July 23, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Shel Silverstein was a poet, illustrator, and songwriter who didn’t fit any mold. Known to millions for The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, he also wrote one of country music’s most unforgettable hits: “A Boy Named Sue,” made famous by Johnny Cash. With a legacy that spans literature, music, and illustration, Silverstein remains one of the most versatile and beloved storytellers in American culture. Our American Stories’ own Greg Hengler shares the story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
All believes on the Giving Tree, half fallen, no shade
to Crawlin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Underneath this is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
And the song you just heard was Giving Tree by
Plain White Teas. The song based on the famous picture
book that was written by Shelle Silverstein. Here's Greg Engler
with the story.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Poet W. H. Auden once said, there are good books
which are only for adults. There are no good books
which are only for children. Children's picture books matter because
they're a form of our first impression of literature and
become the gateway towards our appetites for the written word
(00:59):
in our knowledge of the world. This most distilled form
of art expresses basic truths about life in such a
poetic way that it assumes the form of intellectual mother's milk.
(01:19):
The stylistic eccentricities of Maurice Sendak, doctor Seuss, and Shell
Silverstein formed the bedrock of our childhood lexicon. Shell's story
is arguably the most eccentrically interesting among the Big Three.
(01:40):
Born in nineteen thirty on the northwest side of Chicago,
Sheldon Alan Silverstein grew up in a second story apartment
crammed with relatives his Jewish parents, an immigrant father from
Eastern Europe and a Chicago born mother, opened an unsuccessful
bakery on the heels of the Great Depression. Though Silverstein's
(02:02):
mother encouraged his early knack for drawing, his father made
it clear that he was expected to join the floundering
family business. Silverstein discovered his passion for drawing when he
was five. The lonely eccentric Kids spent his k through
twelve years drawing, reading, and listening to the radio.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Sir, is it true that you are two thousand years old?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Oh boy?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
They were his comfort and refuge from the perpetual boredom
of school and his increasingly wrathful father. After a few
unsuccessful attempts at college, he explained, I didn't get much
attention from the girls, and I didn't learn much. Those
are the two worst things that can happen to a guy.
(02:54):
But this delay and gratification would later reveal itself as
a blessing in disguise. By the time I could get
the girls, I already knew how to write poems and
draw pictures. Thank god, I was able to develop these things,
which I could keep before I got the goodies that
were my first choice. While serving in Japan and Korea,
(03:18):
he found an unexpected outlet as an army cartoonist. When
he was discharged and unemployed, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to
magazines while hawking peanuts and hot dogs to fans at
Comiski Park in Chicago. His break came in nineteen fifty
(03:40):
six when he visited the offices of a startup magazine
for men and met its editor himself, an avid cartoonist
and Army veteran, Hugh Hefner. During those playboy years, Silverstein
shuttled back and forth between Chicago and downtown New York.
He frequented folk clubs and began making his own music,
(04:04):
scribbling away songs on the back of cocktail napkins and tablecloths,
performing folk and jazz numbers in a low, gravelly voice.
Silverstein was a prolific perfectionist. In nineteen sixty four alone,
he published three children's books and one book for adults.
Among them was The Giving Tree, whose breakaway success caught
(04:28):
his publisher, who had printed a measly run of seven
thousand copies. By surprise. Sales of The Giving Tree doubled
every year in the decade following its publication. They have
since approached ten million copies in sales worldwide. Here's Shell
reading The Giving Tree.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Once there was a tree, and she loved the little boy.
And every day the boy would come. He would climb
up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples.
(05:15):
And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.
