Friday Five: Florida

The Florida Territory was created on this day back in 1822 (it wouldn’t become a state for another 23 years). Get some sand in your shoes with these five Florida songs.

5. Patty Griffin – “Florida”
Paradise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: “Isn’t it hard sometimes, isn’t it lonely? How I still hang around here and there’s nothing to hold me.”

4. John Anderson – “Seminole Wind”

One of Anderson’s biggest hits is about damage done to the Everglades that makes “the ghost of Osceola cry.”

3. Bill Monroe – “My Florida Sunshine”

With this song and the instrumental “Tallahassee,” Monroe did right by Florida. And since he found his legendary Gibson F-5 Lloyd Loar mandolin in a Florida barbershop, the Sunshine State did right by him, too. Claire Lynch does a fine version of “Sunshine” that can be found on her 2009 record Whatcha Gonna Do.

2. Keith Whitley – “Miami, My Amy”

“Well, everybody talks about the California quakes/But the first time I ever felt the earth shake/Was in Miami when Amy touched me.” Now that’s a damn good opening lyric. This single, written by Hank Cochran, Dean Dillon, and Royce Porter, topped out at #14 in 1986.

1. Fiddlin’ John Carson – “Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)”

This Stephen Foster song, written in the 1850s, is Florida’s official state song.