Eventually Sue catches up with his father, inciting a bar fight in which the father explains he gave his son the name in order to make him a strong man with “gravel in guts and spit in eye”. In “A Boy Named Sue”, a son vehemently searches for his father in order to kill him for naming him ‘Sue’. There was equal support of women who wanted to work and those who wished to stay home the same can be said for men. An interviewee, when asked about her motivation to move into a commune, stated she enjoyed her time there, as “women take care of themselves” a psychiatrist living in Topanga, California studying the commune commented as well, saying: “No one here is trying to climb to the top of some hierarchy.The most important thing to them is people-to-people contact.” Hippies wanted a place to come together to appreciate the community each other had to offer, regardless of gender. It was here that women found freedom, and if not so at least a momentary escape, from patriarchal values found in mass Western culture. Its antithesis, brought about by the hippie culture, promoted sexual ambiguity, meaning an individual does not fall in a binary category or does not identify strictly as male or female. They prided themselves on the ability to break from the strict traditional mold that had gripped society as well as being able to instill that sense of freedom in their children, thus beginning a new liberal tradition.īreaking away from a conservative society meant breaking away from binary sexual stereotyping. Separating themselves from society, the hippie community was dominated by fierce individualism one principal was overjoyed with the children creating “the most disorganized playground ever seen”. Commune living housed people from all backgrounds, genders, and religions which, as opposed to the rest of society, better fit their needs and values such as spending more time with their children or a generally more relaxed environment values such as making their own clothes and baking their own bread, which are, at their root, “a lot of things society stifles out of people”. When gathering in living communities called communes, it can be assumed their community is no different. The hippie youth culture of the 1960s can be characterized by two words, peace and love. The former pertains to the male prisoners directly while the latter develops out of the counterculture and through the appeal of hippie-commune living. These theories center the song around both the male/female gender conflict and the new challenges of asexuality or agenderism, meaning without any form of binary association. McCusker and Pecknold speculate about the relatively private reception and then the vast popularity of the song as it “might have resonated with or satirized the gender-bending politics of hippie youth culture” or perhaps the prisoners of San Quentin, where the song was first performed, “needed to face their own tribulations of challenged masculinity”. Strict binary gender identification plays a significant role in “A Boy Named Sue”. This period of conflict, while seemingly leaving male country performer’s work unaffected, promoted the ‘masculinization’ of female performer’s music. 5.Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue”, made famous by Johnny Cash, ‘over-genderized' femininity and masculinity, stereotyping both the male and female during the 1960s and early -70s, the rising counterculture and human rights movement directly challenged these stereotypes that society had wholly adopted as ‘natural’. The song was originally inspired by a male friend of Silverstein’s with a somewhat feminine name-Jean Shepherd, the author of A Christmas Story. And not just the country charts-it held the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. They weren’t the only ones: "A Boy Named Sue" quickly shot to the top of the charts. Johnny wasn’t sure he could learn the lyrics fast enough, but he did-and the inmates went crazy for it. ![]() They were headed to California to record the famous live At San Quentin album. When the party was over, June encouraged Johnny to take the lyrics to “Sue” on the plane the next day. ![]() Everyone debuted a new song at the party-Dylan sang “Lay Lady Lay,” Nash did “Marrakkesh Express,” Kristofferson played “Me and Bobby McGee,” and Mitchell sang “Both Sides Now.” Silverstein, who was a songwriter in addition to an author of children’s books, debuted “A Boy Named Sue.” As you might imagine, it was a veritable who’s-who of music: Bob Dylan, Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell, Kris Kristofferson, and Shel Silverstein. In 1969, Johnny and June threw a party at their house in Hendersonville.
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