Talk:Smackwater Jack (song)

Who says it's about the Old West?

The short answer, I guess, is James E. Perone, whose description of the song is cited and may be the basis for Stewart Mason's very similar assessment. But (looking it up), an Old West setting may seem obvious to him, but it's certainly not there in the lyrics. If the lyricist has never suggested it, why should Wikipedia assert it?

"Confrontation," "law and order," "clean up the streets," "the [National] Guard," and "[Police] Chief" were all very contemporary terms in 1971, and (with the exception of "law and order") not associated with the Old West. Every state has at least one border, but the idea of "surrounding" the border (if not just a joke) suggests the smaller states of the Southeast, while the term "smackwater" suggests swamp land or the Gulf coast, where a posse pursuing lynch law was not something you had to go back a hundred years to see--especially in the Southern Gothic fantasies of northern songwriters. (Compare: "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," of the following year.)

If the words "Old West" are excised, on the other hand, what remains is straight from the lyrics, without interpretation. So I'm excising them. I will not, of course, add in any of my speculation about where or when the song is supposed to be set. No one knows, unless Goffin and King have given some indication we haven't turned up yet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mandrakos (talk • contribs) 10:52, 11 December 2016 (UTC)