I’ve loved this song for 35 years and still break out in chills whenever I hear it. Elvis recorded it for his Aloha From Hawaii TV special and I’ve heard it was a standard entry in his 1970’s concerts. Mickey Newbury wrote it using three traditional songs and it was his best known hit. (Newbury’s biggest success was as a songwriter) Glen Campbell recorded it too.
The lyrics say… Old times are not forgotten, Look Away, Look Away, Dixieland
By look away how do you interrupt that? Do you think he’s talking about the destruction of the Civil War? The burning of Atlanta and battlefield deaths? I wasn’t sure because Dixie was written quite a few years before the war. But Newbury only used that song as a basis for An American Trilogy. I’m not sure if he wrote those lines thinking about the destruction or not.
this gets me every time. powerful lyrics. It really sums up the reality of the war for both sides.
So hush little baby
Don’t you cry
You know your daddy’s bound to die
But all my trials, Lord, will soon be over