And the tree was happy.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
But then time passes and the boy forgets about her.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
But time went by.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
One day, the boy, now a young man, returns asking
for money. Not having any to offer him, the tree
is happy to give him her apples to sell. She
is likewise happy to give him her branches, and laid
her trunk, until there's nothing left of her but an
old stump, which the old man or the boy proceeds
(05:51):
to sit on.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Come boy, come sit down, Sit down and rest. And
the boy did, and the tree was happy.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
This book has been described as one of the most
divisive books in children's literature. The controversy concerns whether the
relationship between the main characters A boy in a Tree
should be interpreted as positive i e. The tree gives
the boy selfless love, or a negative i e. The
(06:28):
boy and the tree have an abusive relationship. Lisa Roguach
in her biography on Silverstein, a boy named Shelle offered
her take on The Giving Tree. Given Shell's disgust with
the me first attitude among the folk singers and other
artists who were creating art as a form of self analysis,
(06:50):
he wrote it as a reaction to their own mushiness.
Silverstein was continually asked to defend his children's picture book
It's just a relationship between two people. One gives and
the other takes. He would often repeat every year The
Giving Tree appears on the list of top ten children's
(07:13):
books of all time. Silverstein said that he had never
studied the poetry of others and had therefore developed his
own quirky style. Shell was no coward, nor was his
goal to please the most amount of people. Therefore, he
(07:33):
was no fan of political correctness.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
There was a time. Now you take a Little Red
writing Hood, for example, the Three Little Pigs. You know,
there was a time when I know, when I read
Little Red Riding Hood, she goes, you know, to the
you know, she gets the directions from the wolf, and
she goes to the grandmother's house, and the wolf's already
been there, and he's already eaten up the grandmother, you know,
And now an earlier edition than this had the wolf
(07:59):
he eats up the grandmother the earliest edition, and then
he eats up little red Riding Hood too. It was
a moral story, you know, I don't know what the
moral was really, but it meant something. And he eats
the grandmother and then he eats red Riding Hood. Well,
by the time I was reading the story, he eats
the grandmother, but he doesn't quite manage to get Red
Riding Hood down completely because the woodsman comes in and
(08:20):
kills him. Then, as I was older, I read the
book again, and what they turned it into this time
was that he eats the grandmother, he doesn't get to
red Riding Hood, but the woodsman comes in and chops
open the wolf's belly, and the grandmother pops out brand new. Well,
now I think it is. He comes in, he doesn't
even eat the grandmother altogether. He just scares her and
(08:42):
she runs away, and then the hunter comes in. Well,
you know, eventually, you know, the hunter and the wolf
and the grandmother are all going to sit around and
play jin rummy.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Sheell wrote hundreds of poems and verses for children and
best selling collections like the Fiercely Imagined Works Where the
Sidewalks and a Light in the Attic translated into more
than thirty languages. Shell's books have sold over thirty million copies.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
And when we come back more on the Life of
Shell Silverstein. Here on our American Stories, and we returned
(09:40):
to the life of Shell Silverstein. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
The Beatles were.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
On the cover.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
The Beatles. Silverstein produced over one thousand published songs, many
of which have been used in TV shows and movies,
including classics like Doctor Hooks, the cover of the Rolling Stone,
which was featured in almost famous Cameron Crowe's Tender semi
autobiographical film about going on tour with rock stars in
(10:09):
the nineteen seventies, and writing about it for Rolling Stone
magazine Long Seams File.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Cover.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Schell also wrote the Ballad of Lucy Jordan, which was
featured in Flman Louise, and he was nominated for an
oscar and a Golden Globe for his song I'm Checking Out,
sung by Meryl Streep in the film Postcards from the
Edge fo the fearsome looking bald bearded jew wearing a
(10:41):
long flowing pirate shirt and leather jacket that Goodwill would
have rejected. Was also adored by the country music community.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Here and topic. The rain is a pollen, the boss
it is the dripping, and the kids are a bond.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
One of them is toddler, then one is a crawling
and one's on.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
He wrote One's on the Way and Hey Loretta, both
hits for Loretta Lynn in nineteen seventy one and nineteen
seventy three.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Well there building a gallows outside myself, and I've got
twenty five minutes to.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Go and twenty five minutes to go, sung by Johnny
Cash about a man on death row, with each line
counting down one minute closer to his execution.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Well, I'm waiting for the pardon that'll send me free,
with nine more minutes to go. But this ain't the movies,
sob forget about me. Eight more minutes to go.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
On February twenty third, nineteen sixty nine, the night before
Johnny Cash was set to record his live album at
San Went in prison, he held a party at his home.
