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.

---------------

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 

Another Stagger Lee roundup.

(Other Stagger Lee posts can be found here, and here)

Taj Mahal




Wilson Pickett




Jerry Reed's odd, heavily sanitized version. Billy and Stack have a quarrel over a broad, then make-up. No one gets murdered, no one even gets shot.  Sorry Jerry, but if you're going to cover Stagger Lee, someone needs to end up dead.

 

Another Look: Psycho

(Original post here)

Elvis Costello's version:



Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman give it a go:

Psycho

 A brilliant piece written by legendary songwriter Leon Payne, and performed by Jack Kittel.  I managed to dig up some info on it here and here.

What I can unravel is as follows: 'Psycho' was written in 1966 by a prolific blind songwriter Leon Payne, who's music career stretched back to the 1930s and who's writing credits include such classics as 'Lost Highway' (Hank Williams) and 'I Love You Because' (Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash). Depending on who you believe, Payne wrote 'Psycho' in response to a notorious mass shooting spree at the University Of Texas and the strangely affecting letter the shooter left next to the bodies of his mother and wife, or to the story of murderer and grave robber Ed Gein (who also inspired Bloch's book/Hitchcock's movie of the same name), or possibly both.   - Record Hunting in Australia  

Speaking of Australia, Beasts of Bourbon also recorded a great version:

Day of Rest - Boulder to Birmingham

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham 
I would hold my life in his saving grace. 
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham 
If I thought I could see, I could see your face. 


Tomorrow it will be five years.  I'd still walk from Boulder to Birmingham to see you again.  Miss you beautiful girl.

Quote of the Week

Murder merely relieves tension.


- Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), Pink Flamingos

TV Set

Campy, gory, horror inspired, psychobilly fun courtesy of the Cramps.  How'd he kill her?  Why did he kill her?  We don't know.  What we do know is that Lux Interior is pretty creative when it comes to a corpse.

Another Look: Miss Otis Regrets

Original "Miss Otis Regrets"entry is here.

LaBelle doing a  gospel tinged version of the song.  I believe that it was recorded around 1969/1970.

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
  

The Ballad of Charles Whitman

On 1 August 1966, around 11:30 a.m., he entered the University of Texas Tower. Once in the elevator, he asked for help from an attendant, who informed him how to turn it on. "Thank you, ma'am," Whitman said. "You don't know how happy that makes me." (From www.popsubculture.com)

In 1966 singer, songwriter, satirist and future gubernatorial candidate Richard "Kinky" Friedman was a senior at The University of Texas At Austin.  On August 1st of that very same year, Charles Joseph Whitman entered the school's administration building.  He took elevator up to the 27th floor. He beat the receptionist, Edna Townsley (who later died), with the butt of his rifle.   He fired at Mark, Mary, Mike Gabour and Marguerite Lampour  who were walking up the stairs, killing Margurerite and Mark and leaving Mike and Mary injured.   He went to the observation deck, loaded his gun, and started shooting at the people below.

Before Officer Houston McCoy fired a fatal shot, Whitman took the lives of 14 people and wounded 32 others.  The bodies of Whitman's mother and wife were discovered later.

Kinky would later sing about these events in "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" which can be found on his 1973 album "Sold American".

Unlike Bruce Springsteen's real life killer inspired "Nebraska", Kinky Friedman's "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" is no somber reflection on the nature of man and evil.  Told with a mixture of dark humor, and cold hard facts, it's a "biting examination of the culture that produced Whitman" (Fillpo, Chet. Nashville Skyline: The Subject Was Murder).

Naturally this song, upset a lot of people in Austin.

 The stark reality of the song affected audiences in Austin like nothing I've seen before or since. There were usually people in the audiences who had had friends or relatives shot in the Whitman massacre, and audience reactions often ranged from tears to screams to anger and fury and occasional attempts to attack Friedman. (Fillpo, Chet. Nashville Skyline: The Subject Was Murder)

While the song is hard to listen to, Kinky Friedman isn't lampooning the murders, he's lampooning the society that cause people like Charles Whitman to happen.   Society, and the Eagle Scouts:

I believe there is something in the mind-set of the Eagle Scout that provides an excellent breeding ground for the future mass murderers of America. Maybe it’s that, while the rest of us are desperately trying to extricate ourselves from a turbulent and troubling adolescence, the Eagle Scout is assiduously applying himself to the narrow, maddening craft of knot tying. It’s my theory that in a universe of Eagle Scouts, you’d find an extremely high proportion of psychopaths. (Friedman, Kinky. "Psycho Paths", Texas Monthly. July 2002) 

In "The Ballad of Charles Whitman" the things America celebrates are the things that also turn Americans into killers.

Other Links:

"The Madman In the Tower". TIme, August 12th, 1966.