War & Love: Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town
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Does sheâŚor doesnât she?
At its simplest, âRubyâ is a veteranâs story, a husbandâs story, and a disabled personâs story. Taking the song at face value buys into the husbandâs suspicions. Although Larry Wayne Clark is generally right in his comment above that âRubyâ is âuncompromising,â the song also leaves some mysteries. âRubyâ is well crafted lyrically, with deft touches of sympathy and compassion for both characters in the song. Crucially, it tells enough, but not too much.
âRubyâ is a murder ballad without the murder. Some listeners hear a mournful, self-pitying tone in the early country versions of the song, like Johnny Darrellâs, but hear a real threat when Rogers sings it. The lyrics themselves donât go as far as they might in this murderous direction. The first three verses address Ruby directly; the fourth verse sings about Ruby after sheâs left the âstage.â We hear, âIf I could move, Iâd get my gun and put her in the ground,â rather than âput you in the ground.â When he makes the threat, itâs not directly to her.
We still have some doubts, though, about whether that gun is as far away as he says it is. The concluding tag of the song âFor Godâs sake, turn around,â therefore, hangs out there ambiguously. It is either a plea for Ruby not to leave or a plea to return before he shoots. Whether you hear the second option mostly relies on how the singer sings it, but is certainly a plausible reading of the song. By the time Rogers records âRubyâ as a solo artist, as in the above track, the tone of that final tag is more deadly still than in the First Edition performances.
âRuby,â though, is also Rubyâs story. As much as the song connected listeners to the Vietnam War, it also invoked the renegotiation of gender conventions. To allege her infidelity, the song casts Ruby as a âpainted ladyâ from the first verse, effectively equating her cosmetic touches with a desire to be sexually attractive away from her husband and home, and therefore unfaithful. She would presumably have no good reason to go out with painted lips and tinted hair. As Malcolm Gladwell describes, the era in which Tillis wrote the song was one of transition from when hair coloring was the province of actresses and prostitutes to one where it was about self-determination and self-expression. Although how we hear the song now is different from how it would have been heard then, that signal that Tillis sets in the first verse still colors (pun intended) how we interpret the song. Rubyâs name reinforces this.
Whether the husband is really right about Ruby is another mystery, and one that some were quick to answer in the negative. âRubyâ inspired a response song, âBilly, Iâve Got to Go to Townâ (YouTube), released by Geraldine Stevens in 1969, and mimicking the First Edition arrangement. In it, Ruby proclaims her fidelity to Billy, but also her need to go to town. âBillyâ is not as artful a song as âRuby,â but it exposes a certain unfairness in the original, it gives voice to another point of view, and provides a contrast that undercuts the assumptions âRubyâ evokes.
The night before the 1972 Kenny Rogers and the First Edition performance above, Susan Stamberg became the first woman to anchor a nightly national news broadcast, NPRâs All Things Considered. This has nothing to do with âRubyâ directly other than to note that part of what made âRubyâ compelling at the time were shifting boundaries of public and domestic, male and female spaces. Who âbelongsâ at home, and whoâbelongsâ out, especially on their own, underlies the conflict in this song.
Beyond the politics, foreign and domestic, âRubyâ tells a compelling human story. In some ways, it complements a song like âT.B. Sheets,â in wrestling with the ways physical infirmity can test character and strain relationships. Fundamentally, âRubyâ is a classic country âcheatinâ songâ with a patriotic bent and a tragic twist. The core sentiments of love, loss, and loneliness (his or hers) remain.  Even if âuncompromisingâ at some level, the song leaves important gaps for the listener to fill in for themselves.
Stories of the song
I donât know the end of the story for the real-life Ruby and her husband in Pahokee, Florida. Iâve seen two conflicting accounts of their fates, one merely sad, the other tragic. I havenât found a confirmed source for either account, and I donât care to try too much harder. I focus more on the story of the song than the story behind the song, because the animating question for me is really about how the songs work. Itâs not always pretty or happy, but itâs rewarding.
In researching this post, a footnote led me to true crime writer Ann Ruleâs A Rage to Kill, which contains a story called âRuby, Donât Take Your Love to Town.â Itâs a true story, but not the true story from Pahokee, Florida. Instead, itâs a story of a couple in Washington state: âEric Shaw,â a paraplegic Vietnam veteran, and his wife âAmy.â (These are pseudonyms.) After the war, Eric descends into bitterness, rage, and false accusations. He starts calling Amy âRuby,â after the name in the song, contriving allegations about infidelity. Ericâs malevolence does not stop even after they divorce, and Amy feels trapped by shared custody of their kids. The story ends horrifically.