Tanya Tucker: Delta Dawn Meaning
Song Released: 1972
Delta Dawn Lyrics
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by
And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky
She's forty-one and her daddy still calls her "baby"
All the...
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1TOP RATED
#1 top rated interpretation:I beleave that it is delta dawns funeral. The flower that she wears is reference to when they used flowers before the embalming process to cover up the smell of the dead. Then the rest of the song is about her life. She was 41 when she passed but still to that day her daddy called her baby. Everyone thought she was crazy.and so forth. And the reason she is crazy is because she fell deep in love with a man that she was suppose to marry but something either happened to him or he left and she couldn’t deal with that loss and it made her “crazy” and she alway looked for him. Then at 41 she dies. Either by suicide or just of a broken heart.
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2TOP RATED
#2 top rated interpretation:It's not really up for debate. The song is about his mother. He said so himself here:
http://www.chickensoup.com/book-story/23552/13-delta-dawn -
3TOP RATED
#3 top rated interpretation:This song is about a stunning woman that was fooled into loving a conman who left years ago and now at 41 years old and crazy she waits for him downtown
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In the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music, Harvey says the tune is really about his mother, a heavy drinker who died in an apparent suicide by crashing into a tree when the songwriter was a teen (sometime between 1958-1959). Harvey had just returned from a TV gig with his band; he had asked his mother not to go, worried she would embarrass him by drinking too much and making a spectacle. The guilt over his mother's death stuck with him for years. A decade later, he was hanging out at Larry Collins' house with a group of country musicians. Everyone fell asleep except for Harvey, who stayed up strumming his guitar. That's when he saw his mother.
"I looked up and I felt as if my mother was in the room. I saw her very clearly. She was in a rocking chair and she was laughing," he recalled. "My mother had come from the Mississippi Delta and she always lived her life as if she had a suitcase in her hand but nowhere to put it down. She was a hairdresser in Brownsville. She was very free-spirited, and folks in a small town don't always understand people like that. She never really grew up."
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I believe that the song, Delta Dawn is about a woman who is very saddened by the loss of her true love, to suicide. Her heart is broken
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According to the writer it's about his mother. She lived her life as if she always had a suitcase in her hand and nowhere to set it down.
She was considered the prettiest woman in her hometown when she was younger. Then she met and fell in love with a man of low degree, who promised to marry her then left her. She became an alcoholic. Her alcoholism and search for the man made people think she was crazy.
Her son asked her to not go to a performance of his, because he feared she'd get drunk and embarrass him. She died that night in a car wreck that he felt was suicide.
He carried guilt for years. Then one night he said her spirit appeared to him and let him know he wasn't to blame. He then wrote the song in 20 minutes.
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It's about the writer's mother who committed suicide at 41. It's a eulogy. She is clutching a faded rose as she lies in her coffin. The man she's meeting to take her to "his castle in the sky" is god.
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Delta Dawn is a woman about to die; the faded Rose speaks of her youth and that her life wasn’t always one of homelessness and mental illness. She’s ready to die and is looking for God, the dark haired man to take her to heaven. The dark haired man is Jesus and comes to her as a man of low degree, like her, common, to make her his bride and take her to his mansion in the sky.
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It can't be that Jesus is the dark haired man. The song refers to him as a man of low decree.
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In reply to:: "It's not really up for debate. The song is about his mother. He said so himself here:
http://www.chickensoup.com/book-story/23552/13-delta-dawn "
It states in this article that he said "about 10 years later "IN 1973" I wrote the song"... ??? Tanya Tucker recorded it in 1972 ... so where is the truth in this article????
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Amazing things people read into the song. How about what the composer said?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBXOOSEPGSU
reminds me of one of Isaac Asimov's stories of a literature professor who explained one of his stories completely wrong and then told him "you are the author, you don't know what you meant" -
Delta dawn is a woman who fell in love with a man, she was all dressed up with flowers and roses. For some reason he fooled her and did not show up to marry her, maybe he died, she loved him so she waiting all the years for him to show up but he didn’t. “To take you to his mansion in the sky” means that he is going to take her to heaven with him when she dies and they will reunite. Her daddy still called her baby while she was older. Everyone thought she was crazy because she waited for her man to come get her, she carried a suit case for him to pick her up.
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# 2. Both men and women who keep having bad relationships are usually are attracted to a set of appealing qualities in a person of the opposite sex. The flip side is that the same negatives are in that personality, so they chosse the same trouble over and over...or they are that trouble to a partner over and over. Solution? 1. Get counseling, find out why you keep being attracted to trouble and /or are trouble to another. Learn to be attracted to a person who is not trouble (They may seem boring if they are good for you, get past that.). Learn not to be toruble to another. 2. Get on e-Harmony and find a good partner. Unlike some dating sites, they do an indepth personality analysis to match you. you still have to use common sence, not every one is a good match, but it gives you better odds. In my 60s and it worked for me. Take it or leave it for what it's worth. 3. O, I'll take the writer's interpretation of the song.
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The mansion in the sky connotes Heaven and she’s about to commit suicide to be with her mysterious dark haired man again. The suitcase reminds us that earthly belongings aren’t important.
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Delta Dawn Song could be interpreted a few ways.
My thoughts on the song is that it was made in honor of a mans mother,recalling the stories he has been told. His thoughts of the tragedy and younger days of his momma b4 passing -
I do believe it is a spiritual song. And I believe the dark-haired man is Jesus ready to take her to the promised land. Her mind is lost and so is her soul and she wants to go home. She remembers good times and her younger days when her daddy still called her baby. Maybe he is gone now and that is one right moment in her life. She's lost her mind, she's weary, she's ready to come home.
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Tanya Tucker first came out with the song Delta Dawn but Helen Reddy made it a number one hit a year later
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Personally, I feel that Delta Dawn is a woman who lost her husband, or another close male figure, and is now grieving and waiting for him to come and take her to his mansion in the sky, or for her to die and reunite with him.
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