verse chorus structure, just a repetitive thing where it swells up with a line that rhymes before the title is recapped, keeps inching forward as the protagonist’s state of mind keeps changing.

Actually the two other versions DO have the same intro lick, which is not used here but I (Bobby) barely mind.

It rivals some of those Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell classics in its machine-tooled precision mixed with deep feeling

I kind of like the streets of Baltimore

Exactly!

(x-post)well, the woman proclaiming that baltimore is the prettiest place on earth is a woman who comes from baltimore and quite possibly has never seen any other city. it might mean loving the city life in general (or, conversely, hating the country life). or it might just mean loving the place you came from, no matter what it's actually like.also, don't underestimate how easily baltimore fits into the meter and rhyming scheme of the song. it's a very musical name.

Interesting. Please elaborate.

Well, I was joking, but it's kind of an interesting other-side-of-the-proverbial-coin if you dwell on their conceits. Where "Sail Away" is about a trader enticing an African to come to America so he can be sold into slavery, "Streets of Baltimore" about a guy bringing his (white) lady from rural Tennessee to the bright lights of the city, which she ends up loving so much she ditches the guy.

Wait, she ditches him for the guy in "Sail Away"?

Then Randy Newman writes "Baltimore" in response to Gram Parsons' response to "Sail Away".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjAMoU6es-8

Willie Nelson just released an album of Harlan Howard songs and this is on it.