Papa Loved Mama, penned by Garth Brooks and Kim Williams, adds another tale to the the pantheon of tunes about killing your spouse/wife/partner/lover/obsession. Seems a trucker has discovered that his wife likes to fool around while he's on the road. Naturally he reacts to this in a calm, rational, manner: Well the picture in the paper showed the scene real well Papa's rig was buried in the local motel
Yep, he drives his semi into the motel room where she's holed up with her one night stand. You have to admit, "Papa" was creative. Significant others in other tunes have been stabbed, shot (a popular option) cut with a razor, and beaten with sticks. They've also been tied to chairs, then shot. I'm pretty sure that "Papa Loved Mama" was the first song that involved death by truck.
Ever wanted to hear David Allan Coe cover this song?
While Lonnie Johnson disliked the "blues" label, "She's Making Whoopee in Hell Tonight" is a fine example of that genre. Recorded in 1930, the complex guitar playing and it's dark, chilling lyrics, make for a truly wicked little song. The next time someone claims that nobody ever sung about "bad things" before 1965, point them to this little ditty.
You been gone all day, set to make whoopee tonight
I'm gonna take my razor and cut your late hours,
I will be serving you right
The undertaker's been here and gone, I gave him your height and size
Undertaker's been here and gone, I gave him your height and size
You'll be making whoopee with the devil in hell tomorrow night
Of course to claim that this song, is no different than modern murder songs, would be wrong as well. Lonnie Johnson seems to take no real joy in the act. He's become her slave, and the only way to free himself from her cruelty is to kill her. He'll be happy to see her dead, but killing her with his razor seems to be a means to an end. Still the act of using a razor makes me think, he really wants her to suffer, like the way she's made him suffer. Nasty, brutal stuff.
Told you, next time you go out, please carry your black dress along
'Cause a coffin will be your present and hell will be your brand new home
Another way that "Whoopee" differs from songs like "I Used to Love Her", is that in some, albeit, twisted way fear of female power plays into it. She's not simply disposable trash that's killed because her lover has tired of her, she's killed because she holds power over him.
You made me love you, just got me for your slave
He can't simply leave her. The only way he can free himself is to kill her. While the view of a woman as a dangerous enslaver of men, is not exactly feminist, the image brings a complexity to the song, that so many new songs lack.
In high school my friend and I developed this theory: if you sing it slowly and with an acoustic guitar, you can pretty much get away with anything. One example we always provided, was Johnny Cash's Delia's Gone. It's your age old tale of a cheatin' lying woman getting her comeuppance from a vengeful lover. But it's how he does it that makes it so unerrving: he ties her to a chair, and shoots her. With a submachine gun.
I don't think it's a conicidence, that this song came out during the height of gangster rap. But unlike Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre and other of their ilk, their were no hysterical polticians and no complaints from NOW.
Like so many of my generation, this was the song that taught me that country could be cool. This dark, violent, "love song" with the coolest dude on the planet. I still get chills.
Here's an earlier version of the song, with slightly different lyrics. I think it proves that Cash was well aware of popular culture when he updated it for American Recordings:
