Jon Langford interview, Part Two
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| Jon Langford (Photo by Barry Phipps, courtesy the artist and Bloodshot Records) |
Today we continue our conversation with transplanted Chicagoan and jack-of-all-trades (music, art, comic interludes, storytelling) Jon Langford. You can read Part One here; Part Three appears Friday. Today we find out why Langford wanted to record an album of murder ballads, and why he finds the most amoral murder ballads also the most appealing. I’ve again included the full audio version of our interview. The text here has minor edits for readability. Also, though Lanford references different artists in his discussion of “Long Black Veil” and “Knoxville Girl,” I decided to use the versions that were recorded for The Executioner’s Last Song in the audio mix.
Jon Langford on his study of the murder ballad
MBM: You were talking about the tradition of folk songs, and that being a form which tries to deal with reality in a way that pop doesn’t always. So, do you remember or have you gone on to look at the tradition of the murder ballad in Welsh culture, in Welsh folk music?
MBM: That’s why you got itchy feet and wanted to go?
No, when I did the murder ballads albums against the death penalty, The Executioner’s Last Songs, that’s when I really started to investigating it, and tracing a lot of those songs back. A lot of them come from I think it’s more like Scottish, English roots. You know a song like “Long Black Veil,” which I think Johnny Cash had a hit with, but The Band did it too.
It’s about yeah, somebody who killed his best friend’s wife. She stands over his grave, because he’s dead, the narrator in the song has actually been executed. And he wouldn’t confess that he hadn’t done it, because he would then reveal he’d been having an affair with his best friend’s wife. So, someone was killed in the pale moonlight or something. It’s a very happy song.
We’ll take a break here to go over the lyrics of “Long Black Veil.”
Long Black Veil
Ten years ago on a cold dark night
Someone was killed ‘neath the town hall lights
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed
That the slayer who ran, looked a lot like me
Now she walks these hills, in a long black veil
She visits my grave, when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows, but me
The scaffold is high, and eternity’s near
She stood in the crowd, and shed not a tear
But some times at night, when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil, she cries over my bones
Now she walks these hills, in a long black veil
She visits my grave, when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows, but me
The judge said son, what is your alibi
If you were somewhere else, then you won’t have to die
I spoke not a word, though it meant my life
I’d been in the arms of my best friends wife
Now she walks these hills, in a long black veil
She visits my grave, when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows, but me
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows, but me
There are so many great performances of “Long Black Veil,” from talented artists like Gillian Welch, Jerry and Sara Garcia, Bruce Springsteen, and of course, The Band. But I chose to share this short, simple and absolutely wonderful version by the great Canadian singer Joni Mitchell and the legendary Johnny Cash.
I guess for the TV format they did a truncated version of the song (most clock in at five minutes and change). Still, I can’t watch this without dissolving into tears. And can you imagine a figure like Johnny Cash being given his own television show these days? Well, maybe if it was some kind of reality show . . .
Okay, back to the interview.
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JL: “Long Black Veil” goes back; you can trace it all the way back. And then someone in like 1956 or something put it out, and just put their name on it for the publishing, and copped the publishing money. But you can trace the song; it’s much, much older. A lot of that I think in country music definitely comes from those roots. And a lot of bluegrass stuff, which has lots of stuff about people dying, though not necessarily murders.
Greil Marcus, I talked to him about it once. He said well what happens to these songs, how they evolve in crossing the Atlantic, is that the American versions of all these songs, if you look at them, they usually get rid of the verse which says “oh, the moral of the story . . .” So that they become totally amoral.
JL: Yeah, and I think a lot of the murder ballads is kind of like daytime TV or like Mexican murder magazines now. There was just this fascination with the fact it was going on. It’s kind of like the news, the old folk songs were…even a song like “Frankie and Johnny,” which is about a woman going to a bar and killing her boyfriend for cheating on her.
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The saga of Frankie and Johnny, including the history behind the song and the various versions of it – has been covered extensively here on Murder Ballad Monday – check out our coverage here.
And in the meantime, here are a couple of stellar versions of “Frankie and Johnny.”
William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy of course had a huge influence on Chicago.
And since Langford is obviously a Merle Haggard fan I included his version. He has a way of bending notes with his voice that is so . . . terrific.
Once again, back to Langford.
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JL: Yeah because it’s not our Johnny Cash. You know. Or there’s “Delia’s Gone,” which is a great murder ballad, which he wrote. A guy ties his girlfriend to a chair and shot her with a machine gun (laughs).
JL: (laughing) I know! Women don’t come off too well in murder ballads, it’s really heavily . . . it’s probably an accurate reflection of (reality). “Frankie and Johnny” is one of the few where the woman’s actually the killer.
And over here when I first moved to the States, I was watching TV one night on me own. And it was a vigil for John Wayne Gacy. There were people outside the prison, they were executing him as well. I thought “My God!” because I’d sort of forgot they did that here. There were these people going “He deserves to die, if anyone deserves to die it’s him.” And then they showed – what really got me into it – they showed the protestors (ed. note anti-death penalty protestors) with their badges and banners. But they didn’t show their faces. And they showed them in this weird slow-motion kind of montage-y thing, and blurry. Like they were space aliens or people who’d slid so far off the political map that they couldn’t even be represented. You know, they didn’t have names or voices or things to say. And it was like “Look at these freaks!” I thought where I grew up was pretty mainstream . . .
That’s concludes Part Two of our conversation with Jon Langford. Tune in Friday for the final installment, when Langford answers the burning question: “Have you ever written a murder ballad?” The results may surprise you! Also, do you think there’s a famous murder/er who is due a ballad? Let us know in the comments below.