Gentle On My Mind

Album

Gentle on My Mind

Label

Capitol Records

Genre

Country

Composer(s)

John Hartford

Entered Chart

Jul 8, 1967

Peak Date

Nov 2, 1968

Released

Unknown

Recorded

Unknown

Catalog #

Capitol 5939

B-Side

Just Another Man

This song, written by John Hartford, won four 1968 Grammy awards, including one for Hartford for Best Folk Performance, and one for Glen Campbell for Best Country & Western Solo Vocal Performance, Male. Hartford's inspiration for this song was the movie Doctor Zhivago. After watching the film, he sat down and wrote the lyrics in about 15 minutes. Doctor Zhivago is a poignant love story which takes place during the Bolshevik Revolution. It stars Omar Sharif as Doctor Yuri Zhivago, a married doctor, who falls in love with Julie Christie's Lara Antipova, a political activist. The film won several Academy Awards in 1965. Glen Campbell's version of this song was the first major hit for John Hartford, who - up to that point - had enjoyed only moderate success as a singer and songwriter. Campbell used this song as the theme to his TV variety show The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour which ran 1969-1972. More recently the Lucinda Williams recording appeared over the closing credits in the Will Ferrell movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Having been recorded by musical giants including Dean Martin (whose version reached #2 in the UK in 1969) and Aretha Franklin, this song is one of the most-recorded country songs in history. >> The country music group The Band Perry covered the song in 2014 for the soundtrack of the documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me. Their rendition won the Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.

It's knowing that your door is always open
And your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
Rolled up and stashed behind your couch
And it's knowing I'm not shackled
By forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that are dried upon some line
That keeps you on the back roads
By the rivers of my memory
That keeps you ever gentle on my mind

It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy
Planted on their columns now that bind me
Or something that somebody said
Because they thought we fit together walking
It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing
Or forgiving when I walk along some railroad track and find
That you're moving on the back roads
By the rivers of my memory
And for hours you're just gentle on my mind

Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines
And the junkyards and the highways come between us
And some other woman's cryin' to her mother
'Cause she turned and I was gone
I still might run in silence tears of joy might stain my face
And the summer sun might burn me 'til I'm blind
Oh but not to where I cannot see you walkin' on the back roads
By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind

I dip my cup of soup back from a gurglin'
Cracklin' caldron in some train yard
My beard a roughenen, coal piled
And a dirty hat pulled low across my face
Through cupped hands 'round the tin can
I pretend to hold you to my breast and find
That you're waiting from the back roads
By the rivers of my memories
Ever smilin' ever gentle on my mind
Gentle on my mind
You are gentle on my mind