Sammy Kershaw released "Queen of my Double-Wide Trailer" on August 23, 1993. It was Kershaw's third single off the album Haunted Heart and reached No. 7 on Billboard's US Hot Country Songs.

Kershaw's narrator loses his "Queen" to a man named Earl, "the Charlie Daniels of the torque wrench." Initially, the singer was dubious about the merits of recording the song, let alone releasing it. Who would ever identify with this song?

Kershaw later commented, "Somebody must have identified with it," noting that, "in fact, this song singlehandedly sold hundreds of thousands of albums."

At the time, I remember people knocking the quintessentially Nashville-country song as crazy. "There was a song about a lobster tank and chicken fried steak..."

(My typical response, "Yeah. It's awesome. Go away.")

In the early 1990s, the country pop formula was resurgent, thanks in part to country music moving from AM radio to the FM dial. This, in turn, moved much of the talk radio over to the AM side.

Billboard also stopped counting record sales in their country singles chart. Collective airplay by country radio became the metric.

The country music formula aimed to attract general audiences. For my money, there was no greater era of pop country than the late 80s to mid 90s.

"Queen of My Double-Wide Trailer" turned this "Countrypolitan" formula on its head, however. The tune, a mid-tempo number in shifting meters, was catchy and resembled the pop music that was popular in the 1990s Nashville sound.

But the lyrics—penned by Dennis Linde—were seen as "white trash." See: trailer park living, polyester curtains, onion rings as a dinner entree, and the Queen's "pretty red neck."

Yesterday we mentioned Joe Diffie's "John Deere Green," which was released a few weeks later on November 8, also a Dennis Linde original.

While Kershaw's video of "Queen of my Double-Wide Trailer" helped tremendously in supporting the single, Diffie's number never even got a commission for a video. Strangely, the radio edit and the album version are slightly different. I don't know the story behind that, however.

Importantly—at least for what I’ve been writing about this week—both songs took place in the same "world" of Linde's.

The hero of "John Deere Green" was a fellow named Billy Bob, who "one July, in the midnight hour ... climbed upon the water tower, stood on the rail, and painted a ten-foot heart ... in John Deere green."

Linde presents us with a vision so strong that it is debatable if a video would have even done it justice.

In the town Linde presents us with, Kershaw's narrator, his "Queen," and Earl the mechanic no doubt saw this water tower and the (sometimes legible) message "Billy Bob loves Charlene" on a regular basis. "Painting over it ain't no use. There ain't no paint in the world that'll cover it. The heart keeps showing through ... In John Deere green."

Fast-forward to the year 2000, and the Dixie Chicks brought us back to Linde's world once again—with Linde even playing guitar on the track—with their crossover single (#19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #13 on the Hot Country chart) and its viral video, "Goodbye Earl." This song was not without its controversy.

In the video, Dennis Franz (at one time America's favorite cop, Andy Sipowicz) played Earl. Jane Krakowski played Wanda, while Mary Ann was played by Lauren Holly.

By this time, "Earl," who earlier in the decade tried poaching Kershaw's "Queen," was now married to Wanda. He was an abusive sumbitch.

Mary Ann and Wanda, "best of friends all through their high school days," hatched a plan to dispatch Earl.

The controversy surrounding the "country murder ballad" led a few country stations to ban the song altogether. Perhaps the song could have vaulted all the way to the top of the charts without the bans, but it is hard telling, not knowing. In that era, the Dixie Chicks dominated the ratings.

Either way, today, "Goodbye Earl" remains one of the Dixie Chicks most well-known tunes.

Linde wrote dozens of songs within this world of his, and we will talk more about them by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, we started a Dennis Linde resource page ... sure to grow in time.

As always,

Brian