“Impeach Me, Baby”: Songs of Presidential Impeachment (1868 – 2020)

Last weekend on The Lost Child, I played an hour of impeachment songs — not from our own troubled age, but from what I’d call the golden age of impeachment songs, circa 1974 — a wide-ranging collection of blues, soul, country, folk & funk from the heart of the Watergate years. There was more music than I knew what to do with, so I’ve posted the whole show here, along with an extra thirty minutes of bonus songs, and you can stream it anytime.

I hope you’ll give it all a listen, to enjoy the full gamut of Nixon-inspired tunes. Some of this music you won’t hear anywhere else — like this psych-folk record from singer Melany Dyer, who offers a unique perspective on impeachment in her “First Lady’s Lament.” Sample lyrics: So take me, take me, Richard / Take me away in the morn / Before impeachment bells start ringing / And my love turns into scorn.

First Lady's Lament

The Nixon era inspired multiple “Watergate Blues,” along with lots of funk — from the Honeydrippers’ “Impeach the President” to the extended riffs of James Brown’s band, the JB’s (see “Rockin’ Funky Watergate” and “You Can Have Watergate But Give Me Some Bucks and I’ll Be Straight,” both fueled by the mighty trombonist Fred Wesley). Nixon himself actively sought the loyalty of the country music community, launching National Country Music Weeks and appearing, at the height of the scandal, onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. But for all that, even the country crowd would turn on him: in his own “Watergate Blues,” Tom T. Hall imagines dead presidents rolling in their graves and conjures up (“Lord help us all”) a nightmarish vision of America’s future. (A recent Netflix documentary digs into Johnny Cash’s own gutsy clash with the president.) In Franklin, North Carolina, on his own Me Too record label (its logo the head of a Democratic donkey), singer Les Waldroop recorded several variations on the wiretapping theme (“Watergate Bugs,” “Big Watergate Bugs,” “Sermon on the Bug”). You can hear two of them, and a lot of other gems, on my Watergate show.

But what of the other impeachments? Surely our nation’s first impeachment — Andrew Johnson’s — inspired a number of songs; I’ve found just a couple so far.

In case you forgot the history, Johnson was impeached by the House, but the Senate failed, by a single vote, to convict him. One pro-Johnson (or at least anti-impeachment) song, “Impeachment’s Sad Fate,” reveled in that failure. Sung to the tune of a cynical Civil War ballad, “Grafted into the Army,” the new lyrics took shots at Benjamin Butler, one of three House impeachment managers who’d failed to sell the pitch for removal. O, Butler! the song proclaims:

’tis well! your impeachment fell
Beneath the Constitution;
You thought men would dare—
Without thought or care,
To despise that institution.

Still, Johnson remained deeply unpopular, even in his own party, and when the next election rolled around, he failed to win the Democratic nomination. A new song — built on the tune of another wartime ballad, “Just Before the Battle, Mother” — let the president know exactly where he stood:

Just before election, Andy
We are thinking most of you;
While we get our ballots handy
Just be sure they’re not for you;
No, dear Andy, you’ll not get them,
But you will get what you deserve;
Yes, you’ll get your leave of absence
As you swing around the curve.

Fast forward to 1999. That year, the Drive-By Truckers gave us an impeachment song like no other, the raucous, singalong saga of “Buffalo Bill,” lampooning the hysteria engendered by the presidential member. “The President’s Penis Is Missing” moves through time and space and concludes that there are just bigger fish to fry: Meanwhile, the whole world’s suffering from hunger and meanness / But we’re all more concerned with the president’s penis.

In his “President Clinton Blues,” Piedmont bluesman Drink Small similarly declares the latest scandal unworthy of our worry. I don’t know why people are worrying about Clinton, Small begins: The man did the same thing that Adam did to Eve. Fair warning, this one’s got a couple of cringey moments that only age worse and worse with time — but it’s a remarkable document all the same, and a throwback to the downhome Watergate blues of Big Joe Williams, Bobo Jenkins, and Sam Chatmon. Small’s take-home message: President Clinton, go on and live your live.

But impeachment songs, post-Nixon, have been relatively few. In 2006, over the course of just nine days, Neil Young cranked out an entire album of urgent, blaring protest songs aimed at George W. Bush. Among the more memorable tracks on Living With War was “Let’s Impeach the President.” But, of course, we didn’t.

And here we are in 2020. Who’s making the impeachment songs now? Twenty years after the jokey “President’s Penis,” the Drive-By Truckers have become more and more overt in their politics, more scathing in their commentary; “The Perilous Night” — released last month, and written before this impeachment saga began — takes on Charlottesville, the president, “White House Fury,” and knocking fascism (“Trump says, ‘Let them in'”).

