Of course, country and country-rock songs brim with a sense of place -- "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Texas songs by Bob Wills and others, "24 Hours at a Time" by the Marshall Tucker Band. But Bobbie Gentry and others have something else in mind, not so much Southern pride but Southern experience.

I'm sure other current songs like this exist, but I'm not hearing them. The only other song that comes to mind -- and I heard this one, too, yesterday -- is "Walkin' in Memphis" by Marc Cohn (fine southern name). Based on his own experiences in Memphis, it brims with the musical history of a real place. And for a guy named Cohn, he gets some of the religious flavor of the South in the song just right, when he sings,

Now Muriel plays piano Every Friday at the Hollywood And they brought me down to see her And they asked me if I would -- Do a little number And I sang with all my might And she said -- "Tell me are you a Christian, child?" And I said "Ma'am I am tonight"

One other song comes to mind when I scan my limited memory files is "Poke Salad Annie" by Tony Joe White. It comes completely with a spoken introduction of great ethnoculinary interest:

[spoken]
If some of ya'll never been down South too much...
I'm gonna tell you a little bit about this,
So that you'll understand what I'm talking about
Down there we have a plant
That grows out in the woods and the fields,
Looks somethin' like a turnip green.
Everybody calls it Poke salad. Poke salad.
Used to know a girl that lived down there and
she'd go out in the evenings and pick a mess of it...
Carry it home and cook it for supper,
'Cause that's about all they had to eat,
But they did all right.

[sung]
Down in Louisiana
Where the alligators grow so mean
There lived a girl that I swear to the world
Made the alligators look tame

Poke salad Annie, poke salad Annie
Everybody said it was a shame
Cause her mama was working on the chain-gang
(A mean, vicious woman)

If any KTers have nominations for great region-based songs, from anywhere, just send them in and I'll write about them. Springsteen, maybe?