Let's start with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, shall we? I mean, where would we be (at the very least, where would our clothes be) without Holly Golightly? One scene I love is the one wherein she sings "Moon River" and we see beyond her glamorous and cosmopolitan facade.
I listened to this song probably one hundred times this weekend because I was writing a paper about it for my music history class. It got me thinking about rivers and the seeming preoccupation with rivers in music that comes from the south. The internet tells me that Johnny Mercer, who wrote these lyrics, was thinking specifically of a river near his house in Georgia. Here's Johnny Cash in Nashville, singing one of my favorite songs:
I love it. And I love that gentleman's bow tie in the background. And the petticoats! Finally, here's a song that came on my Dolly Parton Pandora station (don't judge!) while I was "completing" my chemistry homework:
Like Cash's song, it's about the Mississippi River acting as a force that keeps two lovers apart (at least, I assume the "Big River" is the Mississippi River). Is that why music from the south seems so preoccupied with rivers? Because of the Mississippi?
Why do you think it is? Any excellent music/literature/art/whatever about rivers that I failed to include?
