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This poem to Hopalong Cassidy first appeared on the inside record sleeve of the American Pie album, and seemed strangely out of place at the time; I couldn't begin to see what a TV cowboy had to do with Buddy Holly. And I had almost forgotten it through the years, as subsequent reissues of the album had all omitted this dedication. It is only fairly recently—thanks to the Mobil Fidelity Sound Labs re-mastering of American Pie—that I was able to revisit the inner sleeve once again; and suddenly, there it was—black hat, white horse, black holsters, white handles. Black and white, that was you Hoppy. An ode to the memory of some TV cowboy no longer seemed the odd irrelevance it once appeared to be: just as television itself was in these years of its infancy a simpler black and white medium, Hoppy too is emblematic of the safer, less complicated black and white values of the 1950s—a hero of homespun virtue, and defender of the way we once saw ourselves. The way we once were. The black and white days are over. So long Hopalong Cassidy; bye bye Miss American Pie.
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INTRO | VERSE
1 | CHORUS | VERSE
2 | VERSE
3 | VERSE
4 | VERSE
5 | VERSE
6 | CONCLUSION
THE FIFTIES | THE
SIXTIES | 1968 | ALTAMONT | HOPPY | DON
McLEAN
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
