Friday Five: Songs About Pants

Pants are pretty awesome, despite what Lindsay Lohan seems to think. You know what else is pretty awesome? Songs about pants.

Sure, Conway Twitty and Mel McDaniel have some nifty—and ubiquitous—songs about blue jeans, and Brad Paisley’s newest release has what’ll probably be his thousandth Number One, “The Pants,” but here we salute a handful of pants songs that could use another moment in the sun.

• 5. “From Levis to Calvin Klein Jeans” – Brenda Lee
  This one’s a single from 1981 LP Only When I Laugh. Here, Lee takes a cowboy to task for turning fancy as he moves from boots and cattle drives to Gucci shoes, Porsches, and disco dancin’. Now I like horses just as much as the next person, but at least you don’t have to worry about mucking out a stall when you’ve got a sports car.
• 4. “Two Pairs of Levis and a Pair of Justin Boots” – Red Steagall
  A rodeo man comes home to find his long-suffering wife—and all his possessions—gone, minus a saddle and these few elements of sartorial splendor. Steagall sure seems to be fond of this particular brand of jeans, as he’s also recorded “Tight Levis and Yellow Ribbons.”
• 3. “The Little Red Patch on the Seat of My Trousers” – Wilf Carter
  Cowboy singer Carter, aka Montana Slim, delivers this humorous tale about a fella, clad in a pair of pants with a red patch on the butt, relaxing in the country. Until, that is, he runs into a bull who isn’t exactly fond of red fabric waggling around in front of him.
• 2. “Leather Britches” – Sam Bush
  Leather britches sound rather uncomfortable, but based on the number of artists who’ve covered this traditional tune (John Hartford, Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers, and Hot Rize among many others), maybe we should give ‘em a try. You first.
• 1. “Make-Up and Faded Blue Jeans” – Merle Haggard
  A struggling singer playing the Modesto Holiday Inn comes across a jeans-clad woman with the potential to distract him and “blow all [his] chances at being a big singing star.” This lady gets better looking as she edges closer to the stage, thanks to the wonders of the lights, Maybelline, and probably a drink or nine. The album this track came from, Back to the Barrooms, is one of Hag’s finest.

Juli Thanki is the editor of Engine 145 and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Bluegrass Unlimited, and M Music & Musicians Magazine. In 2011 she received the International Bluegrass Music Association Print Media Person of the Year award.