Farewell Possum.

George Jones wasn't a murder ballad type of guy, he was more of "drinking whiskey and crying 'cuz she left me" honky tonk guy.  But looking at his life, it's almost surprising that he didn't become the topic of a murder ballad: violence, drug addiction, divorce, occasionally singing like a duck on stage, more divorce, and a lot of booze.

I'm not kidding about the duck thing either:

In his autobiography "I Lived to Tell It All," country legend George Jones describes a mega-bender of booze and drugs that continued until his brain snapped and he found himself locked in a Donald Duck voice that he couldn’t stop using when he spoke. Let me reiterate: George Jones got so wasted that he was only able to speak in a Donald Duck voice for days on end. He performed several entire concerts in his Duck impression and, at one point, to make matter worse, he locked himself in his dressing room and wouldn’t hit the stage until he was introduced as Hank Williams.  - Holy Taco 

There's also this legendary tale:

Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor. I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn't walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left. 

But she forgot about the lawn mower. I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat; a key glistening in the ignition.

 I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did. -  George Jones, "I Lived to Tell All"1

But that voice:

I've been racking my brain trying to find words to describe it that haven't already been used.  Pure  heartbreak in a voice.  A national treasure. How about, "goddamn, that voice"?

Only a voice like that, could lyrics like this seem poinant:

I pulled the head off Elvis
Filled Fred up to his pelvis
Yabba Dabba Doo, the King is gone
And so are you.2

Eventually, with the help of his 4th wife Nancy, Jones cleaned up.  With the exception of a few stumbles (and one huge car crash) he pretty much stayed out of the news.  

He died April 26th 2012 at the age of 81.  With all the slick, pop driven, sugar coated crap that's being passed off as country music,  I can't help but thing that so much of the real thing has died with him.

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1.  Jones, George with Tom Carter.  I Lived to Tell it All. Dell Publishing, 1996

2.  Ferris, Roger. D. The King is Gone and So Are You 

Yet Another Look: Stagger Lee

I know you're all probably getting tired of old Stagger Lee but . . . this blew me away:

The Collins Kids. Larry and Lorrie.  Larry is probably around twelve or thirteen here. All the little teenyboppers of today ain't got nothing on this kid.  Lorrie is pretty stellar as well.

This has nothing to do with murder but here's another one of their songs:

Larry went on to write such songs as  Delta Dawn and You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma (1).  Not bad.

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collins_Kids

El Paso

Songwriter and singer Marty Robbins, a native of Arizona and one of ten children, grew up listening to his maternal grandfather tell stories of the west. (1)  This obviously had a profound impact, which can be heard on the, 1959 album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, and the track El Paso. 

In what writer James Miller calls "the last great cowboy ballad" (2), Marty Robbins sings of love, a wicked woman, obsession, vengeance and western justice.  Released in 1959, El Paso is a mini-movie set to music, an "essentially aural version of cowboy b-movies that were so popular at the time." (3) It's a tribute to an American west, not of fact, but of Hollywood dreams.

 The west presented to us in El Paso is "a dangerous place of large passions and empty violence, where death and eros an intertwined." (4)  Moral ambiguity does not exist here.  Laws of conduct are set in stone, and those that break those laws are punished.

Light! Camera! Action!

The narrator "[falls] in love with a Mexican girl" (5) by the name of Felina (or Feleena), and spends the night in the local cantina watching this beautiful girl with "eyes blacker than night"(6) dance.  We've seen her before, the wicked woman "casting [her] spell"(7), and rendering men powerless.  In other songs, such as She's Making Whoopie in Hell, her "spell" is so powerful that the decision is made to kill her in order to break it.  But in El Paso, she prompts a man to murder for the love of her.

The "hero" of our story, discovers his love, his obsession, drinking with a "wild young cowboy" (8).  Overcome with anger and jealousy he challenges the man to a showdown:

My challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat
the handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor (9)

Unlike so many songs, the killer is no nihilistic psychopath, for right after the killing he's shocked by his "foul evil deed" (10) .  Remorse doesn't stop him from stealing a horse and galloping off into the desert.  No judge's gavel need fall for him to know his fate if he stays: his sentence is death.

Yet his love for Felina overwhelms him.  The desert, for all it's dangers is nothing compared to missing her.  Seeing her again is worth dying for, and he knows that he will die.  Women are dangerous creatures, men will not only kill for them, but against all reason, they will die for them. So still in the grips of her spell, the killer rides back to El Paso

When he gets there, he finds a posse of cowboys waiting for him, dashing any hopes the listener may have had for earthly redemption.  It was a foolish hope: a crime of passion or not,  El Paso is still "the staunch tale of a man who kills another and must return to the scene of the crime to take his punishment" (11).  This is the west, and justice must prevail:

I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle 
I feel the bullet go deep in my chest (12) 

Yet death is worth it, because, before he leaves this world, he winds up in sweet Felina's arms.

