"Move It on Over"

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

Ah, this is our week for Man’s Best Friend, the humble and faithful dog. And because you have to search far and wide to find anyone who doesn’t naturally understand the truth of that old and true appellation, it’s not surprising that some of Dogs’ Best Friends have commemorated their canine pals in song or story. We featured one such story about a real honest-to-goodness dog named Mutt in yesterday’s podcast on The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be by Farley Mowat.

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The friendship between people and dogs predates recorded history, as evidenced by the paintings of dogs found in the Lascaux Caves in France. And it was a now-famous dog named Robot, who with “his boy,” discovered that archeological wonder. So we find dogs depicted in art and in folk stories and in great literature and in song throughout the history of mankind. Why shouldn’t we sing songs about dogs?

It’s also not surprising that when we mention dogs in song, we often do so playfully, because dogs are playful creatures. That’s why children love them and why even otherwise very grown up grownups sit on the floor to play tug-of-war with the family dog. Thus it’s natural that dog songs, whether in the form of folk or popular music, often cross over into the most entertaining and low-brow musical genre of all: the novelty song. That’s where we have to place songs like Patti Page’s popular hit, “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?”(1953) or The Royal Guardsmen’s big hit, “Snoopy and the Red Baron” (1966). But neither of those is my choice for today.

I’ve written about the composer of today’s song a couple of times already for Sometimes a Song, when I covered two of his Country gospel songs, “I Saw the Light” and “Where the Soul Never Dies.” If you want songs about sin and repentance, love and heartache, and what it’s like to be in the doghouse because you got home late and your wife locked you out, who better to listen to than the tremendously talented Hank Williams?

Hank Williams was still making the radio circuits with his band in 1947 when he was asked to record for the newly formed Acuff-Rose music publishing company, the first such company in Nashville. In those days Nashville had no studio musicians, and Hank likely expected to record with his own band. But Fred Rose — a songwriter himself and the producer who guided Williams’ work during what would be a very short recording career — knew better. Fred wanted to take some of the “hillbilly” edge off of Hank’s work, so he hired the best musicians in town, the backup band for Opry star Red Foley, to accompany Hank while he recorded his first songs, including “I Saw the Light,” and our song for this week, “Move It on Over.”

Clearly, Fred Rose knew what he was doing, because “Move It on Over” became the first of eleven great hits that Hank Williams recorded between that session and his sudden death in 1953. The song reached number four on the Billboard Folk Music charts in 1947. So it was a cross-over hit that gave Williams nationwide exposure and earned him a spot on the very popular “Louisiana Hayride,” a national show known for making stars out of its performers. With his first big hit on the charts and a regular gig on “Hayride,” Hank was on his way, though no one knew at that time how sadly brief his own journey on this side of the veil would be.

I’ll add one final note about today’s song for you to contemplate. Some music historians now credit “Move It on Over,” not “Rock Around the Clock,” with being the protypical rock ‘n roll song. You can hear echoes of Hank’s song in Bill Haley’s, which was written and recorded seven years later, a year after Hank Williams died.

Although Hank Williams couldn’t transcribe his own songs, he was a natural talent and had grown up listening to both Country and jazz music. Having soaked in jazz rhythms and methods from his childhood on, Hank had adopted many jazz and blues composition patterns into his own music, including the particular twelve-bar arrangement and arpeggios he used in “Move It on Over” — the very same arrangement and arpeggios that Haley would later used in “Rock Around the Clock.” Hank Williams also found a way to add a strong drum-beat (a sound which would define rock ‘n roll) to his recordings. At that time, Country musicians were expected to observe an unwritten ban on drum accompaniment. Hank added drum-style rhythm to his performances by simultaneously muting his guitar strings and lightly beating the instrument with his palm. This innovation introduced a percussive element to popular acoustic guitar music of the era, and when you listen to today’s recording, you will clearly hear that beat. But whether or not you think that perhaps he, and not Bill Haley, “opened the door” to rock ‘n roll, I think you will have to love “Move It on Over” for its playful lyrics, its pleasing melody, and its toe-tapping rhythm.

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Is today’s selection a novelty song, a love song, or a lament — or all three? I’ll leave that up to you to decide!

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!

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reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true

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