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The Father and the Son

“Christ and the Sinner,” by Countess Kalkreuth, Germany (image of oil painting from 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition)

In “Billy Paul,” Gill frames the elegy in terms of a Christian salvation drama and his own personal loss. He invokes love, forgiveness, and the complicated question of who—the singer, the Father, or the Son—is responsible for what in relationship to the sinner and his sin. Gill explains, “there’s a line in the song about seeing you at your best and at your worst but the best of you is what I’ll remember first. I’ve made enough mistakes in my own life that I’ve been forgive[n] for…. That feeling of forgiveness and that feeling of loving someone at their worst is powerful.”

Unlike “Those Three Are On My Mind,” “Billy Paul” is an almost purely personal song, more about the singer than the killer. It’s not a political song or even a moralistic one in ways we might expect of a modern murder ballad, especially one about relationship violence. It’s the antithesis of the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.” “Billy Paul” might not seem to give the woman’s death the gravity it deserves. The song isn’t really about her. It’s about the rupture in the singer’s relationship with Billy Paul, and the questions that can never be answered. The singer can’t prevent the tragedy, nor can he be an agent of justice or reconciliation in its wake. Because Billy Paul is dead, the only peace to make is through forgiveness and memory.

The song will never fix anything for the unnamed “Wendy Sue,” though. No poetic justice to be found here. However morally unsatisfying or incomplete that might feel, “Billy Paul” prompts us to consider that making the perpetrator a “monster” or something “other” is not especially illuminating or in every way helpful. Billy Paul may be both angel and demon.

Music City Elegist

Merle Haggard (1937-2016) and George Jones (1931-2013) (source: Merle Haggard’s Facebook page)

Gill commented in a 2014 interview that “Billy Paul” felt to him like a song where he was most inspired by Merle Haggard:

“…there was one record I made a couple of years ago where I really got emotional because it was the first time I’ve made a record that I felt like I really seeped into Merle Haggard. It was a song called ‘Billy Paul.’ The sound of the record, everything about it was Merle. It was a true story about a friend of mine that unfortunately killed a woman and then took his own life. So it’s a dark subject. But in listening to it, I said, ‘Now that sounds like something Merle Haggard would do.’”

This assessment rings true to me. In moving from considering Gill’s limited work as a murder balladeer to his more extensive work as an elegist, “Billy Paul’s” compassion for the wrongdoer feels right out of Haggard, which helps make further sense of it.

A few years ago, we discussed how Haggard needed only the first two lines of “Sing Me Back Home” to win an audience’s empathy for a condemned murderer. Haggard never appeared to think of his own time in prison as a badge of honor, but it was a wellspring for what Gill talked about as the capacity for “loving someone at their worst.” Haggard had a well-honed sense for the humbling power of forgiveness, and a convincing voice to give to his songs’ often fallen, broken characters.

As I noted above, 2016 has already given us too many occasions for tributes and elegies in the music world, with high-profile losses of such artists as David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Merle Haggard, Lonnie Mack, Prince, and (ironically, in this context) soul singer, Billy Paul.

Gill’s most recent elegy is for Haggard. It also debuted at the Grand Ole Opry, on April 15. “A World Without Haggard” is both a biographic ballad and a honky-tonk keening for the loss of a musical hero. It’s fresh and in the moment for Gill, with perhaps a dash of hyperbole and a healthy dose of exposition.

Gill recently put forth a similar effort in an elegy for George Jones, another mainstream country legend with his own personal struggles. You may have seen Gill’s famous, tear-choked performance of “Go Rest High On That Mountain” with Patty Loveless at the Opry’s memorial service for Jones a few years back. Given the parallels between Jones’s struggles and Keith Whitley’s, the choice was apt.

Gill’s a “Sad One Comin’ On” is a fitting, original elegy for Jones; part biography, part autobiography.

These songs are less properly folk songs than they are creations of country music celebrity culture. What they may lack in musical or historical complexity, or the ability of other singers to inhabit their voice, they make up for in sincerity. Gill conveys his grief convincingly, perhaps as a proxy for our own. The songs speak to the pangs that have been all too frequent to many in recent months, of the deeply personal connections we feel to the people who sing the songs that animate our feelings and anchor our memories.

“Go Rest High”

“A World Without Haggard,” “Sad One Comin’ On,” and “Go Rest High on that Mountain,” may not have an obvious connection to “Billy Paul,” at least insofar as “Billy Paul” is considered as a murder ballad. As elegies, though, they all evoke a love for their protagonist – both hero and villain, or neither – that takes them in in all their brokenness and weakness.

I’m generally one to focus more on the song than the singer, so it feels odd to me to spend so much time on songs that are so deeply personal to one artist. These songs as a group, though, show both the individual healing power of music in the wake of tragedy and loss, as well as the way music heals and builds a community through that act of healing.

My brother-in-law died almost ten years ago, and “Go Rest High On That Mountain” has been a go-to song for me to sing and play on guitar in the years since. Although the lyrics are not in every respect a neat fit to my brother-in-law’s life and death, it has brought me healing at times, and an ongoing, never fully concluded emotional reconciliation with his loss. The song has become “folk music” for me, and the others in this post may become so as well, for me, or for you. In another context, I could probably consider “Go Rest High” as a “Conversations with Death” song, but it fits here now for a number of reasons, not all of which I can explain. I can say, though, that I’m grateful to Gill for sharing it, and his pain, with us.