Conversations with Death – 3 – “No Telephone In Heaven”
Introduction
Two years ago this month we lost Doc Watson.
This isn’t an homage to Doc. I mention the anniversary by way of saying that I first heard today’s song from him. But more to the point, “No Telephone in Heaven” is a perfect vehicle for expressing how we might feel about those, like Doc, whom we’ve dearly loved and lost.
It is no murder ballad, but it fits well within the boundaries of the kind of song we’ve started to take on in our Conversations with Death series. It is about a child who, quite literally, wants to talk on the phone with her dead mother. And it brings me to tears often when I hear it – especially these days as my mother prepares to end her time on Earth.
I haven’t much time at all to write this week, but I don’t think this song needs all that. The lyrics say everything that must be said. Of course, if you’re a regular reader then you know me – I won’t let it go without a little commentary. I promise to keep it brief.
“There’s no telephone in Heaven…”
The music must come first.
“Now I can wait on baby” the smiling merchant said
As he stooped and softly toyed with her golden curly head
“I want to call up Mama,” came the answer full and free.
“Will you telephone and ask her when she’s coming back to me?”
Chorus
“My child,” the merchant murmured as he stroked the anxious brow
“No telephone connection where your mother lives at now.
There’s no telephone in heaven,” and a tear sprang in her eyes.
“I thought God had everything with Him up in the sky.”
“Tell her I get so lonesome that I don’t know what to do,
and Papa cries so much that I guess he must be lonesome too.
Tell her to come to baby cause at night I get so afraid
when she’s not there to kiss me and the lights begin to fade.”
Chorus
“All through the day I need her, since my dolly’s getting so poor
’cause unkind little brother hit it with his little sword.
And there’s no one to fix it since Mama’s gone away,
and poor little lonesome dolly’s getting thinner every day.”
Chorus
It’s a devastating scene. A young girl asks a merchant for a direct line to her mother in the other world. Even if you’re not a believer in that other world, I bet this song still hits you. We’ll get back to that below.
For now we need to know it’s not Doc Watson’s song. The Carter Family first waxed this A.P. Carter original in 1929.
Carter’s lyrics are quite close to, though not exactly, Doc’s. In the first verse particularly, ‘her golden curly head’ is rather clearly ‘his.’ The later verses refer clearly to a girl though. Is the merchant is playing with his own hair? That makes little sense as an image. I think what was originally intended, though not perfectly evoked, is a scene of two siblings at the merchant’s feet – Mama’s son and daughter. First the boy speaks, then the girl; and they both want that connection.
Doc streamlines the imagery to makes it clearly one girl talking to one man, and I reckon it to be more powerful that way.
But here are two versions as it was first intended, first the original cut for Victor on YouTube and Spotify, then a recording of A.P performing it on a radio show in 1939. I think you’ll understand why Doc wanted to play this one and pass it on.
(radio performance, A.P. Carter)
“I thought God had everything…”
We’ve already seen in this blog how A.P. Carter could dig deep with songs about death in the case of “The Cyclone of Rye Cove“. In that one, parents wept over their dead children. Though “No Telephone in Heaven” reverses the scene, the finality of death is still at the core of his lyrics. In ‘Rye Cove’, innocence is left lying on “pillows of stone”. In ‘No Telephone’, it is lost in the realization that neither great hope nor powerful technology can overcome Death.
That latter point is more than just an interesting feature of song that reflects its times. The telephone effectively represents the creative power that humans wield, and as well serves as the song’s emotional axis. In the child’s mind, if people have it then God should have it. It is a brilliantly evocative image, and it strikes at the heart of what we feel when we come to that line between this world and Eternity.
Though the imagery is soft and the tone sad, it is very much the same stark reality we confront in “Oh Death‘s” terrifying scenes. In ‘No Telephone’ it is not our own mortality we must face directly, but the impenetrable wall between life and death is the same.
“The old, the young, the rich, the poor,
they alike with me will have to go.
No age, no wealth, no silver, no gold,
nothing satisfies me but your poor soul.”
So, though ‘No Telephone’ looks somewhat different on the outside – much more sentimental and soft – it’s packing the same sort of lyrical vitality. Tell me you didn’t get shivers when you heard the line about her doll being beaten by her brother’s sword! It’s perfect imagery and metaphor.
You just don’t forget the first time you meet this song. It may not be a murder ballad, but like “Oh Death” and Carter’s own “Rye Cove”, it’s clearly a first cousin to the tradition and it gets its similar striking features from the same ‘genetic’ material.
Coda
I think it’s worth reprising one more theme here, one I first took up in considering “Oh Death”. The idea of Heaven is integral to this song, and yet the song works whether or not one believes in Heaven or is even religious. Though the concept of Heaven was surely more than a literary device to A.P. Carter, it need not be more for any listener. We can all relate to the idea of being lost and lonely as a child. We can all relate sooner or later to losing our loved ones. We can all relate to being afraid of the dark.
I know it’s a simple thing to say, but there’s a point to be made. There’s something deeper than cultural context in songs like this one, and in murder ballads. No, we don’t hear them the same way, with the same assumptions shaping our perception, as did our ancestors a century or more ago. But, we hear them as powerful nonetheless.
Perhaps that’s easier to see in a song like this one. Those who are unfamiliar with the tradition often find it truly strange, or think those of us who are drawn to such songs have some sort of macabre and unhealthy fascination. In fact, the opposite is true, and this song makes it clear. I always want to hug my son after we visit my mother in her hospital bed at the nursing home. And I always want to hug him after I hear this song.
This song and this tradition reveal to us the importance of being alive, of dancing on graves until we become the dance floor. To my mind, though we may at first find them jarring, it is indeed why they endure well beyond the times and places of their creation.