The Legend-News

Lookin’ For Sloan

You may have noticed that on some of the lyric pages that I’ve marked some passages as questionable. Because I’ve been transcribing these lyrics using audio tapes of the Original Six albums, some of the words aren’t as clear as I’d like them to be.

Well, last week I did some further experimentation with transferring songs from vinyl LPs to a digital files, and I can now report that the experiment was a success: the clicks and pops of the original songs are much clearer when transferred to a digital medium. :) And, I’ve cleared up two questionable words in the song “Sloan”.

Now you’ve got to remember that I’ve never been in western Iowa, having travelled only as far as Newton, which is about thirty miles east of Des Moines. Yes, I’ve driven through southern Minnesota and northern Missouri, but I’ve somehow failed to cruise through territory of the trucker C.W. McCall. So when I listened to C.W.’s songs and heard the names of the towns he’d been to, I tried to find them on my sort-of-trusty Rand McNally road map. The problem was that Rand McNally tends to ignore really small towns.

In “Sloan”, the chorus sings

or so I thought. This afternoon, I dusted off the turntable, cleaned up my copy of the Wolf Creek Pass LP, and digitized it. Then I opened the “Sloan” file and looped those lines several times, while closing my eyes and just listening. After seven or eight repetitions, the words finally came to me: “Fiscus” and “Quick”.

I referred again to the town listing on the back of Mr. McNally’s map, and lo, there were no such towns listed. Bummer. So I went over to MapQuest and did a query, because I was certain that I had the correct names. And I was right! According to MapQuest, Fiscus is on County Trunk Highway F32, between Red Line and Audubon; and we know that Audubon is definitely on the map. “Quick” is on U.S. 6 east of Council Bluffs, at County Highway L52, just south of McClelland. So, those previously questioned lines now say

Two more towns to add to my itinerary for next year’s vacation.

Song A’ Th’ Week.

It’s a classic tale: Man finds dog. Man loses dog. Dog finds dog. Man finds dog again.

Rating: two Kleenex.

Sloan

(Bill Fries, Chip Davis)
From the album Wolf Creek Pass