Gentle On My Mind

A deep dive

John Hartford wrote the song Gentle On My Mind in 1966 and released it on his 1967 RCA album Earthworks & Music. Glen Campbell heard it, liked it, and in 1967 recorded and released his own version recorded with The Wrecking Crew, a loose collective of session musicians Campbell was a part of. By 2001 the many versions of Gentle On My Mind had registered more that 6,000,000 plays.

At the bottom of this post you’ll find the song’s lyrics and a plethora of Gentle On My Mind covers, YouTube links, beginning with Hartford and Campbell’s original versions and including everyone from Aretha Franklin (brilliant!) to Frank Sinatra (pure cheese).

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I think my first Gentle On My Mind obsession occurred around 2010. I have a dim recollection of sending an urgent Facebook message to someone I vaguely knew and rarely interacted with and going off about the genius of the lyrical content. They were baffled. I was trippin’ ballz, shooting sparks, possibly in a manic state.

I don’t recall which version of the song sent me on that flight. Glen Campbell and John Hartford both recorded and released the song in 1967 and won two Grammy’s each for it in ‘68. Gentle On My Mind has since been recorded hundreds of times. A year after its initial release, there were already fifty recordings of it, by 1987, over 400. Taking into account all recorded versions, the Wikipedia article I used as source cited it as the second-most-played song on the radio in the United States.

The popularity of the song created opportunities for Hartford: he was a regular on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, became a writer and performer on the Smothers Brothers show, and played on The Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo recording. But Hartford was never completely comfortable with certain aspects and demands of the entertainment world and record business. The ongoing stream of royalties from this gem allowed him the freedom to follow his heart, make the kind of records he wanted to with the people he wanted to make them with, and pursue his passion for steamboats, studying for and getting his captaincy. Be a freak, in the best sense of the word.

I was determined to learn the song, took one look at the chords and backed off.  There were a lot of coloured chords in there - major 7ths and 6ths. Imagine music theory is a towering black monolith and I’m a monkey sitting in its shadow at a toy piano. Poking the keys with a banana. I was pretty much a hillbilly punk, an idiot savant, hold the savant, and most of this was beyond me. 

Portrait of the artist

humdeedumdeedum…..the passage of many years…..humdeedumdum

So…it’s fourteen years later and my understanding of musical theory has progressed since I had been first smitten by Gentle On My Mind. I’m all fired up again to learn it. It’s a John Hartford version that has sparked me this time, not the original recording from his 1967 RCA album but a later recording on the Flying Fish label featuring a crack band, soaring instrumentals, and a rolling rhythm.  It was the making of the Instagram reel below, riding the bus from Lethbridge to the Calgary airport a couple of days after my Mum passed away that lit this fire, branding the song into my temporal lobe.

As the universe would decree, I find the music and lyrics in one of the Reader’s Digest music books my Mum passed on to me.

I look at the chords. I understand the structure. It’s beautiful, it’s simple, it’s genius.

Unsurprisingly, given its ubiquitous popularity, I’m not alone in my Gentle On My Mind fixation. Sleuthing the internet for this post I encountered numerous blogs with people relating their personal connections and experiences with the song, how it was part of their history, how it got in their blood, their head, their heart. Scores of articles discussing its history and the significance of its popularity. Over the years Gentle On My Mind has become woven into North American culture and beyond. What is it about this song, what is the magic?

It’s unusual, it’s got a hell a lot of words. It doesn’t rhyme. Hartford himself says it “violated the principles of songwriting” - if only he was alive to expand on that -  and calls the song a banjo tune without a chorus and with a variety of words he deemed “hard to sing.”  

Without making a focused effort to learn the lyrics, you’re not gonna pick it up and sing along with anything but the tag at the end of each verse. It’s stream of consciousness, rolling wheels, open windows, a tumbling cascade of free flowing emotive imagery propelled by an insistent and infectious banjo-driven rhythm. 

Hartford and his wife Betty were living in a trailer in Nashville when Hartford wrote the song, inspired, so the story goes, after he and Betty had been out to see the film Dr. Zhivago, an epic tale of complicated conflicted love.

