Pubdate: Thu, 24 Oct 2013
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Column: Weed Between the Lines
Copyright: 2013 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

ONE TOKE OVER THE BUBBLE MACHINE: LAWRENCE WELK SCORES!

Finding out that contemporary Nashville musicians are including 
cannabis in their songwriting got me to thinking about how cannabis 
made its way into popular songs and culture.

THC, the active ingredient in cannabis that stimulates the frontal 
lobe of the brain, which has to do with creativity, among other 
things, has been a favorite drug among musicians at least dating back 
to the days when recording began and, I suspect, a lot earlier than that.

My first exposure to a drug reference in a song came in 1963 via a 
relatively innocuous song about growing up. "Puff the Magic Dragon" 
was written by Peter Yarrow and Leonard Lipton and performed by 
Peter, Paul & Mary on the 1963 album Moving. I was 16, already a huge 
PP&M fan, and I identified with the story of Jackie Paper moving away 
from childhood - "Painted wings and giant rings make way for other 
toys" - and I would have been blissfully unaware of its so-called 
cannabis references had I not read about them in national publications.

The song created quite a stir at the time, but today the evidence for 
veiled reefer references is slim to non-existent. Claims included the 
use of the word Paper for the name of the boy (a reference to rolling 
papers?), while other conspiracy theorists suggested that dragon 
could be construed as "drag on," as if on a joint, you know. Yarrow, 
who added the melody to a Lipton poem, has continuously, flatly 
denied that it was anything more than a song about a boy giving up 
childish things, but people will believe what they will.

The first time I saw musicians smoking cannabis was in 1964. We got 
free tickets to see Louis Armstrong, then in his early 60s and riding 
the popularity of "Hello Dolly," at the Municipal Auditorium in 
Kansas City. The free seats were high behind the stage of a 
10,000-seat arena, and Armstrong, who had a large band with him, 
broke into "Dolly" at least three times that afternoon.

But the most interesting part was during the instrumental portions, 
when Armstrong and some of the band would retire backstage, and we 
were far enough above them that we could see them passing something 
they were smoking. It wasn't until a few years later, reading about 
Armstrong's documented affinity for cannabis, that I figured out what 
they were doing.

And then along came Bob Dylan. "Mr. Tambourine Man," which became a 
huge hit for The Byrds in 1965, was considered a drug song from the 
outset, mostly because of its "trippy" lyrics that described magic 
swirling ships and senses stripped. And Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 
and 35," released in 1966 on the Blonde on Blonde album, has also 
been categorized as a drug song. Its refrain is pretty obvious - 
"everybody must get stoned" - and it went to No. 2 on the charts as a single.

I wouldn't presume to second-guess Dylan's songwriting intentions, 
but "Rainy Day Women" is open to interpretation. Each verse begins 
with "they'll stone ya when," which I hear as Dylan laughing and 
leering at those who were already criticizing him for various 
offenses against music, i.e., not continuing to write "protest" or 
topical songs or for "going electric" ("They'll stone ya when you're 
tryin' to make a buck/They'll stone ya and then they'll say, 'good 
luck.'") That said, the general frivolity of the production, which 
emphasizes raucous laughter among the musicians - Howard Sounes' 
biography, Down the Line, says that Dylan passed out joints at the 
recording session - the wheezing, almost out-of-control horn charts 
and the cheerleading quality of the refrain strongly suggest the drug 
connection. I could go either way.

But my all-time best dope-song story concerns the misappropriation of 
an actual cannabis song by a most unlikely source. I was on the 
couch, must have been 1970 or 1971, and on came The Lawrence Welk 
Show. Myron Floren, Welk's prominent accordionist, introduced Gail 
and Dale to sing one of the "newer songs." Whereupon, in perfect 
harmony and with Pepsodent smiles, the duo performed Brewer & 
Shipley's "One Toke Over the Line."

Welk came on afterwards and praised the song as "a modern spiritual." 
I almost fell off the couch laughing. Brewer & Shipley were based in 
Kansas City when they had their day, and I was pretty proud that two 
local hippies had gotten into the Top 40 with such an obvious 
cannabis reference. Another song on the Tarkio album, "Tarkio Road," 
was about two long-hairs moving product on their motorcycles along 
the back roads of Missouri and Nebraska. All I could imagine was that 
Welk's people, in a sincere attempt to attract a younger audience in 
the era of Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, might have missed the 
meaning of "toke," but they sure as hell knew what "sweet Jesus" meant.

I repeated the story to friends, and after awhile, I began to 
question if it were actually true or if I had just been stoned and 
imagined it. But in the early 1980s, Michael Brewer, who co-wrote the 
song with Shipley, confirmed the Welk story for me during an 
interview with the Kansas City Times.

I didn't see the clip again until the YouTube era.

Now anyone can see a truly great countercultural moment by typing 
"Lawrence Welk One Toke Over the Line" into YouTube's search engine.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom