Grammar-challenged Bakersfield song titles
by Bryce Martin

Hey, what do you want? These are country boys through and through. Sometimes song titles are written "countryish" on purpose, such as Fuzzy Owen's *"Yer Fer Me," and sometimes not, as in the ones below from Bakersfield 45 rpm records and LPs.

1.
"Put Me on the Welfare" (Darrell Gene)
Maybe it's just me, but shouldn't the article "the" be eliminated?

2.
"Opal, You Ask Me" (Tommy Collins)
Asked.

3.
"Hag and I" (Bob Teague)
Hag and Me.

4.
"Sing a Song" (Dennis Payne)
The line "I have sing a song" from where the title is born should contain "sang" and not "sing."

5.
"Bulshipers" (Red Simpson)
Technically, this may be correct, with one or two "p's" but it looks bad.

6.
"Scotish Guitar" (Gene Moles)
A "tt" I should see.

7.
*"Your For Me" (Buck Owens)
Go for "yer" for effect, or the contraction "you're" for "you are."

(This gets an asterisk because Owens wrote it and published it as "Your For Me" but when it came out on vinyl it was corrected by the record company and printed as "You're For Me." The song was published by Fuzzy Owen's Owen Publishing. Fuzzy did a hick version of it on record and titled it "Yer Fer Me.")

8.
"The Whizer" (The Bakersfield Five)
Even with instrumentals where just about anything goes concerning song titles, wouldn't "The Whizzer" just look better?

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