While doing aquafit group exercises with my wife in the YMCA pool last week, a catchy but unfamiliar song caught my attention.
Nearby, a hula class was rehearsing for an upcoming show. That’s where the music was coming from — a country song, played repeatedly to give the dancers their needed practice.
At first I thought it was Dolly Parton singing, figuring the halau may have been giving the famous singer a tribute after her recent death at age 80.
Later, after getting out of the pool, my wife told me that it was definitely not Dolly Parton and that the voice was not high enough to be her. Melveen Leed, she said it was, with certainty.
“It’s about the paniolos,” she said.
Hmmm, Melveen Leed. Now there’s a big name in Hawaii. Intrigued, I searched for the song a few days later and gave it a listen.
The song was “Paniolo Country,” and it was as enjoyable as I’d hoped. Along with the toe-tapping instrumentation and Leed’s expressive vocals, I tuned into the lyrics, which were wonderfully evocative.
The opening stanza:
Places I have been
Cities I have seen
With concrete caverns rising from the ground
Miles and miles of asphalt trail
Stretch across a land
Stampeding metal ponies leaving smoke along the way
Now we’re talking. Concrete caverns … asphalt trail … smoke along the way — all evoking a yearning for tranquility amid a chaotic world.
Written by Marcus Schutte Jr., Leed was the original performer of the song in 1975, and it was subsequently recorded and released by country music star Randy Travis in 1993.
Not only that, I learned that Leed sang a duet of the song with the aforementioned Dolly Parton in 1988 on an ABC TV special.
See, maybe my tone-deaf ears had somehow picked up on that Dolly Parton connection after all.
You can find the duet video on the Internet, but I like Leed’s original version better.
As you can imagine, by the end of the song, Leed takes us on a quick jaunt to her kind of blissful “home on the range.”
Check it out:
Cowboys have been popping up in my world quite a bit lately. The Netflix series “Brothers,” starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, gets a thumbs-up from me so far. In the opening episode, a rascally Harrelson convinces McConaughey, against his better judgment, to take a road trip. They wind up at a rodeo, where McConaughey takes a somewhat hilarious crack at bull riding..
A day or so later, another cowboy connection surfaced in my Facebook feed — this one a fascinating nugget of Hawaii history.
In 1908, Ikua Purdy, a great-grandson of Parker Ranch founder John Palmer Parker, traveled with fellow paniolos to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to compete in the famed Frontier Days Rodeo.
Purdy delivered a legendary performance in steer roping, reportedly setting a record by roping his steer in 56 seconds. In 1999, 44 years after his death, he was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame.
“They (Purdy and his friends) were an instant curiosity with their odd slouched hats and colorful hat bands, peculiar saddles, and bright clothes — an exotic blend of Hawaiian and vaquero influence and tradition,” according to the National Rodeo Hall of Fame.
The vaquero influence dates to 1832, when Mexican cowboys came to Hawaii’s Big Island to teach cattle-handling skills.
Which brings me back to “Paniolo Country.”
Here’s a suggestion for anyone weary of the political discord that seems to be tearing this country apart.
Before climbing aboard our metal ponies and heading down those miles and miles of asphalt trail toward the concrete caverns, let’s take one small step toward a little more understanding.
All we need is a little water to wash down a Melveen Leed-style chill pill.