Spooky Grass

In honor of Halloween, one of my favorite holidays (cause it's just so darn fun!), I've put together a small list of some creepy Bluegrass/old-time songs.

Maybe you didn't know, but old-time music was full of songs about murder and ghost stories. A lot of the stories are just as scary as any thriller novel you could buy today, but most had some truth to them.

• O the Wind and the Rain, a traditional song done by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on the Songcatcher soundtrack. This song is a very odd one indeed. It's recursive, that is, it's a song about itself. This is an interesting trend in fiddle songs, and I'm always looking for more recursive fiddle songs.

  Anyway, this song is about two sisters, who both love the same man. However, he only loves the good sister, so the evil sister throws the good one into the river and drowns her. The good one floats to the riverbank, where I assume she rots, leaving only her bones. So far this is standard old-time song material, only now it gets really weird. After some time passes, a fiddler finds her remains and makes a fiddle from her bones and strings his bow with her hair. (This just goes to show you what sick puppies we fiddlers are!) However, this bone fiddle is haunted, and will only play one song -- O the Wind and the Rain, the very song that's telling this story.

  I just can't pass up the opportunity to do a little sociology about the writers of this song. I find it funny that the prettier and "good" sister is the light-haired blonde sister, and the dark-haired sister is the "evil" one. Hey, these were the same people (I guess?) who thought left-handed people like me were the spawn of Satan, and that the fiddle was the "Devil's box," because fiddle tunes are for dancing and dancing was sin. Too funny. This must be why I like Halloween, fiddles, and brunettes so much!

  So, one last oddity about this song -- I have a strange t-shirt based on this song that I got this past year at Merlefest (picture attached). I think that Jerry Garcia's bluegrass band did a cover of it at some point, which is why one of the Deadhead booths had the t-shirt. Anyway, the fiddle looks a little odd, so it might be the bone fiddle, and the woman playing looks very odd, so I think she is the ghost playing the song that reveals her sister's deed. A very odd picture for a very odd song.

• Caleb Meyer another Gillian Welch song, this time on her Hell Among the Yearlings album. Another ghost/killing story, this song is about a woman alone on a mountain who's attacked by a local moonshiner, Caleb Meyer. She kills him by cutting his throat with a broken whiskey bottle. The chorus of the song is her telling his spectre not to haunt her. "Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna wear them rattlin' chains, but when I go to sleep at night, don't you call my name."

• Polly Vaughn by the Dillards on their greatest hits album, There Is a Time (1963-70). (You know the Dillards! They played the Darling boys on the Andy Griffith show!) This song is about a hunter who shoots what he thinks is a swan, but is actually his sweetheart Polly. Her ghost visits him to forgive him and then appears again at his trial to prove his innocence. A little creepy, but with a great chorus.

• O Death by Dr. Ralph Stanley, from the obligatory O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. If you haven't heard this song, where the hell have you been for the past two years? It still gives me shivers (well, until I think of the scene in the movie, then I get a little tickled).

• My Last Days on Earth by Bill Monroe, the father of Bluegrass, on his Country Music Hall of Fame collection. This is a creepy instrumental mandolin tune with a spooky choir singing raw chords in the background. Very different than the music I've heard from Bill Monroe in the past, but beautiful in a haunting way.

• Black-Eyed Dog by Nick Drake on Time of No Reply, a collection of rarities and demos. This song isn't a Bluegrass or old-time song. I guess it fits in the "folk" category better than any other I can think of, but to be honest, I've always felt Nick Drake was in a class all by himself. A contemporary of Gram Parsons, I've this strange suspicion that Nick and Gram were two sides of the same soul, but that's a topic for another day.

  Anyway, this has to be one of the bleakest songs of popular (and I use that term loosely) music of the past fifty years. Drake's sparse, bare voice over sparse, bare guitar, singing repetitive and simple lyrics that summon such a terrifying image of Death at the door. "The black-eyed dog he knew my name..." In usual Drake fashion, however, he's not afraid of his mortality, but just accepts it.

• Honorable Mention: Omie Wise by Doc Watson on The Best of Doc Watson 1964-1968. Not really a spooky song, but the calm and wistful way that Doc sings about the murder of Omie Wise by her suitor John Louis (to cover up his indiscretion in her pregnancy), is disturbing enough to merit a Halloween spot. In the song, the murderer promises to take poor, foolish Omie away to marry her but instead pushes her into a deep river and she drowns. One can only hope she haunted him till he met his end. Happily, he does go to prison for it.

  On a lighter note, why the hell didn't anyone in the past learn to swim? That's two songs in this list that could have been averted with a $20 swimming lesson!

Here's the Amazon list of these CDs. I hope you enjoy the list, and please send me any other suggestions!