The evening ended, as it usually did, with his friends
trying out their latest songs. Bob Dylan sang lay Lady Delay,
Chris Christofferson sang Me and My Bobby McGhee, and Shelle
(12:15):
Silverstein offered up a boy named Sue. Here's Johnny Cash's son,
John Carter Cash.
Speaker 7 (12:23):
Sheelle brought my dad a poem named boy named Sue,
and Dad read it and he was and he laughed
and he liked it. He put it in his pocket.
And this was right before he went to San Quentin
to record the live album. There, he got on stage
for the live performance and he and basically remembered that
(12:44):
point in his pocket. He reached in and took it
out and looked at it, turned around to the band
and said, play something in a and the band just
began to play and just a little, you know, twelve
bar walking blues rhythm, and then Dad recited the lyric
the first time he'd ever recited it live ever, and
(13:07):
he was recorded, and that was the big number one hit.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Here's Johnny Cash singing a Boy named Sue for the
first time at San Quentin Prison.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Well, my daddy left Tom when I was three, and
he didn't leave much. Tom and me, just this little
guitar and a empty bottle of food. Now, I don't
blame him. Because he's running head. But the meanest thing
that he ever did was before he left. He wasn't
named me Sue Well. He must have thought that it
(13:38):
was quite a joke and had got a lot of
laughs from lots of folks. It seems like I had
to fight my whole life through. Some gal would giggle
and I'd get rid, and some guy laughed, and I
the bus is head. I'll tell you life ain't easy
for a boy named Sue Well.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
I grew up.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Quick, and I grew up mean. My fist got hard,
my wist got keen. Room from town to town to
hide my shamee. But I made me a bow to
the moon and stars. I'd search the honk of thomps
and bars and kill that man and give me that
awful name. Well, it was gotten Burg in mid July,
(14:19):
and i'd just hit town, and my throat was dry.
I thought I'd stop and have myself agrove. I had
an old saloon on a street of mud. There at
a table dealing study such a dirty mainsy dogh that's
named me Sue.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Well.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I knew that snake was my own sweet dad from
a worn eye picture that my mother had had and
I knew that scar on his cheek.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
Cut his evil eye.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
He was big and bent from gray and old. And
I looked at him and my blood ran cold, and
I said, my name is Sue.
Speaker 6 (14:52):
How do you do?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, that's what I told him.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Well, I hit him hard, right between the eyes, and
he went down, but to my surprise, come up with
a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth, and
we crashed through the wall into the street, kicking and
a gougeing, and the mud and the blood and the beard.
I tell you I fought tougher men, but I really
(15:23):
can't remember when he kicked like a mule and a
bit like a crocodile. I heard him laugh, and then
I heard him cause he went for his gun to
pull mine first. He stood there looking at me, and
I saw him smile. He said, so this world is rough,
and if a man's gonna make it, he's got to
(15:43):
be tough.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And I know I wouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
There to help you along, so I give you that name,
and I said goodbye, and you you'd have to get
tough or die. And it's that name that helped to
make use trunk.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, he said.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Now, you just fought one hell of a fight. And
I know you hate me, and you got the right
to kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if
you do, but you ought to thank me before I
die for the gravel in your guts and the subit
in the eye, because I'm that named you suit.
Speaker 7 (16:18):
Yeah, what did I know?
Speaker 1 (16:20):
What could I do? I got all joked up, and
I threw down my gun, called him a paw, and
he called me a son. And I come away with
a different point of view. And I think about him
now and then every time I try, and every time
I win. And if I ever have a son, I
think I'm gonna name him Bill or George, anything but Sue.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Sell wrote A Boy Named Sue after hearing his close
friend Jeane Shepherd, known for the film A Christmas Story,
which he narrated and co scripted, complain about being teased
for his girl's name as a kid.
