Marty Stuart has a new song. ‘Skip A Rope’ is the third marker for the upcoming ‘Songs I Sing In the Dark’ project.
‘Skip A Rope’ was a hit song by Henson Cargill. The controversial song held parents accountable for teaching their children immoral behaviour.
“The song is a socially conscious treasure from those times, relevant literature with a beat,” Marty Stuart said in a statement. “The recording had a built-in cool factor that set it apart from most of its competitors. The Nashville Cats again lived up to their stellar reputation. They laid down a slinky groove that served as a rock-solid musical bed for Henson to glide on while telling his story. I’ve always pictured Henson Cargill in the recording studio with a burning cigarette in his left hand while he sang. I imagine he never touched the cigarette after he lit it. I’m thinking when the take was over, there was nothing left but smoke and ashes. That’s about all that was left of me after I heard “Skip A Rope” for the first time. I’m still mesmerized by the song. The song’s three-note, plaintive, drone-like intro beckons me inside the walls of the piece and then drops me off at a heart-to-heart level with the message in the song. It’s a message that’s just as relevant today as it was during the song’s heyday when it reigned on the charts. As a matter of fact, “Skip A Rope” stands as an eternally relevant, statesman-like monument of a song.
Henson Cargill was the perfect messenger to deliver the words of this song. “Skip A Rope” was to be his biggest hit. Nothing of its magnitude followed. But I did hear one of the “A” Team musicians that played on the record once say, “When you’ve got a ‘Skip A Rope,’ you don’t need anything else.”
Cargill earned a Grammy nomination for the song but lost to Johnny Cash for ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. Cash was once Stuart’s father-in-law.
Marty Stuart will highlight one song a month leading into ‘Songs I Sing In The Dark’. Marty recorded the songs at his former home outside Nashville.
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