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Does she…or doesn’t she?

At its simplest, “Ruby” is a veteran’s story, a husband’s story, and a disabled person’s story. Taking the song at face value buys into the husband’s suspicions. Although Larry Wayne Clark is generally right in his comment above that “Ruby” is “uncompromising,” the song also leaves some mysteries. “Ruby” 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.

“Ruby” 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 Darrell’s, but hear a real threat when Rogers sings it. The lyrics themselves don’t go as far as they might in this murderous direction. The first three verses address Ruby directly; the fourth verse sings about Ruby after she’s left the “stage.” We hear, “If I could move, I’d get my gun and put her in the ground,” rather than “put you in the ground.” When he makes the threat, it’s 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 “For God’s sake, turn around,” 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 “Ruby” 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.

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“Ruby,” though, is also Ruby’s 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 “painted lady” 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. Ruby’s 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. “Ruby” inspired a response song, “Billy, I’ve Got to Go to Town” (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. “Billy” is not as artful a song as “Ruby,” 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 “Ruby” 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, NPR’s All Things Considered. This has nothing to do with “Ruby” directly other than to note that part of what made “Ruby” compelling at the time were shifting boundaries of public and domestic, male and female spaces. Who “belongs” at home, and who”belongs” out, especially on their own, underlies the conflict in this song.

Beyond the politics, foreign and domestic, “Ruby” tells a compelling human story. In some ways, it complements a song like “T.B. Sheets,” in wrestling with the ways physical infirmity can test character and strain relationships. Fundamentally, “Ruby” is a classic country “cheatin’ song” with a patriotic bent and a tragic twist. The core sentiments of love, loss, and loneliness (his or hers) remain.  Even if “uncompromising” at some level, the song leaves important gaps for the listener to fill in for themselves.

Stories of the song

Cover of ‘A Rage to Kill’ by Ann Rule

I don’t know the end of the story for the real-life Ruby and her husband in Pahokee, Florida. I’ve seen two conflicting accounts of their fates, one merely sad, the other tragic. I haven’t found a confirmed source for either account, and I don’t 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. It’s not always pretty or happy, but it’s rewarding.

In researching this post, a footnote led me to true crime writer Ann Rule‘s A Rage to Kill, which contains a story called “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” It’s a true story, but not the true story from Pahokee, Florida. Instead, it’s a story of a couple in Washington state: “Eric Shaw,” a paraplegic Vietnam veteran, and his wife “Amy.” (These are pseudonyms.) After the war, Eric descends into bitterness, rage, and false accusations. He starts calling Amy “Ruby,” after the name in the song, contriving allegations about infidelity. Eric’s malevolence does not stop even after they divorce, and Amy feels trapped by shared custody of their kids. The story ends horrifically.

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