Happy Hallowe’en!

Over the last three years, the Saturday Soundtrack before Halloween has featured roots music and pictures of homes decorated to celebrate the season. For this fourth installment I’m bringing some of the best of those together as we prepare for another evening of ghosts and goblins.

Spooky farewells

The legs of the Wicked Witch of the East — which is all we see after Dorothy’s house falls on her in the classic film The Wizard of Oz — have become a Halloween staple. Here’s a great display in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington.

Rhiannon Giddens sings a version of O Death (popularized by Ralph Stanley in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?) from her album, They’re Calling Me Home. Giddens, with partner Francesco Turrisi, bases this version on a different source — Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Island Singers. As the Bluegrass Situation (BGS) site notes, it is a good reminder of “just how much of American music and culture are entirely thanks to the contributions of Black folks.”

And here’s the Ralph Stanley version.

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Murder and suicide ballads

The family bluegrass band Cherryholmes caused a stir with the modern murder ballad Red Satin Dress. I note the comment by the writer on the BGS website who pondered, “…with so many songs about murderous, deceitful women in bluegrass — the overwhelmingly male songwriters across the genre’s history couldn’t be bitter and misogynist, could they? Could they?”

Of course they could. If you have to ask you haven’t been paying attention.

As I wrote in 2021, leave it to national treasure Dolly Parton to recast murder and suicide ballads from the point of view of the abused, forgotten, and often murdered woman. The Bridge is a brilliant “sad-ass” Parton song**, focused on the last words of a pregnant woman about to jump to her death, on the spot she first kissed the lover who deserted her.

BGS also had a take on Jake Blount’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night.

“In the Pines” is one of the most haunting lyrics in the bluegrass lexicon, but ethnomusicologist, researcher, and musician Jake Blount didn’t source his version from bluegrass at all — but from Nirvana. That’s just one facet of Blount’s rendition, which effortlessly queers the original stanzas and adds a degree of disquieting patina that’s often absent from more tired or well-traveled covers of the song. A reworking of a traditional track that leans into the moroseness underpinning it.

Blount’s version, as another commentator notes, goes back to a more authentic version of the song, removing the aspects of a love story and revealing the harsher truth about the lynching mobs and sudden disappearances in the woods. Chilling but brilliant.

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Why won’t they stay in the grave?

The Folklore Center at the Library of Congress had a blog post a few years ago entitled Ghost Stories in Song for Halloween. The first tune recommended was Jean Ritchie singing The Unquiet Grave, “which is both a tender love song and a frank conversation with a ghost.” Writing about Ritchie’s version, the liner notes suggest that the song…

“…is notable for its exhibition of several universal popular beliefs, including a talking ghost, the idea that excessive grief on the part of mourners disturbs the peace of the dead, the troth plight that binds lovers even after death (with the death-kiss perhaps indicating a return of the troth), and the belief that the kiss of a dead person may result in death.“

One of the most haunting versions of this tune was recorded by my favorite Irish band, Solas. And this snippet from the lyrics give a hint of what’s to come.

One kiss, one kiss of your lily white lips, one kiss is all I crave
One kiss, one kiss of your lily white lips and return back to your grave…”

Well, you get the idea. Give it a listen.

Bringing Mary Home is a classic “ghost” hit by the Country Gentlemen, in part because the ending sneaks up on you. This version from a 1992 reunion show at Woodstock — featuring Eddie Adcock (banjo and backing vocals), the late John Duffy (mandolin and high tenor), the late Charlie Waller (guitar and lead vocal) and Tom Gray (bass) — is priceless. Yep, John Duffy’s pants are pretty scary on their own!

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Hellhounds on my tail

The blues and jazz cats also have a great number of songs for the season. Nina Simone does her usual masterful job with the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins hit I Put a Spell on You. Of course, no Halloween-influenced roots music list would be complete without at least one song from bluesman Robert Johnson. “Legendarily making a Faustian deal at a mythological crossroads,” Johnson recorded “Hellhound on My Trail” during his second Texas sessions, a year before his mysterious, and untimely death. 

Climb under the sheets if you need to, but don’t get spooked.

More to come . . .

DJB

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*To read the earlier posts, check out 2020, then 2021, and again last year in 2022.

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**Parton self-described some of her work from the early years as “sad ass songs.” In those works, she was often taking traditional murder ballads like Knoxville Girl and recasting them from the woman’s (i.e., the victim’s) point of view.

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Image of werewolf from Pixabay. Image of ghost from Stefan Keller on Pixabay. Image of house decorations from Claire Holsey Brown and DJB.