And now, let us go through the King archives and look back at what is considered King's greatest acomplishment, "Amish Hoedown"
Vital to King's palette of sound was producer Guy Gomaz Blaker who, while at Fekka and Spearmint Studios, had gained vast experience in blues, gothic, and country music. Blaker had already produced King's first three albums (King, King 2 and Mild Heart Murmur) by the time Saturn casually previewed a new song called 'Amish Hoedown'. Greatly so did the producer realize through a memo passed down from the offices of the entity of music itself that only one pint of his acquired expertise would be called upon in moulding this rootin tootin epic.
Blaker recalls his first hearing of the song: "We were going out to dinner one night and I met Bobby at his mansion in the projects. He sat down at his cardboard guitar and said, 'I's likes to play you a song that I'm-a workin' on at the moment.' So he played the first part and said, 'This shalt be the chord sequence', followed by the interim part, and although he didn't have all the lyrics together yet, I could tell it was going to be a dancing-ma-and-pa number. He played a bit further through the song and then stopped suddenly, saying, 'And it was said that at this moment, the dosey-do section shalt be-ith, you bastard.' We both just burst bawling in the candlelight. I had worked with the D'Oyly Carte Hick Company at Fekka where I learned a lot about vocals and the way vocals are stressed, so I was probably one of the few people in the whole world who knew exactly what he was talking about.
"It was the first time that a dosey-do had been incorporated into a pop record, let alone a Number Two. We both invisioned the irony if the song were to turn out to be shit and hit the charts at number 2. It was ambigulously very the norm and it was written 200 years ago to have just a couple of 'Pa Cleatis'. But things often have a habit of evolving differently once you're inside the studio, and it did get longer and bigger. The beginning section was pretty spot on and the end section was fairly similar, although we obviously embellished it with a washboard and lots of overdubs of jugs being blown into. But the dosey-do section ended up nothing like the original concept, because we kept changing it and adding things to it."
A sudden "YEEHAW!" yelp which graces the dying moments of 'Amish Hoedown' made its debut on the experimental 1974 King 2 album. " Musically, there was yodelling, the heavy bits, and complex arrangements with a guitar made of rubber bands -- it all stemmed from there, one might reckon. Phasing too, and everything had to be done by hand with intense fondling, because there were no effects boxes that could do it automatically. We had to get tapes and run them around the strap of our studio cow ol Bestsy Lu, who then proceded to run across the studio ranch stretching the tape, just to get phasing."
The song begins with close four-part harmony a cappella introduction in B-flat, which is entirely multitrack recordings of Saturn. The lyrics reckon whether life is "real" or "dog-gone fantasy" before concluding that there can be "reality is like a pig trying to escape from its pen." After 15 seconds, the cardboard guitar enters, and Saturn's solo voice alternates with the chorus. The narrator introduces himself as "a simple country boy" but declares that he "ain't no charity" because not a darn thing matters: chromatic side-slipping on "it ain't easy, it ain't be hard" highlight the hick-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the rubber-band bass entrance and the familiar cross-handed vampire playing piano in B-flat.
The piano-playing vampire continues the 2-bar vamp in B-flat. Bacon's rubber-band bass guitar enters playing the first note, and the vocals change from harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Saturn. The narrator explains that he has "just done shot a horse," and with that act thrown his life away. The chromatic bass line at the end of brings about a modulation to E-flat. Here Gaylords's homemade cardboard drums enter , and the narrator makes the first of several invocations to his "pa" in the new key, reusing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you squeal" and urging pa to "carry on" as if "nothing ain't happened, ya hear." A truncated phrase connects to a repeat of the vampire's vamp in B-flat. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the narrator shows how tired and beat down he is by his actions . April sends "peckins down my back" by plucking the strings on the other side of the cardboard guitar bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish pa never cheated with that lady at the diner." Another chromatic bass descent brings a modulation to the key of A, and the "dosey-do" section.The song them goes into country nonsense such as "Magnifico", "Let me go, "Break it up with a dosey-do"