“Everyone’s made a whole lot out of that," says Hartford. "I know it gave me a feeling that caused me to start writing, but as far as saying it came from that, I don’t know. It just came from experience. While I was writing it, if I had any idea that was going to be a hit, it probably would have come out differently, and it wouldn't have been a hit. That just came real fast, a blaze, a blur. I wrote it in 20 minutes. I didn’t realize what I had written until I came back later and looked at it.” After their divorce, Betty pointed out parallels between herself and the female character in the song.

Here is the original draft of the song.

It came out almost entirely fully formed

For me the song draws its power from several sources. While some see a tale of lost love I see a narrative of unconditional love, an old, deep, and still potent device. The song begins with this knowledge, this certainty:

It’s knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk

And each verse ends with the tag, a confirmation. She will be there:

waving from the backroads by the rivers of my memory, ever smilin’ ever gentle on my mind

Personally, I feel like she’s okay, she’s not pining away crying about it, she is “ever smiling” after all. Perhaps she has her own life apart from the wanderer, I’m thinking. She just might be glad the wanderer isn’t hanging around 24/7h, bit of a pain in the ass. Body odour, bad habits, doesn’t behave in restaurants and shopping malls. But I digress.

The visuals painted by the lyrics span an expansive land, are somehow mythic, touching our hearts and minds in places in ways we can’t precisely define. The song literally bursts with imagery, it’s filmic, it’s staring out the window of a speeding car or the open door of a rail car while the world flies by. The folk mythology of the wanderer and what that evokes. Freedom, a restless spirit, travelling and seeing a continent coast to coast, characters encountered. The transformative nature of the journey.

Much of the writing is intensely visual. It is, as Hartford suggested, a “word movie.”

Though the wheatfields and the clotheslines and the highways and the junkyards come between us

I hear this and a picture of America coast to coast is conjured in my mind, yet with no description of a cityscape or mention of a city of any kind!  How does that work?  You’re on a highway and these wheat fields, clotheslines are flying by … rural areas, small towns. Then there’s junkyards, the outskirts of a city. Heaps of rusting cars, broken washers, exploded couches, dead TV’s. The junkyard, out on the fringes, like this traveler. Seen through the window of a car, the back of a truck, or a rail car.  It further builds the character and narrative of the restless wanderer. Then….

And another woman’s crying to her mother because she turned and I was gone

He’s a phantom. A myth.   He’s gone.

Diving into the language, here’s a beauty….

I dip my cup of soup back from a gurgling crackling cauldron in in some trainyard / My beard a roughenin’ coal pile a dirty hat pulled low across my face

I enjoy the playfulness and love of language in these lines.  The percussive consonance in these three words:  dip, cup, soup. Followed by this tasty gumbo of consonants and vowels:  ….gurgling crackling cauldron. What?!?  Say that six times fast.  And by the way, what is a roughenin’ coal pile?  I don’t know, I’ve never come across one.  But I can see the black stubble and imagine how it feels as he rubs his chin. See flickers of firelight and shifting shadows play across the tip of a nose, the rise of cheekbones below the dirty hat pulled low across my face. These are a few faves I’ve picked out. The song is jam-packed and bursting, a reader’s and writer’s delight.

And now the monkey at the piano is going to attempt to speak on the subtlety of the cycling chord changes that both colour and propel the song. 

Campbell recorded the song in E and the internet told me that Hartford played it using C positions in G tuning, tuned down a step and a half, so the banjo is tuned to E. That’s all Greek to me. I play it in C on the piano and here is the basic construct:   

C – Cmaj7 – C6 – Cmaj7 – Dm – Dm7 – Dm6 – G7 – C

The foundation of each C chord stays the same.  C – E – G, the triad.   So we start out with a C chord C-E-G-C, then we have C major 7 (the triad+B), C sixth (triad+A), the C major 7 again (the triad+B).  This one note change in each chord makes a simple internal melody creating different colours and degrees of tension in the chord as it cycles. A similar cycle occurs with the Dm chord before it goes to the G7 which transitions the progression back to the root chord C. I can’t say with any authority that this is “The Way - The Truth.” One will find variations out there and after all I’m a monkey, so I’ll leave the music theory there and say the one thing I can say with any certainty….

It’s beautiful, it’s simple, it’s genius.

