Season 279 - Red rum (sort of)

So this is a song by just about everyone ever, and the beauty of it is there's that many interpretations that there's no wrong way to play it.

Which is where this one comes in.....


 
Awesome theme! I'm known for doing murder ballads around my house cause my wife freaks out so at them. Her reaction makes me do them more. lol Sometimes she won't even let me finish the song. Then at a gathering my wife asked me to do some, and the 12 year old daughter of my wife's friend was completely mesmerized by them, and now requests them whenever I see her. Which is a little weird. lol This song, written by Waylon Jennings, is far and away the most requested one I get. Interestingly there's another version of this song with an "alternative ending", where the guy ends up in a mental hospital and it's unclear if he's killed anyone. I like this ending much better. It's much more powerful. I didn't hit the chords at the end of the song here as clean as I'd like, but I kept the take.

 
Looks like I'll be doing a Blitzen Trapper song for the second straight week. It might end up being two, though I'm hoping someone else will do this one for me. I did it already on tiple way back in Season 19. I may have changed the key from the original, but when I played it the chords were "Cm Gm Eb Bb F" all the way through.

 
OK - first up can I just say that I hate this song? But...

When I did "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" last week, Pabrizzer told me that he rated it about the same as "Honey", and I am pretty sure he meant he didn't like either of them.
When I mentioned this week's theme to my wife, she came back in an instant with "Honey".
So I just had to...Sorry Pa. (and I got the season number wrong AGAIN!)

 
So here's one I actually like. But how come I didn't spot that it has a tree in it too? So, as a sort of joint Season 278/279 entry...



That's definitely my lot for this week, as I am off to the Glastonbury Festival. And for once, the weather forecast is a good one!
 
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Caught Melissa in the kitchen and knocked one out for ya - great theme! Hopefully more coming from the coast because it is 111 in Cloverdale and he are getting the hell out of here tomorrow ;)
 
This is another original true story song, or as true as I could get it. With old stories like this, it's hard to tell where the truth blurs into legend. If you are inclined to learn more about this story, and see some photos of the people involved, just do a search for Joe Ball, the Butcher of Elmendorf. I tried to get it as accurate as possible, based on what I have read about it. Apparently, no one else has written a song about this before!



Elmendorf is a very small town
Down around San Antone
And Frank X. Ball was a rich man
He had the first house to be made from stone

It was named after Henry Elmendorf
But Frank built it from the ground
His cotton gin handled all the crops
That grew on the farms all around

Frank and his wife Elizabeth
Had children upstanding and fine
But they also had one son named Joe
There was something twisted in his mind

They said he was just as good as most
Before he fought in the Great War
But they say he saw things in the trenches
That left him strange and scarred

When he came back home from the war
He started running bootleg whiskey
He'd dip it right out of a 50-gallon barrel
For anyone who had the money

Now, Joe, he liked his whiskey
And he was good with a gun
He would shoot birds off a telephone line
With his pistol, just for fun

And when Prohibition ended
He opened a bar in town
And there he fell in love with a waitress
Pretty, dark-haired Hazel Brown

But Big Minnie was already in love with him
And she was jealous of Miss Brown
So one day Joe took Minnie to the coast
And there he shot her down

Well, Joe knew how to bring 'em in
No, greed he didn't lack
He caught him some alligators
And put 'em in a concrete pond out back

On Friday nights the folks would come
And the party would last all night
And Joe would have a cat or a possum
And the alligators would bite

He'd throw a squirrel or a dog or a cat
Or any live meat he'd found
Into the gator pond while the people cheered
And them big gators would swallow it down

Then Joe fell in love with another girl
Buddy Goodwin was her name
Then Hazel found herself in Minnie's place
And her fate was just the same

He stashed poor Hazel in a whiskey barrel
And hid it behind a barn
But then he fed her to his gators
When authorities were warned

There were two county deputies named John
Gray and Klevenhagen were their last names
They drove out to Joe Ball's bar
Tryin' to figure out Joe Ball's game

Well, Joe went for his pistol
When they walked in the room
But Joe turned the pistol on himself
And Joe Ball sealed his own doom

Nobody knows how many he killed
But several women had disappeared
They found Minnie buried at Ingleside
But there were many more, they feared

They found rotted meat and clumps of hair
Back there in the gator's deep
So they put them gators in the San Antone Zoo
And for many more years
People would come
And watch 'em just a-layin in the sun, asleep.
 
Can the person be dead when the song begins?

Oh hey, I think this follows on from the PM you sent me. As long as the song mentions the actual death at some point, I don't see a problem with it. Even if it doesn't, I'll be pretty lenient this week, so if you think it works, I'll accept it.
 
May have to Thornton Rule the heck out of this one. Do songs about death include songs about those who try to prevent death, however futile the attempt may be? Hope so, because here's one by Warren Zevon about Philip Habib. Title cut from "The Envoy."

 
May have to Thornton Rule the heck out of this one. Do songs about death include songs about those who try to prevent death, however futile the attempt may be? Hope so, because here's one by Warren Zevon about Philip Habib. Title cut from "The Envoy."



Not actually a death in the song, but I'll allow it because of the Thornton rule.
 
J. Cash. 'Nuff said. (except for the issue of which octave to sing it, but ...) :D

 
As promised (threatened?), for the second straight week, here's a song from Blitzen Trapper's "Destroyer of the Void" album. This is called "The Man Who Would Speak True".

 
Well - it ain't "Tell Laura I Love Her", but I hope this qualifies - thanks for the Season Robin!

 
This is the first track from the Violent Femmes' 1984 album Hallowed Ground. I saw on Wikipedia today that this band was listed under the genre "folk punk"... that's a new term for me anyways.

I kinda think the Femmes' frontman was inspired by Dylan's Hollis Brown when writing it as they're quite similar. I kinda hope someone covers Hollis Brown this week. I did so back in week 127, and it's my favorite murder song.

 
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