"Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" is a song written by Jack Clement and originally recorded by Johnny Cash on Columbia Records for his novelty album Everybody Loves a Nut, released in 1966. Cash notably performed the song at Folsom Prison on January 13, 1968, and it appears on his live album At Folsom Prison released later that year.[3][4][5]
| "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Johnny Cash | |
| from the album Everybody Loves a Nut | |
| Released | 1966 |
| Genre | country, novelty |
| Length | 2:05 |
| Label | Columbia |
| Songwriter(s) | Jack Clement[1][2] |
| Audio | |
| "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" on YouTube | |
Composition
edit“Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog” first appeared on Cash's Everybody Loves a Nut album. It's a funny story about a shaggy dog that keeps on killing the narrator's chickens. It's an amusing cartoon of a song, wherein the narrator is threatening to send the dog to that big chicken house in the sky.
— John M. Alexander. The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash[6]
According to the book The Best of Country Music, it is one of "the two most intentionally silly songs Jack Clement ever wrote", the other being "Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart."[7]
No self-respecting fifth grader could fail to enjoy the joke lyrics to "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" or "Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart."
— Cecelia Tichi. Readin' country music: steel guitars, opry stars, and honky tonk bars[8]
Covers
editAgnostic Front recorded a cover of the song, with altered lyrics, on their 1998 album Something's Gotta Give.
References
edit- ^ John L. Smith (1 January 1999). Another Song to Sing: The Recorded Repertoire of Johnny Cash. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-3629-7.
- ^ John L. Smith (1 January 1985). The Johnny Cash Discography. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-24654-8.
- ^ Billy Edd Wheeler (2002). Real Country Humor: Jokes from Country Music Personalities. august house. pp. 85–. ISBN 978-0-87483-652-3.
- ^ Steve Turner (1 November 2005). The man called Cash: the life, love, and faith of an American legend. Thomas Nelson Inc. ISBN 978-0-8499-0815-6.
- ^ "Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison". Discogs. 1968. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
- ^ John M. Alexander (16 April 2018). The Man in Song: A Discographic Biography of Johnny Cash. University of Arkansas Press. pp. 73–. ISBN 978-1-61075-628-0.
- ^ John Morthland (1 June 1984). The best of country music. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-19192-0.
How else would Cash know that he could sit on a stool with just his acoustic guitar and do "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog" and "Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart," the two most intentionally silly songs Jack Clement ever wrote, and these ...
- ^ Cecelia Tichi (1995). Readin' country music: steel guitars, opry stars, and honky tonk bars. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822364252.