B-side "Go On Blues" Format 7" single | Released March 1976 Length 4:00 | |
Genre Country, rockabilly, novelty | ||
"One Piece at a Time" is a country novelty song written by Wayne Kemp and recorded by Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three in 1976. It was the last song performed by Cash to reach number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and the last of Cash's songs to reach the Billboard Hot 100, on which it peaked at number 29.
Contents
The song's story
The singer leaves his home in Kentucky in 1949 to pursue work at General Motors in Detroit, Michigan. He installs wheels on Cadillacs, watching each one roll by day after day on the assembly line, knowing that he will never be able to afford one of his own.
Beginning almost immediately, he and a co-worker decide to "steal" a Cadillac by way of using their assembly line jobs to obtain the parts via salami slicing. He takes the small parts home hidden in his unusually large lunch box; larger parts are smuggled out in his co-worker's motorhome.
The process of accumulating all the necessary parts turns out to take at least 25 years (the newest part mentioned, the engine, is from 1973), but once they have what they think is a complete car, they attempt to assemble the pieces. Because automakers inevitably make numerous changes to their models, designs and parts over the course of a quarter-century, the result was a hodgepodge of parts from different years and models that did not fit together well (the bolt holes disappear when attempting to fit the engine with a 1953 transmission, there was only one right headlight and two left headlights, and they only had one tail fin).
Despite these problems, the singer and his co-worker get the car in proper working condition. The singer's wife is surprised at the outcome, but wants a ride in it anyway. Townspeople began laughing at the singer's unique car as he takes it to have it registered. However, the folks at the courthouse were not as pleased — it took the "whole staff" to type up the vehicle title, which ended up weighing 60 pounds (27 kg).
The song ends with a CB radio conversation between the singer and a truck driver inquiring about the "psychobilly Cadillac", in which the singer replies, "you could say I went to the factory and picked it up; it's cheaper that way".
The song is in a moderate tempo in the key of F major, with a main chord pattern of F-B♭-C7-F. The verses are done in a talking blues style; Cash had used a similar spoken-word format and chord progression in his earlier hit "A Boy Named Sue."