One little kiss and Felina
Goodbye (13)

A man's dying wish is granted, and the law of the gun still stands.  Everything fades to black and the credits roll.


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1.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Robbins 
2. Miller, James. "El Paso", The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in The American Ballad. ed Marcus, Griel. Wilentz, Sean. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2006)
3. Thomson, Graeme.  I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease and General Misadventure as Related in Popular Song.  (New York: Continuum, 2008)
4. Miller, James. "El Paso" The Rose and the Briar 
5. Marty Robbins, "El Paso", Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, 1959.
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9.  Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Thomson, Graeme.  I Shot a Man in Reno
12. Marty Robbins, "El Paso".
13. Ibid   

The Cruel Mother and The Ballad of Susan Smith.

I was trying to find a way to start this post without spouting some long repeated statement about how mothers killing their children really, really, upsets people. You know what I mean: "perhaps no crime is horrifying then mothers who blah, blah, blah."

Really though. The idea of a mother killing their own, is horrifying. I think people would rather believe that all killers are unknowns that lurk in the shadows, rather than pondering the idea that a woman could kill her child. A child who loves her and trusts her; who she's supposed to protect with her life.







 "The Cruel Mother" has many versions and variants: "The Greenwood Side", "Fine Flowers in the Valley and the "Minsters Daughter of New York" are just three of them. The story however remains pretty much the same. A woman has two illegitimate children in the forest. She kills them. As she walks home she sees two children at play. She tells the children how well she would treat them if they were hers. They inform her that they are her children, and when they were hers she killed them.  The song typically ends with her being cursed to hell. (Link)







 What keeps certain songs alive is having a universal quality, something that people in every age can relate to. The Cruel Mother speaks to that horror and disgust that we feel, that same horror and disgust that people felt centuries ago when they heard a mother had murdered her child.

 That horror could have inspired Lee Ann Brown's modern retelling of "Cruel Mother", "The Ballad Susan of Smith." In 1994 a woman named Susan Smith claimed that she had been carjacked, and the man who did it had driven away with her children Michael and Alex still in the car. The story made headlines, bulletins went out all over the nation. The news broadcast interviews of a tearful Susan begging for her "babies".(Link)

 Then nine days later it happened. Susan Smith confessed to the murder of her children She had driven her 1990 Mazda Protege' to John D. Long Lake. She got out of the car, put it into drive, and let it roll in to the lake with her sleeping children inside.(Link)    The public's sorrow and anger was instant.  Sorrow for two precious children.  Anger for the woman that did it.  The possible motive: that she had done it to win back her rich boyfriend, further enraged people.  "That bitch." "That monster."  

I remember watching a clip of the funeral with my father. At one point he sucked in a breath, wiped tears from his eyes and said, "hope she rots in hell."

Day of Rest: Gentleman Jim Reeves

"If I, a lowly singer, dry one tear, or soothe one humble human heart in pain, then my homely verse to God is dear, and not one stanza has been sung in vain."


- The inscription on Jim Reeves memorial in Carthage, Texas.






It's always a good day for Jim Reeves, but something about fall really puts me in the mood for him.  A warm, comforting voice to listen to as the nights get colder. 






I have about 30 hours worth of overtime coming in on my next paycheck.  Great money, but I've had little time for anything else.  My schedule for October is looking a little less hectic, work-wise, and I'm looking forward to reading, crafting, baking and writing.
So relax and enjoy Gentleman Jim Reeves, one of the nicer fellows on this blog.  Tomorrow, it's back to the grind(house).


 

Day of Rest: Johnny Cash, February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003

Ain't No Grave






Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight
-  Johnny Cash
  

Knoxville GIrl

I met a little girl in Knoxville

a town we all know well

And every Sunday evening

out in her home I'd dwell

We went to take an evening walk

about a mile from town

I picked a stick up off the ground and

knocked that fair girl down.

- Knoxville Girl, Traditional

She's been from Wexford and Oxford. When the Irish brought her to America she made Knoxville her home. No matter her where she's from, it always ends the same; beaten with a stick (or a fence post), dragged by her hair and tossed in the river.

Why did he do it? Little reason is given, expect for her "dark and rovin' eyes".

While the details are lurid, the music is sweet and haunting. I think that this juxtaposition of music and lyrics is why I find the song so fascinating. Some versions I've heard almost sound like a lullaby.

Arthur Tanner and His Corn Shuckers, who recorded it in 1927, are a good example of this. Tanner's voice is simple, straightforward and sad.

My personal favorite version however is by the Louvin Brothers.

Ira Louvin might have been a violent drunk, but damn he had a good sense of harmony. The high low sound, beautiful.

Other versions worth checking out are Brett Sparks With the Pine Valley Cosmonauts which can be found on The Executioner's Last Song, a fantastic album, containing much of the material that this blog is about, and Nick Cave's version which was a B-Side to "Henry Lee" another great song.

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Knoxville Girl Lyrics

Wexford Girl Lyrics