Dave's Song of the Day
One Toke Over the Line – Brewer & Shipley
Tuesday song of the day: Yes, today’s song is about smoking pot.
Brewer & Shipley were a mildly successful folk-rock duo who came together in 1967. They released albums in 1968 and 1969, but their breakthrough was with their third album, 1970’s
Tarkio. The first single from the album,
One Toke Over the Line, became by far their most well-known song.
As the title would suggest, it was a song about smoking pot. The line came from something Tom Shipley said one night when he was particularly high. A friend had given him some hash and had advised him that it was very potent so he should only take two hits. Shipley took three. He then recounts, “I go out of the dressing room – I’m also a banjo player, but I didn’t have one, so I was playing my guitar – and Michael came in and I said, ‘Jesus, Michael, I’m one toke over the line.’ And to be perfect honest, I don’t remember if Michael was with me when I took that hit or not. I remember it as ‘not’; I think Michael remembers it as ‘yes.’ And he started to sing to what I was playing, and I chimed in and boom, we had the line.”
His partner Michael Brewer concurs, explaining, “I just cracked up. I thought it was hysterical. And right on the spot, we just started singing, ‘One toke over the line, sweet Jesus,’ and that was about it; then we went onstage.”
In 1970, a song about getting high was still mildly controversial. As
One Toke Over the Line began getting radio airplay and selling well, Spiro Agnew, then Vice President of the United States, cited it as an example of pro-drug propaganda and urged the FCC to ban the record. The FCC stopped short of banning it or any other specific songs, but in 1971 warned radio stations that they could lose their licenses if they played songs that promoted drug use. Eventually the issue blew over and nobody lost their broadcasting licenses.
While all this was going on,
One Toke Over the Line began climbing the charts, finally topping at #10 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart right around the time the FCC issued their lukewarm edict. Brewer and Shipley had two more singles that charted, 1971’s
Tarkio Road at #55 and
Shake Off the Demon, which hit #98 in 1972. With both later songs well out of the Top 40, this would officially make Brewer & Shipley one hit wonders for
One Toke Over the Line.
A particularly odd performance of the song took place in 1971 as well. Then in its final season on network TV, that bastion of squareness
The Lawrence Welk Show featured singers “Gail and Dale” – Gail Farrell and Dick Dale – performing a very lame version of
One Toke Over the Line. One suspects that they had no idea what a toke was, or that the song was about drugs. Apparently, they had heard the lines about “Sweet Jesus” and just assumed it was a nice wholesome song. After their performance, an equally clueless Lawrence Welk referred to it as “a modern spiritual.”
View: https://youtu.be/L9HXClusp_E
Gail Farrell and Dick Dale on
The Lawrence Welk Show, 1971
View: https://youtu.be/t8tdmaEhMHE
Tomorrow: And in her eyes two sapphires blue