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Urge For Going (WORD)
Urge For Going (PDF)
YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH THE RECORDING! Thanks to Arlene McIntosh for bringing this song to BUG!
“Urge for Going” keens with a sense of longing, capturing the yearning desire to be somewhere, anywhere different from where you are. The song's an account of winters in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, where Mitchell grew up, a town subject to extreme temperatures with warm summers and freezing winters. Mitchell is quoted as saying in introducing the song: "When winter comes along and the farms are all harvested and they don't really have much to do if they don't keep cattle. So most of them have winter houses in the Bahamas and Florida and they just escape, you know, to all the warm places like Philadelphia. The rest of the people who have to stay there feel sort of like this...." Mitchell wrote it when she wanted to leave Canada for warmer climes, and in a sense, the song helped get her where she wanted to be. Her friend Tom Rush cut a version of the song that caught the attention of George Hamilton IV, a starchy country singer known for the straight-laced “A White Sportcoat and a Pink Carnation.” Hamilton took a Chet Atkins-produced take to #7 on the country charts in 1967, the first time Mitchell had chart success as a songwriter. Mitchell noted the differences in Hamilton’s cover when she introduced the tune to a Gerde’s Folk City crowd that October: “With the help of Mr. Chet Atkins … they came up with a song that was a version of my song with a narration and all sorts of wonderful things in it. And I really enjoyed it.” “Urge for Going” may have been a pivotal composition for Mitchell, yet her own studio version — originally recorded for Blue in 1971 — didn’t come out until 1972 (as the B side to the “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” single), and remained unreleased on her albums until 1996, when it appeared on Hits.