In his current book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, respected music artist Bob Dylan critiques 66 popular recordings to explain how music reveals the character of a culture.
Wouldn’t you know it, Page 1 of Chapter 1 features “Detroit City,” Bobby Bear’s 1963 crossover country classic about a disillusioned white man from the South who comes north to the Motor City.
The man makes cars and makes money, but he feels homesick. As many may recall, Barre pronounces the place “DEE-troit City.”
“People back home think I’m big in Detroit City, “From the letters I write, they think I’m fine, “But by day I make the cars, “At night I make the bars, “Only you can read “Between the lines” . . . I want to go home . . . “
Barre recorded and released the song 60 years ago this spring. On the Billboard charts, it reached number six on the country-western chart and number 16 on the pop chart and launched his successful career.
“It wasn’t until Detroit City came along that I realized I’d never have to get a real job, which was a huge relief for a guitarist,” Barre told the All Access Pass website.
Bare was born in Ohio and raised on a farm in Kentucky. Now lives in Nashville. Barre’s son, Bobby Barre Jr., said in a telephone interview from there that his father was “doing well this week. You know, he’s 87. It’s hard. Really hard.”
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Bobby Jr. is also a guitarist and songwriter, and said his son Beckham Bare is spending time with his grandfather to learn the tricks of the trade.
“He teaches my son guitar chords when my son is there playing music,” Bobby Jr. said. “He is an extremely good pianist and guitar player, he is 16 years old and he creates music.”
When Dylan’s book was released late last year, the Bares were pleasantly surprised by a black-and-white photo that showed Bobby Jr., his brother and his parents standing on the shore of what looked like a lake.
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Everyone is hugging and smiling. The photo appears to be from the early 1970s and is credited to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
“Dad got word from Bob Dylan’s management that the book was going to be there, and they sent the book to Dad,” Bobby Jr. said. “And my dad called me and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got the best picture of our family in this book that I’ve ever seen.'”
Bobby Sr.’s big hit came at the start of a musical decade best remembered in Detroit for the glitz of Motown’s assembly line; for the raucous rock and roll concerts in the Grande Ballroom; and about young Canadian artists like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young making their way to fame around the Motor City.
In addition, Dylan’s essay cites “Detroit, home of Motown and Fortune Records, birthplace of Hank Ballard, Mitch Ryder, Jackie Wilson, Jack White, Iggy Pop and the MC5.”
‘I want to go home’
And with the migration from Dixie, Detroit also spoke with a provincial accent. According to Dylan, when “Detroit City” was written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis, “Detroit was a place to run to; new jobs, new hopes, new opportunities. Cars were coming off the assembly lines and straight into our hearts.”
But some of those hearts were broken in the men who left the gentle fields, streams, and forests of the soft, rural South for the concrete streets, sidewalks, and alleys of the cold, urban North.
Dylan begins his essay with “In this song you’re the prodigal son;” and ends it with “Like thousands of others, he left the farm, came to the big city to get ahead, and got lost.” Bobby Jr. agreed, and he quoted the same , a recurring sentiment in other songs, like his father’s exquisite version of “500 Miles.”
“Dylan almost made it,” he said. “At that time, there were a lot of people away from their homes in the South, going to Michigan and Chicago and things like that.”
The song was originally titled “I Want to Go Home,” a phrase that dominates the chorus. The record wasn’t a big hit when it was first recorded and released by Billy Grammer in 1962, but Bare liked it.
“I heard Billy Grammer’s record of ‘Detroit City’ while I was driving down the street one day and I almost crashed my car,” Bare said on his website bobbybare.com. “I thought it was the greatest song I’d ever heard in my life.”
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At worst, a critic might present “Detroit City” as a weepy and mournful expression of self-pity and overwrought sentimentality.
At best, his fans know it’s a realistic portrayal of genuine emotion about real-life depression for some people who lived here. In other words, it’s a perfect country-western lyric.
Of course, such themes are not limited to one musical genre. With a much different style, soul singer Otis Redding introduced it with his posthumous hit “Sittin’ on the Dock of Bay,” which was released five years later. Like Barre, Redding extolled the cognitive dissonance of leaving the South.
“Left my home in Georgia / Headed for Frisco Bay / Got nothing to live for / Nothing seems to come my way.”
And Gladys Knight struck the same chord in the same era with “Midnight Train to Georgia,” because “LA proved too much for the man / He couldn’t handle it / So he left a life he’d known.”
This train trope echoes on the narrated bridge spoken by Barre in “Detroit City.”
“… I rode the freight train north to Detroit City / And after all these years I found I was just wasting my time / So I just think I’ll take my foolish pride / And put it on a freight train south / And ride. ..”
This part impressed Dylan.
“What is it about falling into a narrative in a song that makes you think the singer is suddenly revealing the truth?” Dylan writes.
Bare later recorded other hits such as “Drop Kick Me, Jesus (Through the Goal Posts of Life)”, “Marie Laveau” and “I Drink”. One of his writing collaborators was Shel Silverstein, better known to some audiences as the author of the classic children’s book Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Bare was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Many artists have recorded “Detroit City”. One was Tom Jones, whose exquisite version features horns, strings, Elvis-like inflections and an ad-libbed “Somebody help me!” that’s unintentionally spot on.
Of Jones’ version, Barre told the website classicbands.com, “I thought it was pretty lame.” His son said the success of “Detroit City” inspired his father to record an album of city songs about places like Abilene and Memphis. Bobby Jr. still sings it at his shows, and he estimated that Bobby Sr. performed “Detroit City” “thousands” of times and never got tired of it.
According to his son, Bobby Sr. often says, “Thank God I love that song. Because if I had a hit that was a song I didn’t love, I’d be a miserable person.”
Joe Lapointe is a metro Detroit journalist.