Poor boy, you’re bound to die
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| Neil Young |
This our fourth post so far on the familiar murder ballad “Tom Dooley.”
–The first post discusses some of the history behind the song.
–The second post discusses the history of the song itself, from regional to international popularity.
–The third post picks out some performances from the two decades after the Kingston Trio’s hit.
Americana – no kiddin’ around.
“Every one of these songs [on Americana] has verses that have been ignored. And those are the key verses, those are the things that make these songs live. They’re a little heavy for kindergarteners to be singing. The originals are much darker, there’s more protest in them – the other verses in “This Land Is Your Land” are very timely, or in “Clementine,” the verses are so dark.Almost every one has to do with people getting killed, with life-or-death struggles. You don’t hear much about that; they’ve been made into something much more light. So I moved them away from that gentler interpretation. With new melodies and arrangements, we could use the folk process to invoke the original meanings for this generation.”— Neil Young, discussing the album Americana (2012)
Against our wont, this means I’ll pass lightly over the Grateful Dead, who’ve been caught performing “Tom Dooley” a time or two, mostly around 1978. The song is included as an out-take or added track on the extended version of Reckoning. As Reckoning was a deliberately acoustic album, highlighting the band’s roots in traditional music, it doesn’t take us that far into new territory. Besides that, the performance on the Reckoning track feels rather phoned-in. So, it would be both “Tom Dooley” and the Grateful Dead for completists.
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| Crazy Horse and Neil Young |
Therefore, we’ll really kick things off with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, from their 2012 release Americana. As he states in the quote at the start of this post, Young was looking for traditional songs, even songs that have come to be kids’ songs, and uncovering the darker lyrics, or the more serious tones underneath. Relative to the Kingston Trio, he succeeds; but, as we’ve already heard a few times in last week’s posts others have found these verses, too. It’s not the lyrics alone that take the song all the way into that dark territory for Young.
Young and the band leave Appalachian string band far behind and land solidly in the realm of California garage band. The background chanting “Tom Dooley!” instantly called to mind for me a late-night, amped-up rehearsal in the carport with, perhaps, a none-too-sober nor none-too-expert group of volunteer back-up singers. Reviews of Americana vary widely as to whether Young’s garage band approach is a good or a bad thing for the album. I think it works here, assuming you set your expectations correctly as to what he’s trying to accomplish. The chanting accomplishes another purpose.
Lyrics for Neil Young’s version of “Tom Dula.”
My experience with the Neil Young and Crazy Horse repertoire is fairly limited, so I asked for a little bit of help from Shaleane, who. among other signal contributions, wrote a series of posts here last year on Young’s “Powderfinger.” I was puzzled at first by a statement by an American Songwriter reviewer who pointed to Young’s “Down by the River” as the thematic link for “Tom Dula.” This didn’t seem right to me; a little too facile. Shaleane pointed me to Rust Never Sleeps, the latter half of which resembles “Tom Dula” in tone, and includes “Powderfinger.”
I’m inclined to agree more with Rolling Stone reviewer Rob Sheffield, who says that Young and the band “make the murder ballad “Tom Dula” roar like a lost cousin of “Powderfinger.” They are both songs about facing death, and as Shaleane explored, there’s a lot that gets said inside Young’s guitar solos. The chanting of “Tom Dooley” comes across a an insistent call from the crowd for Tom to hang. Young’s Tom is caged and condemned, and there’s an inner fury about it. Whether or not you believe that the real Tom Dula was guilty, something inside this song, and it’s not explicit, keeps hinting that something’s not right about what’s happening.
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| Jon Langford |
Twangin’ it
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| Steve Earle |
Back in 2002, Chicago-based alt.country artist Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts released The Executioner’s Last Songs. Steve Earle joins the group, singing lead for a slow-tempo, country rock version of “Tom Dooley.” Proceeds from this album went toward the Illinois Campaign Against the Death Penalty. We’ve picked up a few treasures from this album over the months, including Neko Case’s “Poor Ellen Smith” and Edith Frost’s “Sing Me Back Home.”
As the album is mostly murder ballads, it’s an interesting soundtrack for a political campaign. But it taps into, I think, what we’ve found in this blog about the murder ballad genre. The songs often call the listener to empathy and compassion for all parties in the song’s fatal exchange. The songs connect us to each other metaphorically, as part of a common moral community seeking and creating meaning. This is the core artistic feat of Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home,” as I discussed a few weeks ago. So, perhaps there’s no better soundtrack for this kind of cause. If I’m correct about what Young’s up to, Earle, Langford, and the PVC are likely on the same page.
Dooley’s Groove
I’m not sure I have sufficient knowledge of the right musical genres to provide a neat categorization of Snakefarm, which includes a relatively cool and atmospheric version of “Tom Dooley” on its 1999 album of murder ballads, Songs from My Funeral. The synthesized rhythm section and tolling bells carry Dooley along in a groove, with Anna Domino singing the lead. I’ve seen various web sites listing Snakefarm as alternative folk. OK, we can go with that. “Alternative” and “folk” are both huge fudging categories. But the only thing that would distinguish it from urban lounge music is the original source material of the lyrics.
(Apologies to those in Canada and other countries that don’t have access to Spotify. I can’t yet find a version of this on YouTube, myspace, bandcamp, or SoundCloud.)
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| Anna Domino |
There are a few other artists who have attempted this kind of alternative fusion work. I’ll put a few of them on a Spotify playlist before the end of the week. Snakefarm’s is the standout, though. As we’ve seen before, Domino has a deep sense of the power inside these songs and ballads. However innovative the arrangement, or however “detoured” the traditional melody, Domino has a way to hit all the right thematic notes. Taken in occasional doses, Snakefarm’s arrangements are capable of helping me hear the songs afresh.
“The train that runs from righteousness to ruin and on to remorse and redemption is as American as apple pie. Courting disaster, we run away to join the outlaws, the circus, or a rock band till the shock of our fragility forces a return to the confines of the tribe, heads bowed, seeking salvation by Sunday.”
–Anna Domino
Next up
In the next post, which I think will wrap up the week, I’ll tie up some musical loose ends about the Tom Dula story. We’ll look into some other ways that poets and songwriters have tried to sweeten the story or find its truth. Some of these emerged shortly after Dula’s hanging, as our main song has. Others are later engagements, trying to bring a bit of sense or justice to the case. We’ll see how they do.