In the Shadows of “Biggest Parakeet in Town”
by Kroes den Bock
The fog clung to the streets of Helmond the way memory clings to the heart—quietly, insistently, wisping in through the cracks. I was 21 in 1975, a time when the world seemed to tilt with possibility, and the distance between Tennessee and Brabant was only as wide as the gap between the pickup’s speakers. My old friend Jan had driven over in his battered Opel just after sunset, plopped a cassette onto my table, and demanded that I listen “for the love of all things sacred.” That’s how I first heard Jud Strunk’s “The Biggest Parakeet in Town.”
You probably never heard of Jud—not in Helmond, not in most places. Sure, his “Daisy a Day” scraped some radio waves, but “The Biggest Parakeet in Town,” released as a single in 1975 and tucked away on his “A Semi-Reformed Tequila Crazed Gypsy Looks Back” album, almost vanished before it landed. But on that November evening, the song found me. I sat hunched under my thrifted American stetson, tuned the volume knob, and let a rare country magic hum through my ribs.
The song starts with a gentle, old-timer’s piano and Jud’s voice rolling out “She always wanted a big parakeet / One that would soar through the halls on her birthday / The kind they keep in golden cages / But instead I brought her a song.”
Now, there’s a lilt there, something wistful yet victorious—Jud’s words painting a portrait of a man who can’t give the world, gives a song instead, and suddenly the gift transforms into everything she needed.
It struck me hard, this humble anthem disguised as a novelty tune. To Jan and to the gaggle of Helmonders that we’d haul into backroom bars, it was a bit of fun—an American oddity, eccentric and sweet, played to get a laugh over lukewarm Grolsch. But for me, each time the chorus breezed in—
“Now there’s feathers on the floor
And we’re laughing at the sound,
She says I gave her love
And the biggest parakeet in town.”
—I felt the cold drop away outside, and the company of memory settle next to me at the kitchen table.
*
I suppose what made “The Biggest Parakeet in Town” so special was that it was woven from the ordinary threads of longing and small triumphs. Unlike those roaring, cheatin’ anthems that dominated the Grand Ole Opry, Jud’s song was more Dutch than he knew: understated, a bit absurd, but bursting with affection in the humdrum. That was everything to me, then.
Back in those days, I was living above the bakery on Molenstraat, working three days at Mama’s bric-a-brac shop to save up for a Martin guitar. There wasn’t much money, but there was always music, and at least once a week after my shift, a crowd would wedge into my tiny flat for a listening party. Jan, Marije with her riotous red hair, Theo and his quiet, sensible wife. Ineke from down the hall, who wore old Texan boots with her dresses.
Every Thursday, as night cracked open and the city’s sodium glow stumbled through the glass, we’d gather. Some nights were for Jerry Reed, others for Jessi Colter, but on the special nights, I’d queue up Jud’s song. Every time, the laughter would bubble up as soon as they heard that title—and every time, by the closing bars, it would evaporate into something warm and thoughtful.
“He’s not singing about a bird, is he,” Ineke mused once, rubbing circles in her coffee mug. “He’s singing about what you do when you don’t have much, but you want to make someone feel like you have everything to give.”
I nodded. I knew the feeling too well—the ache of wanting to give someone all of Texas, but having only a tune, a story, or a gentle morning to offer instead.
Country music does its best work, I suppose, when it’s an anonymous comfort. This song became that for me—a kind of invocation for those years when our wallets were hollow, but our friendships and romances were anything but. The parakeet might have been a metaphor, but in Helmond, it was also literal: we kept a bird named Blue in Jan’s kitchen, a hand-me-down from his aunt, who squawked along whenever we played Jud’s album.
*
Years trickled by, as they do. Marije’s curls faded and Theo moved to Eindhoven. Music changed—slicker, sharper, louder. But the song lingered. Whenever heartbreak loomed or loneliness pressed, I reached for Jud’s words:
“She said, ‘It isn’t the size of the gift you bring—
It’s the tune in your pocket and the joy that it brings.’”
I wanted to write songs that did that—easy as breathing, small stories that burrow into the heart and warm it from the inside. Maybe it’s no accident that my first album, “Little Surprises,” was born from those nights with Jud’s humble parakeet perched in the background, teaching me how to wrap love up in the simplest melody.
Even now, with my hair gone grey and Helmond’s skyline spiked with modern glass, I’ll dust off the old turntable, thread Jud’s album onto the platter, and find myself grinning at as much at the memory as the music. So many of the “hits” of the age have faded, but “The Biggest Parakeet in Town” still sings for a handful of us—comforting, absurd, and rich with the hope that what we have is worth sharing.
If you ever find a battered copy of that track in a thrift shop or a yard sale, don’t pass it by. Give it a spin, and let Jud remind you—sometimes it’s the small gifts, the not-quite-famous tunes, the hidden parakeets that lift us up the highest.
From Helmond to wherever you are,
Kroes den Bock