Top 5 Songs From Your Native State/Province/City

I was teasing my best friend, who is a music geek same as me. We were talking about the the Top 5 songs from your province/state. The caveat is that these songs have to be actual hits. My friend is from Nova Scotia, and while I realize that there are a lot of good bands from Halifax - Sloan and Thrush Hermit to name two - none of them had genuine world-wide hits. Here is my Arkansas Top 5 - and all of these were international hits:




1. Fever - Willie John (better know under the cover by Peggy Lee)





2. Wichita Lineman - written by Jimmy Webb, sung by the guy who wrote the Arkansas state anthem, Glenn Campbell




3. Folsom Prison Blue - to choose the tediously obvious. Everybody loves this guy, yeah. But he was the real deal. He grew up 50 miles south of my hometown and picked cotton - literally - same as my grandparents and a zillion other white and black people in the South around that time era. Johnny Cash, if I didn't have to mention his name already.





4. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens - there are a zillion songs I could have picked from Louis Jordan. This was his biggest hit, which is why I flipped a coin and picked it.




5. Take Me To the River - Al Green. The Reverend Al Green, of West Memphis. The only explicitly Baptist hymnal to make the Top 10 not once, but thrice (under different covers).




Arkansas is a minor, minor Southern state. Anyone from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, or Tennessee can whip out a much better list of songs. Not someone from Connecticut or Montana or Delaware or Florida (ha ha) however....



Anyway, there's the challenge. Greatest songs from your province or state! Must be actually hits, though! Every place has tons of great, obscure musicians, you know? So they don't count. Has to be a hit. That's why I didn't pick my favorite Arkansas band, the Angry Samoans, Little Rock's answer to the Sex Pistols ("They Saved Hitler's Cock," You Stupid Asshole").




I made the mistake of doing this challenge with a man from Detroit. I forgot that Detroit was the home of Motown....of course I lost!



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