At the end of the first proper date I ever went on, driving my dad's car and feeling all so grown up, I dropped the lucky young lady back at her house... and she asked me in for coffee. I didn't drink coffee, but I took her up on the offer, because I'd seen enough films to know that coffee could be code for something else. Turns out she just meant coffee, and it was horrible instant yuck. I seriously suspect it was Maxwell House. I drank it, then she told me her brother would be home soon, and I left. The next time I saw her, she'd got back together with her former boyfriend.
Nowadays, I drink a lot of coffee, but I've never been a fan of instant. When I was a kid, I drank tea, because that's what my mum drank. By the time I started work, I was drinking buckets of tea every day. Then I started working nights and tea wasn't enough. There was a crappy Klix Coffee Machine in the kitchen at work, and I started drinking it purely to help me stay awake. I didn't like the taste, but there's a theory that you have to taste something 15 times before you can properly decide if you like it or not. Machine coffee was still preferable to the jar of Maxwell House behind the kettle. I've no idea what Victoria Wood saw in it.
Here are some other people who enjoy Maxwell House far more than I ever did...
Presumably they needed the money.
I had too much coffee today
My mind's going blank, can't keep track of what's happening
And I thought I was a caffeine addict!
Marshall Tucker takes his Maxwell House can fishing... but there's no coffee in it.
Well, I'm goin' down to the river
I got a cane pole in my hand
Got my red worms in a Maxwell House coffee can
I'm gonna sit under a shade tree on a riverbank where it's cool
I'm gonna close my eyes and dream and let the cork bob away my blues
While this guy uses it as a way of convincing his fans he's a man of the people...
And we like cold keg beer and fixin' up trucks
Old bird dogs and the woman we love
Maxwell House steamin' out of a coffee cup
We say our prayers, send 'em to the sky
Bust our backs, barely getting by
Carolina to California up to Illinois
Yeah, there's guys like us
Blue collar boys
Maxwell House coffee was named after its first big customer - The Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville. President Theodore Roosevelt reportedly said that the coffee there was "good to the last drop", and that became the company's advertising slogan.
This is the 'Coffee Blues'. I likes a certain brand:
Maxwell's House, it's good till the last drop
Just like it says on the can, I used to have a girl
Cookin' a good Maxwell House, she moved away
Some said to Memphis and some said to Leland
But I found her, I wanted her to cook me
Some good Maxwell's House. I understand
If I can get me just a spoonful of Maxwell's House
Do me much good as two or three cups this other coffee
The Maxwell House Hotel had a chequered history, housing soldiers during the civil war, being reputedly haunted following a violent murder, and hosting the first national meeting of the Ku Kluc Klan. It was destroyed by fire on Christmas night 1961, and later demolished.
Here's some "coffee-drenched death metal" from Stockholm...
After that, your ears probably need a rest. So settle down and listen to some late night Tom Waits... what a writer!
A cab combs the snake, tryin' to rake in that last night's fare
And a solitary sailor who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers
Paws his inside pea coat pocket for a welcome twenty-five cents
And the last bent butt from a package of Kent's
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair
Her rhinestone-studded moniker says "Irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes
I grew up in a tea drinking household, but Mellow Birds was always on hand if anyone dropped in and demanded coffee; tho' any resemblance to what we know as coffee would have been purely coincidental.
ReplyDeleteDon’t listen to John Mead, he’s an imposter.
DeleteJM
Split-personality, John?
DeleteI tried and failed to find any interesting Mellow Birds songs. A few Angry Birds though...
As ever I'm so impressed by your research, Rol; I would never have thought Maxwell House could get so many mentions in song.
ReplyDeleteFor the first decade or so of my life I thought coffee (or so-called coffee) came in a glass bottle - my parents used to drink 'Camp'.
It's weird how coffee has replaced alcohol for many people. Far more coffee shops than pubs these days. (And far more people with anxiety rather than a drunken feel-good stupor? I know there are angry drunks, but far less than angry coffee drinkers...)
DeleteThat's such a good point. All that caffeine making people wired, sleep-deprived, aggressive and hyper and yet I bet no-one working in a coffee shop ever said to a customer, "I think you've had enough now, SIr/Madam..."
DeleteNo, they just say, "Would you like an extra shot?"
DeleteMy friend used to have a chat up line which went "Would you like to come in for coffee? It's percolated"
ReplyDeleteThat would have worked on me.
Delete