Holly Dunn of Creepy Country Songs Fame Dies

Cafe Society
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Well, two creepy songs anyway.

She’s best known in Country circles for Daddy’s Hands, which she wrote for her minister father. Obviously, he took the “spare the rod” Bible verse to heart. The song includes the lyrics:

“Daddy’s hands, soft and kind when I was cryin’
Daddy’s hands, hard as steel when I done wrong…”

Ummmm, yeah, sometimes you just gotta smack them kids, y’know? Damn liberals tellin’ me I can’t now?

She also had the wonderful Maybe I Mean Yes, which got pulled from most playlists for obvious reasons. (cough) date rape (cough).

Holly Dunn died kinda young. Just sayin’.

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Jeez. Anyone else recently die that you’d like to shit on?

Holly Dunn had nothing on Conway Twitty when it came to creepy country songs.

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"…I can tell you’ve never been this far befoooore…

Bom, bom, bommmm…"

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I was unfamiliar with her songs but I just saw Mark O’Connor post on Facebook about it. He said he’s the fiddle player on “Daddy’s Hands” and several other of her early hits. Anything Mark touches can’t be all bad.

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It’s possible to read it as being purely about the initial stages of courtship, well before a well-mannered couple (in the relevant sense) would be anywhere near the bedroom, backseat, or hayloft, but Dunn did request radio stations not play it due to the date rape connotation.

And, of course, Dunn supported my interpretation of the lyrics:

Now, I don’t like pop country. I don’t like stupid songs like those, and I especially don’t like the “thrill of the chase”/“women are mysterious creatures” bullshit which both Others women and puts men in a difficult, dangerous position of having to pursue someone who is culturally forbidden from ever showing any unambiguous sign of wanting to be pursued. It’s stupid for women, it’s downright dangerous for men, and any song which glamorizes it should be hooted off the radio and off the stage. That said, I’m pretty sure Dunn wasn’t lying about how she meant the lyrics, and I don’t see how the lyrics really support the date rape accusation which lead to its being pulled from radio.

I have no idea what you’re “just sayin’” here, but she died of ovarian cancer.

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I’m not familiar with Holly Dunn, but I’d sure like to hear more about Conway Twitty’s “creepy country songs.”

I’ve had nearly zilch contact with Twitty in my musical life. All I know about him is that he was the prototype for the dude in “Bye Bye Birdie,” a musical I’ve always hated, and that a Pentagon general talked him into singing one of his hits in Russian as a gift for the big US-Soviet space collaboration. Underground comix great Justin Green recorded that event for posterity in his “Musical Legends” series.

But I do love creepy country songs.

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The Kendalls…father and daughter duo…Heaven’s Just A Sin Away and other songs to make you shudder.

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I had a couple of Holly Dunn CDs from the 90s. Very catchy tunes, and when I was right into 90s country and female vocalists. There are some songs, album cuts, that weren’t hits that I really liked a lot.

I’m sorry to hear that she’s gone.