Featured in the New Yorker, March 20, 1995
It wasn’t the books that I didn’t read,
It wasn’t the teachers who tried to teach me,
It wasn’t that varsity baseball coach
Who kept on telling them locker-room jokes.
It was Bobbie Ann Mason, back in high school.
She was way too cute, she was way too cool.
How was I gonna get an education
Sittin’ right in back of Bobbie Ann Mason?
—Rick Trevino, singing on
Columbia Records’ Looking for the Light
O.K. How many people do you know with their own theme song? How many people have you even heard of whose full names are also song titles? John Wesley Harding? Pretty Boy Floyd? Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle did have songs named for them, but not many other folks get to have a song of their own, the way I do. Well, I guess from now on you’ll have to look at me through smoked glass: don’t use the naked eye.
The writer Lee Smith is the only person I actually know who has come close to having her own song. Bruce Hornsby, of Bruce Hornsby and the Range, once called her up and said, “Hi, this is Bruce Hornsby.” She said, “Bruce who?” Later, she told me, “He was a big star, but I didn’t know it.” He said he was a fan of her novels, and he invited her to his concert. These days she’s a big Bruce Hornsby fan and belongs to his fan club. One of her novels inspired his song “The Road Not Taken.”
Now along comes Rick Trevino, ambling down the same little-used road. He’s a big country star, but I didn’t know it. His new album includes a song called “Bobbie Ann Mason.” I’m not sure he’s singing about me, but I won’t argue. Ditty immortality is mine. That’s me, no mistake. My name. On my birth certificate. Social Security card. The works. And I’m a real person, unlike Norma Jean Riley. Or Johnny B. Goode. Or sad Eleanor Rigby, who keeps her face in a jar by the door.
Of course, plenty of first names have been song titles: Alison, Elvira, Gloria, Layla, Maybellene. But those gals have no last names. They don’t even have middle names. They have a kind of broad-spectrum immortality. Too vague for Rick Trevino—he likes to be specific.
Actually, I’m reduced to a perfect nonplus. Rick Trevino is way too young to be singing about me back in high school, years ago. But that’s O.K. I’ll take it. How well he knows me! This song is a high-school-vindication dream, the wallflower’s revenge. Carrie returns! I was voted “most studious,” an accolade meaning “Homecoming queen? In your dreams, Mason!” My time has come.
Well, Bobbie knew her history. Bobbie knew her French.
Bobbie knew how to keep the boys in suspense.
She teased with a touch. She teased with a kiss.
I was three long years being teased by pretty Miss
Bobbie Ann Mason, back in high school.
She was way too cute, she was way too cool.
I hope Rick will play my song when he comes to Rupp Arena, here in Lexington, this spring. Rupp Arena is the home of the University of Kentucky Wildcats. At first, I had Rick Trevino mixed up with Rick Pitino, the Wildcats coach. Did Rick Trevino confuse me with somebody else? Maybe Rick doesn’t even know I’m real. Back in high school, I didn’t know he was real. He wasn’t born yet. Reluctantly, I checked into this. It turns out that Rick didn’t write the song. The guy who wrote it just liked the way my name sounded. He wrote the song for an old girlfriend whose name wouldn’t fit the melody, so he plugged in mine. Does this mean I wasn’t cute after all? To tell the truth, I didn’t know a soupçon of French.
The trouble with this song is that it’s so catchy it grabs that little gizmo in your brain that runs a tape loop. Or it does in mine, anyway. I’m being throttled by my own name, but at least I won’t ever forget it. It’s like an ad jingle, a singing logo, a talking T-shirt. Everybody should have a theme song. Hey, if you’ve got five syllables in your name, you can borrow my song! Hillary Clinton, take it for the weekend.
Of course, once you get your own song, your name is liable to enter the fuzzy realm of myth, like Stagger Lee or Jumpin’ Jack Flash or Louie Louie. But what I want to know is how did Dede Dinah feel when she first heard her song on the radio? And what did she do when she found out it was really written for Peggy Sue?