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Glen Campbell released 64 albums in a career that spanned five decades, selling over 45 million records worldwide and having massive hits with songs like Wichita Lineman, By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Southern Nights, and Rhinestone Cowboy. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011 and passed away August 8, 2017 at the age of 81. I highly recommend the documentary Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me that follows Campbell during his final tour across the United States with his family, examining his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and how it affected his ability to play music. Given his reputation for mainstream country-pop, a lot of folks are unaware of what a fantastic guitar player he is. Check out his ripping acoustic guitar solos on the live takes of Gentle On My Mind in the video archive below.

We lost John Hartford way too early, in 2001 at the age of 63 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He was a banjo player, fiddler, guitarist, songwriter, steamboat captain, and a keeper of lore and obscure songs. He is considered one of the founders of the Newgrass movement. He had a unique and resonant baritone voice and in concert would switch between banjo, fiddle, and guitar. He could and would fiddle and sing and dance at the same time. At the bottom of the Gentle On My Mind covers archive below, you’ll find a live concert video of John that captures his spirit and talents.

John Hartford and Glen Campbell…………..ever gentle on our minds.

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It’s knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk / That makes me tend to leave my sleeping back rolled up and stashed behind your couch / It’s knowing I’m not shackled by forgotten words and bonds / And the ink stains that are dried upon some line / That keeps you in the backroads by the rivers of my memories / That keeps you ever gentle on my mind.

It’s not clinging to the rocks and ivy planted on their columns now that bind me / Or something that somebody said because they thought we fit together walkin’ / It’s just knowing that the world will not be cursing or forgiving / When I walk along some railroad track and find / That you’re moving on the backroads by the rivers of my memory / And for hours you’re just gentle on my mind.

Though the wheat fields and the clotheslines and the junkyards and the highways come between us / And some other woman’s crying to her mother ‘cause she turned and I was gone / I still might run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face / And the summer sun might burn me till I’m blind / But not to where I cannot see you walkin’ on the backroads / By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind.

I dip my cup of soup back from a gurglin’ cracklin’ cauldron in some trainyard / My beard a rough’ning coal pile and a dirty hat pulled low across my face / Through cupped hands round the tin can / I pretend to hold you to my breast and find / That you’re waving from the backroads by the rivers of my memory, ever smilin’ ever gentle on my mind

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******************** video archive *******************

There’s hundreds of versions out there. I’ve chosen some of my faves, some that are interesting for one reason or another….and some that are, uhm, bad.

John Hartford 1967 recording

Glen Campbell 1967 recording

Aretha Franklin…killin’ it

Campbell and Hartford duetting live on The Smothers Brothers show with some early video production going on that’s worth a look. Followed by a comedy segment with Dick and Tom Smothers and Campbell, that is corny, not so funny, and segue ways into a terrible song. Check that section out long enough to get a load of Campbell’s cyan blue suit with navy t-shirt -  super styling!  

While we’re on the TV train, this is a must see take with Aretha Franklin duetting with Andy Williams on his show.

From great to…not so great. Frank Sinatra’s unremarkable cheesy take.

Kinda love this Elvis version from his Memphis album. The arrangement is genius and that son of a gun could sing.

The John Hartford Flying Fish label era version, one of my faves.

Glen Campbell rips an acoustic guitar solo on this version, live with a bunch of C&W peers and stars.

More cheese, the best thing about this is Dean’s got a cigarette perched in his fingers throughout, takes a drag at the end of the song, and then goes off about some guy’s tonsils.

The Band Perry won a Grammy in 2015 for their version. I’m on the fence with this one, anyone want to chime in?

This Tammy Wynette version has some alternate lyrics and a modulation

Gentle On My Mind with an Irish accent. It’s ok until an ill-considered sax solo.

I like this straight take on it with Campbell’s daughter Ashely on banjo and longtime Glen Campbell band member Carl Jackson playing guitar and singing.

From the straight up to the just plain weird. Gentle On My Mind, French TV style. You need to see this.

While we’re doing TV…a young, fresh-faced Wayne Newton on the Mike Douglas show doing the song at a sprightly tempo.

Late career Johnny Cash. I’ve got a soft spot for it.

Some guy doing an accordion instrumental version with a canned rhythm track

Roberto Carlos used the Gentle On My Mind melody for his song El Camionero

Ok, here’s one more version of John and Glen duetting, it’s a goodun.

John Hartford concert, solo live in 1980