What are the best songs with an Arizona angle in the lyrics?
That's up to you, readers, to decide.
As part of our coverage leading into to Arizona's centennial Feb. 14, we'll highlight several "bests" of our state.
We start today with 10 song finalists. Cast your votes for five favorites by 5 p.m. Aug. 24. (Click on the poll link at left to vote.) Later this month we'll ask readers to pick the best Arizona TV shows.
Five winners in each category will be revealed in our "Best of Arizona" section on Oct. 30.
Not easy pickin: Winnow your choices judiciously
"Arizona"
Rex Allen Jr., 1981
"I love you, Arizona
"Your mountains, deserts and streams
"The rise of Dos Cabezas
"And the outlaws I see in my dreams."
By decree of the Arizona Legislature, this is the alternate state anthem and, take our word for it, superior to the other state tune, the 1915 "Arizona March Song."
Allen Jr. told us recently that he was finishing up his "Cat's in the Cradle" album, loosely based on the life of his father - the last of the Hollywood's singing cowboys - when he realized he needed a prologue.
Allen asked his dad if he had any songs he hadn't recorded and when the answer was "no," junior sat down in his den in Nashville and wrote "Arizona" in about 30 minutes. He said it was easy to write about a place with which he feels such an emotional connection.
He said the song is really about a woman and that he's always considered Arizona a sort of mother to him.
Allen said he performs "Arizona" in every show he does, including in 2006 at the Great Wall in China and as recently as two weeks ago in Nashville.
By the way, we're going to declare right now that the late Rex Sr., a Willcox native, is one of the five best musicians in Arizona history. He made dozens of movies, starting in 1950 with "The Arizona Cowboy," and recorded 300 songs. Several of those have lyrics about Arizona, including "I Was Born in Arizona" and "Arizona Waltz."
"By the Time I Get to Phoenix"
Glen Campbell, 1967
"By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be rising"
Songwriter Jimmy Webb told the Los Angeles Times that he wrote the song after breaking up with Susan Ronstadt, a cousin of Tucson-born singer Linda Ronstadt.
Webb said he never drove from L.A. to Phoenix and then on to Albuquerque and Oklahoma - a road trip the song covers in a single day.
"It's a kind of fantasy about something I wish I would have done, and it sort of takes place in a twilight zone of reality," Webb told Terry Gross, host of NPR's "Fresh Air" back in 2004.
Campbell won three Grammy awards for the song and the album of the same name.
"Get Back"
The Beatles, 1969
"Jo-Jo left his home in Tucson, Arizona for some California grass"
Paul McCartney once told a reporter that he put Tucson in the song because of his wife Linda's connection to the city. She'd been an art history student at the University of Arizona before she moved to New York and met McCartney.
Jo-Jo was a made-up name, he said.
At the time "Get Back" was written, McCartney hadn't even been to Tucson, but he made it here many times after their 1969 marriage. The McCartneys bought a ranch on the eastside near Redington Pass. Linda McCartney died in 1998.
"Big Iron"
Marty Robbins, 1959
"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day."
That stranger was an Arizona Ranger with a big iron on his hip, and he'd come to take an outlaw named Texas Red.
Red wasn't worried because he'd killed 20 men who'd tried to challenge him before. The outlaw and the Ranger strode into the street not at high noon but at "twenty past eleven." Citizens watched from their windows and held their breath.
"It was over in a moment and the crowd all gathered round
"There before them lay the body of the outlaw on the ground
"Oh, he might have went on livin' but he made one fatal slip
"When he tried to match the Ranger with the big iron on his hip,
"Big iron on his hip."
Singer-songwriter-musician Robbins was a native of Glendale and included "Big Iron" on his "Gunfighter Ballads and Songs" album. "Big Iron" became a Top Ten hit, only to be eclipsed by another Robbins' tune that also told about a place - a place not, alas, in Arizona. That song is "El Paso."
