The Nanci Griffith Lyric That Sings the Praises of a Defunct Department Store Chain

You’ll hear the word storyteller thrown around a lot when it comes to descriptions of songwriters. Truth be told, it doesn’t always apply. For there’s a wide chasm between a typical narrative song and something like Nanci Griffith’s exquisite “Love At The Five And Dime”.

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Griffith managed to evoke something startlingly like real life in all its myriad heartbreaks and triumphs. And, for good measure, she also pays tribute to small-town landmarks that were slowly fading from existence.

Taking “Five”

Nanci Griffith, who passed away in 2021, left behind a wonderful legacy of music. Her work often saw its most exposure in the hands of others. Griffith recorded the first version of “From A Distance”, later a major hit for Bette Midler. And the song we’re profiling here turned into a big country hit for Kathy Mattea in the same year (1986) that Griffith delivered her version.

Griffith wrote the song when she needed to deliver one in a hurry for a music seminar she was attending. Luckily, she had written a short story that contained the two characters at the heart of “Love At The Five And Dime”. She simply adjusted that tale to song form.

The “Five And Dime” to which Griffith refers in the chorus is the nickname of the Woolworth’s department stores that were ubiquitous in small towns for decades. By the time Griffith wrote the song, they were already starting to fade out of the picture.

Griffith made one of the main characters a musician, so she was certainly writing from experience when it came to the tales of touring life in the song. Beyond that, though, she simply had a knack for bringing her protagonists to life and, in this case, giving them a happy ending after years of turmoil.

Exploring the Lyrics of “Love At The Five And Dime”

Griffith begins the tale of “Love At The Five And Dime” when the two principals are teenagers. Rita, “hazel eyes and chestnut hair,” “made the Woolworth counter shine.” For those unaware, Woolworth stores traditionally featured old-fashioned counters where folks could sit down and have lunch during their shopping expeditions.

That’s where Rita meets Eddie, and the two hit it off thanks to the latter’s dancing skills. Things get a bit more complicated when Eddie pursues his steel guitar dreams and makes his mother fret because of it.

At the end of the second verse, Griffith truncates the pair’s finest moment and darkest tragedy into a pair of lines: “So they married in Abilene/Lost a child in Tennessee.” Instead of lingering on the pain, she speaks to their resilience: “But still that love survived.”

Considering that trauma, however, it’s not out of character that the couple strays from each other in the next verse before reuniting. The final verse finds them settling into routine, which nonetheless coincides with the best times of their lives: “Dime store novels and a love so sweet/They dance to the radio late at night.”

That, of course, brings them full circle, these two dancing as they did when they first were courting. It’s just another expert touch from Nanci Griffith, the master storyteller at the controls of “Love At The Five And Dime”.

Photo by KMazur/WireImage for American Civil Liberties Union