Speaker 5 (17:12):
Only I didn't say fudge, I said the word the
big one.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
A Boy Named Sue managed to become one of the
most referenced country songs of all time. The song also
became one of Cash's most requested. He played it at
the White House for President Nixon, and he played it
on his own television show. On April Fool's Day nineteen seventy.
(17:38):
Johnny Cash sang a truncated version of a Boy named
Sue with Shell on The Johnny Cash Show.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
A lot of your writings has met a great deal
to me, and for one song in particular that she
wrote has been largely responsible for a lot of the
success I've had lately. Shell wrote a Boy named Sue
when it was Gatlinburg and mid julyne I just tipped
down and my throat was dry.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Thought it stop and have myself a brew.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
At old saloon on the Street of Love.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
They had a table Daylon stats.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Shell's voice has been compared to everything from a creaking
door or a rusty gate to the yelp made by
a dog whose tail had been stepped on. He agreed
with the critique, although he liked the sound of his voice.
Silverstein also co wrote The Taker with Chris Christopperson, which
(18:45):
was recorded by Wail and Jennings.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
He's a helper Neil Hepper to open the doors that
she came on her own.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Shell also advised Bob Dylan on album lyrics for what
turned out to be Blood on the Tracks, released in
nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Anyone known of the Sun with the Saturdays, she was
lying in bed?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Wonder ears she changed it all?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Ever, hair Well, It's do.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Silverstein also wrote plays. He even co wrote the screenplay
Things Change with legendary playwright David Mammot. On May tenth,
nineteen ninety nine, Shell Silverstein died at age sixty eight
of a heart attack in Key West, Florida. From best
(19:34):
selling children's book author to Grammy winning, Oscar nominated songwriter,
Shel Silverstein's unique imagination and bold brand of humor are
beloved by countless adults and children all over the world.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
And great job as always, Greg, And what a story
about a great Chicago voice. And that Shelle Silverstein and
David Mammott worked together, Thank you goodness they did Shell
Silverstein's story in a way an American story about storytelling
the life of Shell Silverstein. Here on our American Stories.
All believes on the Giving Tree, half fallen, no shade
to Crawlin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Underneath this is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
And the song you just heard was Giving Tree by
Plain White Teas. The song based on the famous picture
book that was written by Shelle Silverstein. Here's Greg Engler
with the story.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Poet W. H. Auden once said, there are good books
which are only for adults. There are no good books
which are only for children. Children's picture books matter because
they're a form of our first impression of literature and
become the gateway towards our appetites for the written word
(00:59):
in our knowledge of the world. This most distilled form
of art expresses basic truths about life in such a
poetic way that it assumes the form of intellectual mother's milk.
(01:19):
The stylistic eccentricities of Maurice Sendak, doctor Seuss, and Shell
Silverstein formed the bedrock of our childhood lexicon. Shell's story
is arguably the most eccentrically interesting among the Big Three.
(01:40):
Born in nineteen thirty on the northwest side of Chicago,
Sheldon Alan Silverstein grew up in a second story apartment
crammed with relatives his Jewish parents, an immigrant father from
Eastern Europe and a Chicago born mother, opened an unsuccessful
bakery on the heels of the Great Depression. Though Silverstein's
(02:02):
mother encouraged his early knack for drawing, his father made
it clear that he was expected to join the floundering
family business. Silverstein discovered his passion for drawing when he
was five. The lonely eccentric Kids spent his k through
twelve years drawing, reading, and listening to the radio.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Sir, is it true that you are two thousand years old?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Oh boy?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
They were his comfort and refuge from the perpetual boredom
of school and his increasingly wrathful father. After a few
unsuccessful attempts at college, he explained, I didn't get much
attention from the girls, and I didn't learn much. Those
are the two worst things that can happen to a guy.