"Take It Easy"
The Eagles, 1972
"Well I was standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
"Such a fine sight to see
"It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
"Slowin' down to take a look at me"
The Eagles had an Arizona connection even before they released "Take It Easy" on "Eagles," their debut album. They'd been the band behind Linda Ronstadt.
The song doesn't identify the exact location, but the town decided it's the northwest corner of Second Street and Kinsley Avenue.
In 2000, volunteers put up a bronze statue of a man carrying a guitar and named it Standin' on the Corner Park.
"Route 66"
Nat "King" Cole, 1946
"Now you go through Saint Looey,
"Joplin, Missouri,
"And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty.
"You see Amarillo,
"Gallup, New Mexico,
"Flagstaff, Arizona.
"Don't forget Winona,
"Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino."
It's a pretty good bet that even Arizonans forget about Winona, which has never been much more than a spot on a map. For the record, it's 15 miles east of Flagstaff, exit 211 on Interstate 40.
Songwriter Bobby Troup wrote "Route 66," aka, "Get Your Kicks on Route 66" after he traveled the famous road.
Nat "King" Cole made it a hit that same year and it's been recorded by dozens of singers since - everyone from Perry Como to the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Depeche Mode.
"Rock 'N Me"
Steve Miller Band, 1976
"I went from Phoenix, Arizona,
"All the way to Tacoma
"Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.,
"Northern California where the girls are warm
"So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah."
OK, so it's another passing-through song by another non-Arizonan. Steve Miller was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Texas.
But it was hot in the summer of 1976 as Miller pleaded 19 times with his sweet baby to "keep on rock 'n me."
So hot that the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
"Under African Skies"
Paul Simon, 1986
"In early memory
"Mission music
"Was ringing 'round my nursery door.
"I said, 'Take this child, Lord,
"From Tucson, Arizona,
"Give her the wings to fly through harmony
"And she won't bother you no more. ' "
The Tucson/San Xavier angle in the second verse is based on the childhood memories of Linda Ronstadt. She sang with Simon on this piece from "Graceland," which won a Grammy for album of the year.
"Ocean Front Property"
George Strait, 1987
"I've got some ocean front property in Arizona
"From my front porch you can see the sea
"I've got some ocean front property in Arizona
"And if you buy that I'll throw the Golden Gate in free."
This song appeared on Strait's album of the same name - an album that debuted at No. 1 on the country charts.
The cover art shows Strait gesturing toward forlorn scrub land that could well be in Arizona. Too bad it's as difficult to see the ocean from here as it is for Tina Fey-Sarah Palin to see Russia from her front porch.
"Willin'"
Linda Ronstadt, 1974
"I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari
"Tehachapi to Tonopah
"Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made.
"Driven the backroads so I wouldn't get weighed
"And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
"And you show me a sign,
"I'll be willin', to be movin' ."
Guitarist Lowell George wrote the song and recorded it in 1971 on the debut album of his band Little Feat.
Ronstadt turned "Willin'" into a hit when she sang it on her "Heart Like a Wheel" album.
In a Playboy interview in 1980, Ronstadt said "Willin'" was the one song she never got sick of performing because it had an emotional hook for her.
On StarNet: Listen to the top 10 videos and cast your votes for five favorites by 5 p.m. Aug. 24 at azstarnet.com/azlyrics
Songs in the key of AZ
Star employees came up with more than 40 songs with an Arizona angle. Some of them and the performers include:
• "By the Time I Get to Arizona," Public Enemy
• "Jack Straw," Grateful Dead
• "The Lights of Tucson," Jim Campbell
• "Send Me Down To Tucson," Mel Tillis
• "Hotel Arizona," Wilco
• "Slowness," Calexico
• "There is No Arizona," Jamie O'Neal
• "The Painted Desert," 10,000 Maniacs
• "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," Johnny Cash
• "King Tut," Steve Martin
• "Sissyneck," Beck
• "Open Pit Mine," George Jones
• "Arizona," Kings of Leon
• "Never Been to Spain," Hoyt Axton
• "Moon Over Tucson," Carrie Newcomer