But the only impeachment-specific songs I know, this go-round, come from Randy Rainbow, who’s been cranking them out like a champ —

— one after another, after another. After another…

So, what have I missed? Tell me your favorite impeachment hits in the comments below. And thanks, as always, for reading and for listening.

Sunday listening: “The Legend of Buford Pusser”

This Sunday’s listening, purchased a few days ago at Secondhand Sam’s in Jasper, Alabama: Eddie Bond Sings The Legend of Buford Pusser, 10 songs on the life & death of the McNairy County, Tennessee, sheriff known for waging war against organized crime, prostitution and moonshine in south Tennessee. This album’s notes describe Pusser as “an American folk hero” and “rugged symbol of honest law enforcement”; he carried a huge wooden stick as all-purpose weapon and was famous (his memory still celebrated by many admirers today) for his relentless, ruthless approach to the law. Pusser made lots of enemies and was subject to a few assassination attempts. His wife was killed in 1967 in an ambush meant for the lawman; Pusser survived the attack, his mangled jaw put back together with wire mesh.

Eddie Bond was a one-time rockabilly singer who’d also served as Buford Pusser’s deputy — and who, at the time of this recording, was “the singing police chief of Finger, Tennessee” (a job, by the way, that Pusser helped him land). Eddie Bond Sings The Legend of Buford Pusser was produced by “Cowboy” Jack Clement and released in 1973 on a subsidiary of the STAX record label(!!); its release helped inspire Walking Tall, a movie about Pusser, which led to two sequels and a short-lived TV series. (A 2004 remake starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the Pusser role but gave the sheriff a new name and backstory.)

I’ve got The Legend of Buford Pusser on the turntable right now, and it’s something — all hero worship and country twang. In “Buford Pusser Goes Bear Hunting With a Switch” (a mouthful of a song title) the sheriff gets full-scale tall-tale treatment:

On the day that he was borned he weighed 42 pounds
He jumped out of bed and he stomped on the ground
He said, Listen here, doc, don’t hit me no more
If you do, you’re going to pick yourself off of the floor

He’s Buford Pusser! He goes bear-hunting with a switch
Ain’t a moonshiner in the county that big Buford can’t get

And so on.

A few other songwriters have remembered Pusser less favorably. Jimmy Buffett had a drunken run-in with the sheriff, himself — Pusser allegedly pummeled him and pulled a tuft of hair out of his head, after Buffett walked across the hood of Pusser’s car in golf shoes — and he alludes to the incident in a couple of songs, “Semi-True Stories” and “Presents to Send You.” The Drive-By Truckers devote two angry songs of their own to Pusser on their 2004 album, The Dirty South, both looking at the man from the vantage point of those who faced his brutal brand of justice. In “The Boys from Alabama,” singer Patterson Hood promises to tell “the other side” of the Pusser story, and in “The Buford Stick” he sings:

Now Sheriff Buford Pusser’s gotten too big for his britches
With his book reviews and movie deals
Down at the car lot making public appearances
For breaking up our homes and stills
I know he likes to brag how he wrestled a bear
But I knew him from the funeral home
Ask him for a warrant, he’ll say “I keep it in my shoe”

That son of a bitch has got to go
That son of a bitch has got to go

Pusser had already laid down his badge by the time his legend really took off outside McNairy County. In 1970, term limits prevented him from running again as sheriff; when he did run in 1972, he was defeated, even as his national celebrity was on the rise. Eddie Bond’s album and the first Walking Tall both appeared in 1973, and for a little while Pusser rubbed shoulders with the rich, famous, and powerful. On August 21 of 1974, he made a deal to play himself in the next movie about him, this one to be titled just Buford; he was feeling good, and maybe a little drunk, as he drove to his home in Adamsville, Tennessee. His bright red, custom Corvette, paid for with Walking Tall money, hit an embankment at high speed, just four miles from home, and Buford Pusser was thrown from his vehicle. He was killed on the spot. Rumors of foul play abounded. The legend grew.

And what of Eddie Bond? Poor fellow! When he died in 2013, the first sentence of his New York Times obituary emphasized what may now be his greatest claim to fame: that he “once told a teenage Elvis Presley that he would be better off driving a truck than trying to make it in music.” Well over half of the Times obituary is concerned with this story, which Bond had spent years trying to explain away; the rest of Eddie Bond’s life — including an unsuccessful run for sheriff of Shelby County, Tennessee — is presented as afterthought, condensed to a few sentences.

The Elvis story, for what it’s worth, goes like this: the unknown singer auditioned for Eddie Bond’s band in May of 1954. Bond was three years older than Elvis and already established in the Memphis music scene. He told the kid to keep his day job — but two months later, Elvis cut his first sides at Sun Records, and his truck-driving days were history.

A few years later, en route to Hollywood for the making of Jailhouse Rock, Elvis confided to a friend that Bond’s advice “broke my heart.” But, he said: “I wonder what Eddie Bond thinks now.”

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