(02:54):
But this delay and gratification would later reveal itself as
a blessing in disguise. By the time I could get
the girls, I already knew how to write poems and
draw pictures. Thank god, I was able to develop these things,
which I could keep before I got the goodies that
were my first choice. While serving in Japan and Korea,
(03:18):
he found an unexpected outlet as an army cartoonist. When
he was discharged and unemployed, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to
magazines while hawking peanuts and hot dogs to fans at
Comiski Park in Chicago. His break came in nineteen fifty
(03:40):
six when he visited the offices of a startup magazine
for men and met its editor himself, an avid cartoonist
and Army veteran, Hugh Hefner. During those playboy years, Silverstein
shuttled back and forth between Chicago and downtown New York.
He frequented folk clubs and began making his own music,
(04:04):
scribbling away songs on the back of cocktail napkins and tablecloths,
performing folk and jazz numbers in a low, gravelly voice.
Silverstein was a prolific perfectionist. In nineteen sixty four alone,
he published three children's books and one book for adults.
Among them was The Giving Tree, whose breakaway success caught
(04:28):
his publisher, who had printed a measly run of seven
thousand copies. By surprise. Sales of The Giving Tree doubled
every year in the decade following its publication. They have
since approached ten million copies in sales worldwide. Here's Shell
reading The Giving Tree.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Once there was a tree, and she loved the little boy.
And every day the boy would come. He would climb
up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples.
(05:15):
And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.
And the tree was happy.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
But then time passes and the boy forgets about her.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
But time went by.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
One day, the boy, now a young man, returns asking
for money. Not having any to offer him, the tree
is happy to give him her apples to sell. She
is likewise happy to give him her branches, and laid
her trunk, until there's nothing left of her but an
old stump, which the old man or the boy proceeds
(05:51):
to sit on.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Come boy, come sit down, Sit down and rest. And
the boy did, and the tree was happy.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
This book has been described as one of the most
divisive books in children's literature. The controversy concerns whether the
relationship between the main characters A boy in a Tree
should be interpreted as positive i e. The tree gives
the boy selfless love, or a negative i e. The
(06:28):
boy and the tree have an abusive relationship. Lisa Roguach
in her biography on Silverstein, a boy named Shelle offered
her take on The Giving Tree. Given Shell's disgust with
the me first attitude among the folk singers and other
artists who were creating art as a form of self analysis,
(06:50):
he wrote it as a reaction to their own mushiness.
Silverstein was continually asked to defend his children's picture book
It's just a relationship between two people. One gives and
the other takes. He would often repeat every year The
Giving Tree appears on the list of top ten children's
(07:13):
books of all time. Silverstein said that he had never
studied the poetry of others and had therefore developed his
own quirky style. Shell was no coward, nor was his
goal to please the most amount of people. Therefore, he
(07:33):
was no fan of political correctness.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
There was a time. Now you take a Little Red
writing Hood, for example, the Three Little Pigs. You know,
there was a time when I know, when I read
Little Red Riding Hood, she goes, you know, to the
you know, she gets the directions from the wolf, and
she goes to the grandmother's house, and the wolf's already
been there, and he's already eaten up the grandmother, you know,
And now an earlier edition than this had the wolf
(07:59):
he eats up the grandmother the earliest edition, and then
he eats up little red Riding Hood too. It was
a moral story, you know, I don't know what the
moral was really, but it meant something. And he eats
the grandmother and then he eats red Riding Hood. Well,
by the time I was reading the story, he eats
the grandmother, but he doesn't quite manage to get Red
Riding Hood down completely because the woodsman comes in and
(08:20):
kills him. Then, as I was older, I read the
book again, and what they turned it into this time
was that he eats the grandmother, he doesn't get to
red Riding Hood, but the woodsman comes in and chops
open the wolf's belly, and the grandmother pops out brand new. Well,
now I think it is. He comes in, he doesn't
even eat the grandmother altogether. He just scares her and
(08:42):
she runs away, and then the hunter comes in. Well,
