Music has long provided inspiration, and the Jimmy Driftwood song, "The Tennessee Stud," has inspired the likes of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Doc Watson, who each offered their own version. The song provides a different sort of inspiration for Thomas Fox Averill, who uses it as the basis of his recently published novel, Rode (University of New Mexico Press, $24.95).
"The Tennessee Stud" is a classic Americana, folk, country, or whatever hole you want to stick it in, and it's a bold step to appropriate a classic for other purposes. It better be good if you're going to do it. Francis Ford Coppola succeeded with the movie Apocalypse Now, which was loosely based on the Joseph Conrad novella, Heart of Darkness. Coppola used sweeping, lush cinematography to create his own, unique version of the tale. Averill uses similar literary devices to create a landscape and historical era in establishing his unique version of this musical standard.
The lyrics of "The Tennessee Stud" tell the story of a man who has to leave in a hurry after crossing his girlfriend's father. He meets all manner of trouble, from Indians to cheating gamblers, but vanquishes all, and ends up back in Tennessee to "whup" his girlfriend's Pa and claim his girl. That's a lot of action packed into a little over three minutes, but one of the peculiarities, and one of the attractions, of a song is not what is revealed, but what is left to the listener’s imagination.
All we really know of the hero is that he loves his horse and he loves his girl; the man with no name becomes almost mythical as he rides across the frontier in omnipotent anonymity. The listener gets to fill in the blanks in an affair that results in the development of a relationship between listener and song, if the song is any good that is. Fiction takes care of a good deal of that for us. Averill provides a name, face, and a breadth of emotion that both exceeds and deviates from the character in the song.