"Delta Dawn" & Dawn Rae Schyller...

Dawn Rae Schyller was born in the year nineteen hundred on May eighth, just at dawn. Because of this her daddy named her Dawn. And, when she drew her first breath, her mama drew her last and passed with a long, drawnout sigh. Her daddy, Brewster Hawley Schyller, dropped to the bedside of her mama, June Rae, and sobbed bitterly. At that moment, Brewster vowed to give Dawn Rae the best life he could, and she was spoiled everafter. Brewster was very wealthy, but an only child himself, and he and Dawn lived in an elegant white anti-bellum mansion on the outskirts of Brownsville, Tennessee.

Brownsville was a poor rural town with only one industry, the canning factory. Practically everyone in town worked in the canning factory, which Brewster Schyller owned. Dawn had only one friend, Gardner Tremolen, a boy her same age who delivered the Brownsville Peek, the little weekly town newspaper. When Gardener died, at the age of sixteen, a drowning accident in Millers pond, tangled among the water lilies, Dawn was disconsolate. She withdrew deeply into herself. Not even her European born tutors or a fancy psychologist could snap her out of it. Then, her daddy took her to Italy, to lush, vibrant Tuscany. When they returned, Dawn was a changed girl. She was now nineteen and an eager, exquisite beauty. Dawn had taken to wandering the woods, and using her sketchbook, drew the scenery and even the woodland creatures. One day, in the woods, she meet James Newell. At least, he said his name was James Newell. His real name was Percy Gilhooley and he was the type of man who was a natural con.

He wooed Dawn and seduced her. He promised to marry her. Of course, and she believed him. But, when he got tired of her, he moved on. Dawn asked her daddy to try to find him. Her daddy refused. Brewster knew James-Percy's type of man. Dawn never got over her one lover and retired quietly into the big house. After her daddy died, Dawn began wandering again, pink roses always fastened in her hair.

This time Dawn began wandering into the town of Brownville, always carrying her carefully packed alligator suitcase. She said she was looking for romantic and handsome dark-haired James. The townsfolk shook their heads when Dawn sat for hours and hours, waiting at the Delta Street bus stop, on the green painted iron bench at the corner of Caster and Delta. She was still young and beautiful. People began calling her "Delta Dawn" and she became an Appalachian folk legend because she continued her peculiar behavior, more or less, until she died at the venerable age of one hundred and three. --- Copyright 2025 by Antoinette Beard. >>> THE TRUE HISTORY BEHIND THE SONG: "Delta Dawn" is a song written by musician Larry Collins and country songwriter Alex Harvey. The first notable recording of the song was in 1971 by American singer and actress Bette Midler for her debut album The Divine Miss M. However it is best known as a 1972 top ten country hit for Tanya Tucker and a 1973 US number one hit for Helen Reddy. Though the song is attributed exclusively to Collins and Harvey, the melody of the chorus is virtually identical to the Christian hymn "Amazing Grace". >>> Content... The title character is a faded former Southern belle from Brownsville, Tennessee, who, at 41, is obsessed to unreason with the long-ago memory of a suitor who jilted her. The lyrics describe how the woman regularly "walks downtown with a suitcase in her hand / looking for a mysterious dark haired man" who she says will be taking her "to his mansion in the sky." Reddy's recording in particular includes choir-like inspirational overtones. >>> The song's writing Alex Harvey said he wrote the song about his mother: 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. Ten years before Harvey wrote the song, he was performing on TV and told his mother not to come, lest she get drunk and embarrass him. That night she died in a car crash, and Harvey believed it was suicide caused by his rejection. For years Harvey suffered from guilt over the incident, until a cathartic incident the night he wrote the song. He was at fellow songwriter Larry Collins' house, who was asleep while Harvey noodled around on his guitar. He believed his mother then came to him in a vision: 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...I really believe that my mother didn't come into the room that night to scare me, but to tell me, 'It's okay,' and that she had made her choices in life and it had nothing to do with me. I always felt like that song was a gift to my mother and an apology to her. It was also a way to say 'thank you' to my mother for all she did. After writing the first few lines of the song, Harvey woke Collins and they finished it together. >>>