Travis Tritt - The Day The Sun Stood Still

Some stories are Epic, and require a great bard to sing of the deeds done therein.  Fortunately, there's a
Country Music song
Broadway Musical for that.  1999 saw the premier of The Civil War, on Broadway's St. James Theater stage.  It told the story of the War Between The States, in musical form, for New Yorkers.  It was nominated for two Tony Awards.

The New York Times hated it.  (Long time readers know my assessment of their assessment)

Maybe they hated it because it was honest in how it presented the conflict.  Rather than the sepia-hued Morality Tale of the Yankeeland public school system, it actually showed the participants as human.  And Travis Tritt lent his voice to countless thousand Southern fallen soldiers.

Tritt was a natural for the part: you don't get much more southern than he is.  Born in Marietta, GA, he got his start singing in the church choir.  His parents divorced, and then re-married.  His father thought he'd never make it in the singing business (admittedly a tough industry), and told him to stick to his job at the air conditioning company.  He married young, twice.  Neither lasted, and he wrote one of his early big hits - Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares) - the night he received his divorce papers from Mrs. Travis Tritt #2.

But Tritt had a gift for songwriting, and a haunting voice that brought the authors of The Civil War to his door.  They knew that he could make those old soldiers come alive, at least for a while.  His singing of the Broadway show tune, with video from the astonishing film Gettysburg is nearly enough to make you feel the heat of the Pennsylvania Sun, beating down on you that July day in 1863.   Watching this is enough to let you notice - if you pay careful attention - William Faulkner, whispering from the gallery:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two oclock on the July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet….

 The Day The Sun Stood Still (Songwriters: Gregory Boyd, Frank Wildhorn, and Jack Murphy)

We were young and bound for glory
Itchin' for a fight like you
Bringin' hell and purgatory
To the boys who wore the blue
And I thought I'd seen it all
Till the day night wouldn't fall
Oh, how the sun did blaze
Wouldn't go down for days

I got shot and lost my rifle
When the first wave hit the rise
And the guns rolled out like thunder
And the black smoke burned my eyes
And I watched it all unfold
Just the way the Bible told
Joshua's endless day
Keepin' the night at bay

And the soldiers kept a comin'
Til the ground looked like a sea
Of blue and grey
And I watched it from a distance
Wonderin' if I would've fought or run away

The day the sun stood still
How they beat the bloody drums
And the seconds moved like hours
But the sunset never comes
And the cannons shake the ground
And the bullets test your will
Even shadows found no cover
On that Godforsaken hill
The day the sun stood still

And I watched them lean their shoulders
To the fearful hail of lead
And I prayed for night to save us
And I cried and bowed my head
But the sun just kept a-creepin'
'Cross a cold indifferent sky
Castin' a deadly glow
On all the men below

All the hours in a lifetime
Don't add up to one while minute in that sun
And the heroes and the cowards
Look the same when they have fallen by the gun

The day the sun stood still
And the north and south looked west
But the evening star was sleeping
And the daylight wouldn't rest
Out on the killing floor
The red sun on the the hill
Shinin' down on all the dead men
With a strange and eerie chill
The day the sun stood still

Do not judge what you brother does
Till you've walked a mile
Rank by bloody file
Who's to say if you'll run or stay and fight?

The day the sun stood still
Is just beneath the skin
In the soul of every soldier
Every battle that he's in
The day the sun stood still
Will haunt your dreams at night
And stalk your every sunrise
Though you will not know it till

The day the sun stood still
How they beat the bloody drums
And the seconds moved like hours
But the sunset never comes
And the cannons shake the ground
And the bullets test your will
Even shadows found no cover
On that Godforsaken hill
The day the sun stood still

It wasn't just the Southern Boys wondering if they'd stand or fight.  The groundbreaking (if deeply flawed) Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War brought the dead back to life - via Shelby Foote.  A moment of this captures what it was like, before the Boys in Blue marched forward, leaning their shoulders into that fearful lead.  Knowing what they were leaving behind:

Today, in the aftermath of the jubilation following the delivery of double-tap justice to Osama bin Laden, remember those who have made it possible.  Those who when the bullets tested their will hunched their shoulders into the whistling lead, and never got the chance to see their sons grow up into honorable manhood.

Never forget how they loved their families.  They didn't.

If they're lucky, some day they too shall have a bard sing the Epic tale of their deeds.  The New York Times will probably hate it, too.  They should listen to Country Music Broadway Shows.

Do not judge what you brother does
Till you've walked a mile
Rank by bloody file

Or ancient history.

The Nation that makes a great distinction
between its scholars and its warriors
will have its thinking done by cowards
and its fighting done by fools.

– Thucydides, 5th Century BC

(Image source) (Image source)