In a classic country song there’s rarely just one misfortune; the bad luck and the soul crushers just keep piling on, like some kind of perverted torture sandwich. In the song Drought just when our hero is thinkin’ it can’t get any worse, what with his good woman takin’ off, next comes a crop killin’ drought ready to destroy his already tough hardscrapple farming existence. And what man can fix that?

The late Dave Dudley (1928-2003) was pumping out the country from the sixties through the eighties and in that hard-working Nashville way recorded more than 70 albums during his career. (Drought is from his fifth album Rural Route 1, released in 1965.) You may remember Dudley as the musical muse for truckers. His biggest hit, Six Days on the Road, was the song that started that whole big-rig trucker music craze in the 1960s.

So have a listen and if you want ol’ Dave’s recommendation for dealing with drought: “Pray with the coming of each dawn that this crop killing drought will be gone.”

Play the track

Lyrics

You can dam out the water and shut the wind out
But a man ain’t been born who can destroy a drought

There’s a hot screaming wind at my door
but I just don’t care anymore
There’s a crop killing drought on the way
and my good woman she left me today

Oh she stayed just as long as she could
but then the farm has not treated us good
She begged me to pack up and go
but then farming is all that I know

You can dam out the water and shut the wind out
But a man ain’t been born who can destroy a drought

She cried as if I were to blame
but the Lord knows I can’t make it rain
There’s a hot screaming sun up in the sky
it’s so still I can hear the grass die
So I’ll wait for the coolness of dark
and bear up to this pain in my heart
And I’ll pray with the coming of each dawn
that this crop killing drought will be gone

You can dam out the water and shut the wind out
But a man ain’t been born who can destroy a drought