1966 Jim Reeves: Distant Drums

There's a delicious irony at work here; it's 1965 and three number ones from the end of the year when Ken Dodd's 'Tears' pulls a handbrake turn on the relentless forward momentum of the music in the charts to send listeners back in time to an almost pre-war era of slow dances and Brylcreem. Fast forward twelve months and three number ones from the end of a year of quite startling number ones and we find Jim Reeves pulling hard on that same brake to once more send the space/time continuum 180 degrees until we're facing the other way.

Like Doddy, 'Distant Drums' pitches up from nowhere - country star Jim Reeves was no stranger to the UK charts, but he'd been in his grave two years already (meaning this wasn't carried on the wave of grief and goodwill that took 'Three Steps To Heaven' or 'Voodoo Chile' to the top). And though the song's war theme had a certain contemporary relevance with the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, that was largely an American concern and no British were being sent aboard. A mystery then as to why this was taken to our national hearts so readily.

'Distant Drums' can be read as an unofficial prequel to 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon'; Jim is hearing the distant drums and bugle calls of a war he may have to fight in and so he urges his Mary to marry him now "for now is all the time there may be". As a song, 'Distant Drums' is cynical in it's emotional manipulation and almost blind acceptance of war ("And if they call for me to come, then I must go and you must stay"). Reeves treats the lyric with respect, but it's the surface reading of a bored parent reading his child a bedtime story but investing no depth or involvement. True, 'Distant Drums' doesn't allow much room for interpretation, but its blandness has the appeal and functionality of an army recruitment poster - that "If you love me Mary, Mary marry me" is too pat to be truly involving, it grates in its neatness and the cartoon parps of bugle calls are a cartoonish romanticism of conflict that's borderline offensive.

Try as I might, I cannot - will not - accept that the same public who bought 'Paint It, Black', 'Out Of Time' et al also handed over their cash at the tills for this. There are battle lines that would have been drawn then once drawn not crossed and I think if 'Distant Drums' is to serve any purpose now it's to illustrate the sheer numbers of the public who were willing to buy a song they liked. But whatever stream of common consciousness that this managed to dip its toes into in 1966 has long dried up and it's a song that, once it starts to play, I can't wait to be over.