“David ‘Stringbean’ Akeman” (image from Dirk aka Dave Kelly, via myspace)

Murder in Music City

Although the story behind this week’s song, “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle,” is forty years old, it’s in the minority of songs among our normal repertoire in that involves some unfinished business. In November 1973, Grand Ole Opry member and Hee Haw cast member, David “Stringbean” Akeman, and his wife, Estelle, were murdered at their home as the result of a burglary gone wrong. Although Stringbean was at the heart of a country music industry well-steeped in the murder ballad genre, there have been relatively few songs recorded that tell this tale in murder ballad form. “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle” is the most effective of them, both commercially and critically, and the only one really remotely explicit about the details. But, it took nearly four decades for such a ballad to come to life. We’ll talk about that in today’s post.

The unfinished business is that there’s still a man in prison for killing the Akemans, and his campaign to atone for his crime and seek parole has become folded in to at least some presentations of the song, which makes for a complicated story indeed about the role that music may play in the healing of wounds and the healing of communities.

Although Bobby Land and Gary Revel both released musical tributes to Stringbean in 1976, and there have been a few other musical tributes here and there, “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle, ” which was written by Verlon Thompson, Guy Clark, and Sam Bush, is the only one I can find to present the elements of the story in a true, narrative ballad style. Here’s the song as performed by Sam Bush on his album Circles Around Me. It’s where I first heard it, and is the performance that earned the song a 2010 nomination for Song of the Year from the International Bluegrass Music Association.

You can find lyrics for the song at Mandolin Cafe.

It was just a simple plan, to rob a banjo man…

Stringbean Akeman was a well-loved member of the Grand Ole Opry and the cast of the country variety show Hee Haw. Born in 1916, Akeman’s experience of the Great Depression had led him to a rather frugal lifestyle and a sharp distrust of banks. He was known to carry significant amounts of cash in the front pocket of his bib overalls, and was rumored to have kept an even larger stash of cash hidden somewhere within his modest cabin in Ridgetop, Tennessee, just a few miles outside of Nashville.

Stringbean

On November 10, 1973, the Akemans returned to their home from an evening’s performance on the Opry. While they were away, two cousins, Marvin Douglas Brown and John A. Brown, had been ransacking the house for the hidden cash. Apparently Stringbean, having heard noise inside the house, came in with a gun drawn, and an ensuing gunfight left him dead. Estelle tried to flee, and was chased down and killed. Their bodies were found the next morning by Stringbean’s good friend and fellow Hee Haw star, Grandpa Jones. Stringbean and Grandpa were regular, early morning fishing buddies, and owned a farm together.

Mystery surrounded these killings at first, and Stringbean’s friends and colleagues at the Opry were concerned for their own safety as well. The Browns, though, had difficulty keeping quiet about their actions. Despite it being a complete disaster, they started to brag about it. They were arrested within a couple months of the incident, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to 198 years each. Marvin Douglas Brown appealed for a new trial, but was unsuccessful. He claimed that he was not the shooter in either case, but having admitted to the burglary that resulted in death, was found guilty under the felony murder rule. He died in prison in 2003. John Brown is still serving his 198 year sentence, and comes up for parole every few years, with 2011 being his last unsuccessful attempt as of this writing.

A new owner renovated the Akemans’ house in 1996, and uncovered a stash of $20,000 rotting away in the fireplace.

An excellent summary of Stringbean’s career and the facts of the case can be found on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog.

All the news that’s fit to sing

It’s a common supposition in our posts that murder ballads have often served to tell the news of a crime. In earlier days, they were one among several genres of ballads that served to let people know of a crime and allow for some communal processing of the events. Such a reportage element is clearly not the case here, as the song came into being some 35 years after the story it tells. The news media was, I’m sure, more than sufficient to tell the story.

Subsequent musical tributes, such as the ones I mentioned above, as well as some television elegies, chose mainly to dwell on Stringbean’s contributions and positive qualities. This 1978 remembrance from Grandpa Jones from Hee Haw is both touching and poignant on the one hand, and remarkable for how much of the story it doesn’t tell on the other. This is 5 years after the Akemans’ deaths.

I suspect, from reading about the development of “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle,” that this murder within the heart of the country music industry was a very sensitive topic for some time. It may just be happenstance, but I suspect that Stringbean was so close to so many musicians who might otherwise have written about him, that it took the passing of decades and a new generation of songwriters to tell the story in this detailed way with an authentic murder ballad. Verlon Thompson, one of the song’s writers, explains his hesitation in a 2010 interview with The Sulphur Springs News-Telegram:

Thompson and [Guy]Clark had been talking about doing a song based on the tragedy for years.

Verlon Thompson’s performance of the song, particularly in the music video he developed for it, adds another twist. Remember that I mentioned above that Stringbean’s assailant, John Brown, is now eligible for parole and can apply again every few years. He got married around the time of his incarceration, and has gotten his GED in prison, gotten involved with Alcoholics Anonymous, and has worked as a prison chaplain. This news clip from a few years ago, featuring Brown’s wife of 34 years (she married him after the crime) tells some of the story of his case for parole. Now, take a look at the YouTube page for the Sam Bush clip above, of the news interview with his wife, and see the continuing animosity that comment writers there are eager to direct Brown’s way. Now, watch Thompson’s video:

I find it fascinating that Thompson elects to include excerpts of Brown’s parole hearings into this presentation of the song. He does so without editorializing, but it’s difficult to deny the effect it has in personalizing the story and forcing the listener not only to confront the horror of the crime, but also the question of what represents a just response to it, both then and now. Justice, mercy, punishment, compassion, remorse, and redemption come into play in a dynamic way, and in a way that’s not as fully present in the song itself.

Thompson may have glimpsed some important signs of healing in the cabin-front performance he talks about above. Perhaps he’s suggesting in the video that justice is a relative or instrumental value and not an absolute one–that its purpose is to restore community. You might hold that the community is only restored by putting the offender out of it for good, or you might hold that if parole is to have any meaning, then there needs to be some sensible threshold for qualifying for it. Perhaps Thompson’s just illustrating the powerful remorse that follows acts of youthful stupidity or evil acts. Whatever particular agenda he may have, the artistic effect is to force the viewer and listener to keep those questions about justice, mercy, and the possibility of redemption alive and not easily settled.

Wrapping up

It’s a semi-vacation week here at Murder Ballad Monday, so we’re going to keep it pretty simple. If all goes well, we’ll have some exciting new content coming up next week, so stay tuned.