Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town
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"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" is a song written by Mel Tillis which was made world famous by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition in 1969. However, it was originally recorded in 1967 by Johnny Darrell, who scored a top 10 country hit with it that spring.
Other singers, Roger Miller and Leonard Nimoy among them, also cut the song, but no one had a major hit with it. However, in 1969, after their success with the hits "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" and "But You Know I Love You", Kenny Rogers wanted to take his group more and more into country music.
The song itself is about a disabled war veteran, who is dying and who is begging his lover not to cheat on him. Tillis based the song on a couple who lived near his family in Florida. In real life, the man was wounded in Germany in World War II and sent to recuperate in England. There he married a nurse who took care of him at the hospital. The two of them moved to Florida shortly afterward, but he had periodic return trips to the hospital as problems with his wounds kept flaring up. His wife saw another man as the veteran lay in the hospital. Tillis changed the war to Korean in the song, and departed from the ending that happened in real life - he killed her in a murder-suicide.
The group recorded their version of the song, with Rogers singing the lead, in one take. The record was yet another major hit for them. It made #1 in the UK (on the New Musical Express chart), staying in the top 20 for 15 weeks and selling over a million copies by the end of 1970. In the United States it made #6 and also sold more than 1 million copies, by 1979. Worldwide the single sold more than 7 million copies.
At Kenny Rogers current shows, the song is often cheerily clapped along to, or joked around with. However, in 1969, telling the story of a crippled veteran was a daring act of compassion, especially as at that time the Vietnam war was rumbling. His recording of "Ruby" came out at a time when military service was unpopular.
In 1977, now a solo act (following the First Edition's split in early-1976), Rogers made re-recordings of this and a number of other First Edition hits for his greatest hits package Ten Years Of Gold (later issued in the British Isles as The Kenny Rogers Singles Album), which topped the US country charts and was just as successful in the UK.
Rogers also re-recorded the track for a 1990 collection of hits, issued in the USA as 20 Great Years (issued in Europe as The Very Best Of Kenny Rogers). It also appeared on live albums, other hits collections and compilation albums.
All inclusive sales of Rogers' own recordings of the song are above 140 million. It also still receives regular airplay on radio and TV across the globe, making it one of the world's most popular songs of all time.
In 2004 the band Cake recorded a version of the song that can be found on their promo CD titled Extra Value. The Killers also recorded a live version of this song on a Radio 1 show in the UK.