you know, eventually, you know, the hunter and the wolf
and the grandmother are all going to sit around and
play jin rummy.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Sheell wrote hundreds of poems and verses for children and
best selling collections like the Fiercely Imagined Works Where the
Sidewalks and a Light in the Attic translated into more
than thirty languages. Shell's books have sold over thirty million copies.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
And when we come back more on the Life of
Shell Silverstein. Here on our American Stories, and we returned
(09:40):
to the life of Shell Silverstein. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
The Beatles were.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
On the cover.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
The Beatles. Silverstein produced over one thousand published songs, many
of which have been used in TV shows and movies,
including classics like Doctor Hooks, the cover of the Rolling Stone,
which was featured in almost famous Cameron Crowe's Tender semi
autobiographical film about going on tour with rock stars in
(10:09):
the nineteen seventies, and writing about it for Rolling Stone
magazine Long Seams File.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Cover.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Schell also wrote the Ballad of Lucy Jordan, which was
featured in Flman Louise, and he was nominated for an
oscar and a Golden Globe for his song I'm Checking Out,
sung by Meryl Streep in the film Postcards from the
Edge fo the fearsome looking bald bearded jew wearing a
(10:41):
long flowing pirate shirt and leather jacket that Goodwill would
have rejected. Was also adored by the country music community.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Here and topic. The rain is a pollen, the boss
it is the dripping, and the kids are a bond.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
One of them is toddler, then one is a crawling
and one's on.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
He wrote One's on the Way and Hey Loretta, both
hits for Loretta Lynn in nineteen seventy one and nineteen
seventy three.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Well there building a gallows outside myself, and I've got
twenty five minutes to.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Go and twenty five minutes to go, sung by Johnny
Cash about a man on death row, with each line
counting down one minute closer to his execution.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Well, I'm waiting for the pardon that'll send me free,
with nine more minutes to go. But this ain't the movies,
sob forget about me. Eight more minutes to go.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
On February twenty third, nineteen sixty nine, the night before
Johnny Cash was set to record his live album at
San Went in prison, he held a party at his home.
The evening ended, as it usually did, with his friends
trying out their latest songs. Bob Dylan sang lay Lady Delay,
Chris Christofferson sang Me and My Bobby McGhee, and Shelle
(12:15):
Silverstein offered up a boy named Sue. Here's Johnny Cash's son,
John Carter Cash.
Speaker 7 (12:23):
Sheelle brought my dad a poem named boy named Sue,
and Dad read it and he was and he laughed
and he liked it. He put it in his pocket.
And this was right before he went to San Quentin
to record the live album. There, he got on stage
for the live performance and he and basically remembered that
(12:44):
point in his pocket. He reached in and took it
out and looked at it, turned around to the band
and said, play something in a and the band just
began to play and just a little, you know, twelve
bar walking blues rhythm, and then Dad recited the lyric
the first time he'd ever recited it live ever, and
(13:07):
he was recorded, and that was the big number one hit.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Here's Johnny Cash singing a Boy named Sue for the
first time at San Quentin Prison.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Well, my daddy left Tom when I was three, and
he didn't leave much. Tom and me, just this little
guitar and a empty bottle of food. Now, I don't
blame him. Because he's running head. But the meanest thing
that he ever did was before he left. He wasn't
named me Sue Well. He must have thought that it
(13:38):
was quite a joke and had got a lot of
laughs from lots of folks. It seems like I had
to fight my whole life through. Some gal would giggle
and I'd get rid, and some guy laughed, and I
the bus is head. I'll tell you life ain't easy
for a boy named Sue Well.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
I grew up.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Quick, and I grew up mean. My fist got hard,
my wist got keen. Room from town to town to
hide my shamee. But I made me a bow to
the moon and stars. I'd search the honk of thomps
and bars and kill that man and give me that
awful name. Well, it was gotten Burg in mid July,
(14:19):
and i'd just hit town, and my throat was dry.
