Redneck Mother by the great Ray Wylie Hubbard kicks off every Mother’s Day for me. My mom is cooler than your mom as she actually got to meet Ray Wylie Hubbard when they just called him “Ray.” He played a little gig up in Red River New Mexico back when the band was known as Three Faces West.
I owe a lot of my musical taste to my mother. When I was a kid she was a member of one of those companies where if you paid .99 cents you got to pick like ten albums, the catch was that they just kept sending albums after that and then charged you full price. I don’t know how many millions my mother spent on music but my brother and I were raised on anything from MoTown to Southern Rock and everyone in between. My musical tastes today can still go from Ice Ice baby to Frank Sinatra plays Juarez in the quick push of a button.
Was Redneck Mother Ray Wylie Hubbards starting point? The song was inspired by a bumper sticker and a gun rack in the parking lot of a honky tonk in the mountains of New Mexico a short time before I was born. Jerry Jeff Walker recorded it and gave me my first intro to the song writing ability of Ray Wylie. On the tally sheet I keep in my mind, I list Ray Wylie Hubbard in the top 5 greatest Texas Songwriters.
Happy Mother’s Day You Redneck Mothers wherever you may be. Happy Mothers Day happy to my mother, who is still the coolest there is.
Just to give you an example of the simple greatness of Ray Wylie Hubbard, check out the bridge of Redneck Mother- sing it in the style of Jerry Jeff if you must but remember Ray wrote it and he is a songwriter who still gets paid for writing songs:
M is for the mudflaps you gave me for my pickup truck
O is for the oil I put on my hair
T is for T-bird
H is for Haggard
E is for eggs
And R is for red neck
Pancho.