Just goes to show you that you have to be careful about what you read on the Internet!

Just goes to show you that you have to be careful about what you read on the Internet!

Perhaps you should ask the Songwriters Hall of Fame why he deserves to be there, or check out any of the Grammys, or other honors that he's won. Or, you could simply listen to his solo albums.

Aside from the Campbell hits, Webb's critical reputation rests largely on his widely-unheard solo albums of the early 1970s. Go find 'em, give 'em a listen and get back to us if you still don't think he's a first-rate songwriter.

The Long jingle-a positive affirmation of the greatness of America and ability for any man to succeed-is sung straightforwardly, then contrasted with the dark sounds and images of Kingfish, which plays up the class conflicts, stereotypes, and anger than exists even among the state's white population. In other words, Long was saying that in America, any (white) man could be a king, but a good percentage of his own native Louisianan's would have voted for a yellow dog than a redneck.

How this fits into the duality of Newman's album is that it again shows the multiplicity of sides and labels tagged onto the 20th Century southerner, and ironically also, it gives a level of sympathy to Long, a man whose policies were in opposition to the New Dealers (e.g. large, centralized Federal government) who came to be the dominant stream in his own party, and the liberal movement, for the bulk of the last century. Politically, Newman is probably quite in line with the New Dealers who hated Long, but the pairing of Every Man a King and Kingfish allows for a critical examination of his place in society that's a lot more deliberative than most political arguments seem to be nowadays.