Origins: jesse winchester's Yankee Lady

Subject: jesse winchester's Yankee Lady
From: GUEST,doryman
Date: 22 Oct 22 - 12:07 PM

A true story?

Subject: ADD: Yankee Lady (Jesse Winchester)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Oct 22 - 01:27 PM

I have no particular proof, but my guess is that this song is totally fictional. Winchester often wrote fictional songs in a context that sounds historic or autobiographical.

YANKEE LADY
(Jesse Winchester)

I lived with the decent folks
In the hills of old Vermont
Where what you do all day
Depends on what you want
And I took up with a woman there
Though I was still a kid
And I smile like the sun
To think of the loving that we did

She rose each morning and went to work
And she kept me with her pay
I was making love all night
And playing guitar all day
And I got apple cider and homemade bread
To make a man say grace
And clean linens on my bed
And a warm feet fireplace

CHORUS
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me

An autumn walk on a country road
And a million flaming trees
I was feeling uneasy
Cause there was winter in the breeze
And she said, "Oh Jesse, look over there,
The birds are southward bound
Oh Jesse, I'm so afraid
To lose the love that we've found."

CHORUS
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me

I don't know what called to me
But I know that I had to go
I left that Vermont town
With a lift to Mexico
And now when I see myself
As a stranger by my birth
The Yankee lady's memory
Reminds me of my worth

CHORUS
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me

Source: https://raffi.fandom.com/wiki/Yankee_Lady

Jesse Winchester recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s_RsqEGHRs

Brewer & Shipley recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIue2OG-JZE

Recording by Raffi on Adult Entertainment; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73ZXOaHStg

Jon Wilcox 1972 recording on Folk-Legacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b0nJj2-pbc

The Jon Wilcox album and notes are now available at Smithsonian Folkways, https://folkways.si.edu/jon-wilcox/stages-of-my-life

Subject: RE: Origins: jesse winchester's Yankee Lady
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 23 Oct 22 - 11:19 AM

I certainly hope this is fictional.

The song has a terrific melody, and Winchester's vocal is outstanding. At the same time, alas, the character who's telling the story is an appallingly self-centered jerk. From what I've heard, Winchester in the flesh was a low-keyed, likable man, and no legends of narcissism surround him.

If the "Yankee Lady" guy is indeed Winchester, it must have been a very young iteration who knew no better. He certainly didn't know enough not to tell this story as he does here. I would be surprised -- well, actually shocked -- if this song survived in his later repertoire.

Subject: RE: Origins: jesse winchester's Yankee Lady
From: cnd
Date: 24 Oct 22 - 09:20 AM

I could see the song being at least partially.

In the song, the main character leaves a comfortable life and a woman he loves in Vermont for Mexico, noting "I don't know what called to me / But I know that I had to go." Notably, this mirrors elements of Winchester's life, leaving the southern United States for Canada, fleeing the Vietnam War draft, a war more nebulous in origin than wars the United States had previously been involved in, causing significant consternation about our motives and reasons for involvement.

Here's an interpretation of the song from Rock Voices: The Best Lyrics of an Era (1980):

The sensual clues of time and place are what give Jesse Winchester's "Yankee Lady" such resonance. Also from Winchester's 1970 debut album, the lyric charts the course of a season's idyll with an older woman and an initiation into manhood. Here, the simple traditional pleasures of rustic domesticity are viewed with reverence ("apple cider and homemade bread / To make a man say grace") while the joys of awakening sexuality are beatifically recalled ("And I smile like the sun to think of the lovin' / That we did"). Winchester invests this rich memory with a fully integrated poetry of passage, from wandering youth to hearth-loving and ultimately restless manhood, from season to season, from time savored to time consumed ("An autumn walk on a country road / And a million flaming trees"), while the Yankee lady of the song stands for all the comforting constancy of a land left behind.

A similar interpretation is seen in The McGill Daily Vol. 065 No. 027: October 29, 1975. While speaking of THE BRAND NEW TENNESSEE WALTZ, columnist Helena Lamed notes "Winchester combines a simple love song with a gentle lament for something left behind: possibly his country, but rather a piece of himself. 'Yankee Lady' projects a similar image."

In summary, I don't think the song is representative of something Winchester lived, but may very well be symbolic of his migratory life and things he left behind in doing it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any direct quotes explaining his inspiration for the song, so unless someone else can unearth something, we'll be stuck making suppositions.

Subject: RE: Origins: jesse winchester's Yankee Lady
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Oct 22 - 09:34 AM

Some times it takes a while to form a moral compass. I know I did some things as a young man that I would never even consider doing in later years.

Subject: RE: Origins: jesse winchester's Yankee Lady
From: GUEST,Guest Joan F
Date: 28 Oct 22 - 12:56 PM

Since no-one else has chimed in on this yet, Winchester got enough flack on this at the time (i.e. while he was singing it i.e. still alive) that he changed "memory that's enough for me" to "memory will have to do for me".

My memory of this goes back to the 80s, I will have to look up when he sadly died but I didn't see him play for maybe 10 years before that.