I thought I'd stop and have myself agrove. I had
an old saloon on a street of mud. There at
a table dealing study such a dirty mainsy dogh that's
named me Sue.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Well.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I knew that snake was my own sweet dad from
a worn eye picture that my mother had had and
I knew that scar on his cheek.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
Cut his evil eye.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
He was big and bent from gray and old. And
I looked at him and my blood ran cold, and
I said, my name is Sue.
Speaker 6 (14:52):
How do you do?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, that's what I told him.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Well, I hit him hard, right between the eyes, and
he went down, but to my surprise, come up with
a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth, and
we crashed through the wall into the street, kicking and
a gougeing, and the mud and the blood and the beard.
I tell you I fought tougher men, but I really
(15:23):
can't remember when he kicked like a mule and a
bit like a crocodile. I heard him laugh, and then
I heard him cause he went for his gun to
pull mine first. He stood there looking at me, and
I saw him smile. He said, so this world is rough,
and if a man's gonna make it, he's got to
(15:43):
be tough.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And I know I wouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
There to help you along, so I give you that name,
and I said goodbye, and you you'd have to get
tough or die. And it's that name that helped to
make use trunk.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, he said.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Now, you just fought one hell of a fight. And
I know you hate me, and you got the right
to kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if
you do, but you ought to thank me before I
die for the gravel in your guts and the subit
in the eye, because I'm that named you suit.
Speaker 7 (16:18):
Yeah, what did I know?
Speaker 1 (16:20):
What could I do? I got all joked up, and
I threw down my gun, called him a paw, and
he called me a son. And I come away with
a different point of view. And I think about him
now and then every time I try, and every time
I win. And if I ever have a son, I
think I'm gonna name him Bill or George, anything but Sue.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Sell wrote A Boy Named Sue after hearing his close
friend Jeane Shepherd, known for the film A Christmas Story,
which he narrated and co scripted, complain about being teased
for his girl's name as a kid.
Speaker 5 (17:12):
Only I didn't say fudge, I said the word the
big one.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
A Boy Named Sue managed to become one of the
most referenced country songs of all time. The song also
became one of Cash's most requested. He played it at
the White House for President Nixon, and he played it
on his own television show. On April Fool's Day nineteen seventy.
(17:38):
Johnny Cash sang a truncated version of a Boy named
Sue with Shell on The Johnny Cash Show.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
A lot of your writings has met a great deal
to me, and for one song in particular that she
wrote has been largely responsible for a lot of the
success I've had lately. Shell wrote a Boy named Sue
when it was Gatlinburg and mid julyne I just tipped
down and my throat was dry.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Thought it stop and have myself a brew.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
At old saloon on the Street of Love.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
They had a table Daylon stats.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Shell's voice has been compared to everything from a creaking
door or a rusty gate to the yelp made by
a dog whose tail had been stepped on. He agreed
with the critique, although he liked the sound of his voice.
Silverstein also co wrote The Taker with Chris Christopperson, which
(18:45):
was recorded by Wail and Jennings.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
He's a helper Neil Hepper to open the doors that
she came on her own.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Shell also advised Bob Dylan on album lyrics for what
turned out to be Blood on the Tracks, released in
nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Anyone known of the Sun with the Saturdays, she was
lying in bed?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Wonder ears she changed it all?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Ever, hair Well, It's do.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Silverstein also wrote plays. He even co wrote the screenplay
Things Change with legendary playwright David Mammot. On May tenth,
nineteen ninety nine, Shell Silverstein died at age sixty eight
of a heart attack in Key West, Florida. From best
(19:34):
selling children's book author to Grammy winning, Oscar nominated songwriter,
Shel Silverstein's unique imagination and bold brand of humor are
beloved by countless adults and children all over the world.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
And great job as always, Greg, And what a story
about a great Chicago voice. And that Shelle Silverstein and
David Mammott worked together, Thank you goodness they did Shell
Silverstein's story in a way an American story about storytelling
the life of Shell Silverstein. Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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