There’s a new cover version of “Love at the Five and Dime” out there—a lovely duet recorded by the late John Prine and Kelsey Waldon. The track is a single off an upcoming tribute album to Griffiths, assembled slowly over the past few years by Emmylou Harris, following the death of Griffiths in 2021.
I had no choice but to listen to it on repeat for the past few days.
It’s the song that introduced me to Griffiths, and it’s still able to pack a potent wallop even after some hundred listens.
Like so many of her peers in the Texas music scene—Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett, and Guy Clark, among others—Griffiths had a talent for writing simply and directly, resulting in songs that felt as if they’d been there all along.
The high water mark for this song may be Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You,” a song that he claimed came to him in a dream. (Note: it’s one of my favorite songs—my wife and I danced to it at our wedding.) Whether or not the story is true is besides the point: it’s a song that feels like it’s always been around, like a well-worn cobble plucked from a stream. It’s just always been there.
“Love at the Five and Dime” has the same effect for me, a quiet love song about Rita and Eddie, tracing their relationship over decades, from teenagers to uncomplicated middle age. The verses glance at the difficulty and fractiousness of their love—the loss of a child, a potentially ruinous affair—but the chorus is what the song is all about, an insistence of the strength and endurance of their bond.
I saw some commentary online that attempts to place the love story in the framework of the Silent Generation, assigning the relative quiet of drama to the pseudo-historical framework of generation stereotyping. That read misses the point, I think.
The love of Rita and Eddie is not one you see much in songs. Love songs are more often sentimental or crazed or sexual or weepy or operatic. This is not any of those—this song is quiet, understated, and finds beauty in a simple (but not uncomplicated) love story. There’s drama there, sure, but drama isn’t the whole of it. The love is.
Taylor Coe 