Billy Edd Wheeler, Appalachian Polymath: Reflections On The Death Of A Great Appalachian

On September 16, 2024, Billy Edd Wheeler died at his home in North Carolina at the age of 91.  Depending on whom you ask, you could hear Wheeler described as a practitioner of various occupations and, before you ask, you should know that he was a master at several.  He was a song writer and performer, an author of nearly a dozen books, a college administrator, a humorist, and a playwright.  He was admired all across Appalachia as a shining example of what a great Appalachian should be and what all Appalachians should seek to become.  Several of his songs have embedded themselves deep in the psyche of the country.  His half dozen books of humor, co-authored with another great Appalachian, Loyal Jones, are found on the display shelves of book stores, variety stores, and general merchandise establishments.  Several of those humor books are likely to be reprinted for years to come.  He was also the author of several outdoor dramas in states as varied as his native West Virginia to Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.  Wheeler was a man of man talents and he worked daily to utilize them all to the best of his prodigious ability.  In addition to those occupations from which he received most of his support, he was also a painter, wood worker, and sculptor whose works were actually good enough to be displayed in several galleries over the years.  

 

 

He was the  son of a mother who raised to be man enough at 16 to climb on a bus in his native West Virginia and travel to Swannanoa, North Carolina, to a residential school with only a single dollar in his pocket.  Over the years after that fateful trip to North Carolina, he served his country as a student pilot, was hired as Alumni Director at his alma mater Berea College, and completed graduate school in play writing at  Yale University.  His was truly a varied and prodigiously productive life.  

 

I never knew Billy Edd Wheeler but we have had three mutual friends including his coauthor of six books Loyal Jones, and Betty Lynn whom he hired as a secretary at Berea College and who also worked with Wheeler and Jones on the publication of their books.  My friend Betty Lynn had this to say about Billy Edd Wheeler: "I read the obit, but it didn't list BEW's first job out of BC. He was associated with the outdoor drama, "Wilderness Road" at Berea, and was the Alumni Director for a few years before going to Yale. He hired me in Jan.'59 to be the secretary/office mgr. in Alumni Office; and we completed the Alumni Memorial Bldg. in 196l under his leadership. I started being Assoc. Ed. of THE BEREA ALUMNUS, a publication for alumni, staff and the campus, under his leadership. I worked with him and Loyal Jones on the Traditional Music events, held annually on the campus and in the publication of their humor books. BEW wrote several outdoor dramas, one in Indiana about Abe Lincoln; one in West, KY at Murray (I went to both of those) and one in WVA about Hatfields/McCoys; and, maybe others? He put out several albums himself, I have most of them. He was very talented!"  

Another friend who had worked with Billy Edd Wheeler on an outdoor drama in North Carolina said, "he authored our sesquicentennial play in MacDowell County some years ago. 1993. " Voices In The Wind". My oldest daughter and I were both in the show. He was quite taken with her performance, at 9 years old!"   Billy Edd Wheeler was obviously a man who enjoyed watching children develop their talents and was willing to reward them for their achievements.  

I have not even mentioned the things I appreciate most about Billy Edd Wheeler and his amazing life.  I love his obvious zest for life and his ability to achieve success in many fields, his lifelong striving to produce high quality work, his outstanding example for other ambitious Appalachians, and his incredible song writing ability.  I consider three of his songs about the coal mining life to be among the ten or so best songs ever written about coal mining.  "Coal Tattoo" is an incredibly masterful work about the difficulty of being a coal miner and facing periodic layoffs and injuries from the profession.  He addressed the frequent loss of a job in coal mining in that song with these words: 

Travelin' down that coal town road,
Listen to those rubber tires whine;
Goodbye to Buckeye and White Sycamore,
I'm leavin' you behind.
I been a coal man all my life
Layin' down track in the hole,
Got a back like an ironwood bent by the wind
Blood veins blue as the coal.

Then he went on to address the frequent injuries in coal mining with one of the great metaphors in all of song writing, comparing a near death experience in the mines with a tattoo,  And yet, that same stanza ends with another reference to the typical coal miner's love of the job which has nearly killed him: 

 Somebody said "That's a strange tattoo
You have on the side of your head."
I said "That's a blue print left by the coal.
Just a little more and I'd be dead"
But I love the rumble and I love the dark
I love the cool of the slate.

Billy Edd Wheeler addressed the deaths and injuries in the coal mines once again in another of the best coal mining songs ever written, "Red Winged Blackbird".  

Oh, can't you see that pretty little bird
Singing with all his heart and soul
He's got a blood red spot on his wing
And all the rest of him is black as coal

Of all the colors I ever did see
Red and black are the ones I dread
For when a man spills blood on the coal
They carry him down from the coal mines dead

Fly away you red winged bird
Leave behind the miner's wife
She'll dream about you when you're gone
She'll dream about you all her life

Oh, can't you see that pretty little bird
Singing with all his heart and soul
He's got a blood red spot on his wing
And all the rest of him is black as coal

 Using the coloration of a beautiful bird, the red winged blackbird as a metaphor for the wounding, disabling, murdering  accidents inside a coal mine was a brilliant piece of writing.  "For when a man spills blood on the coal  They carry him down from the coal mines dead."   It is my personal opinion that Billy Edd Wheeler was the greatest writer of coal mining music who ever lived.  And he proved it once again the beautifully poignant song "The Coming Of The Roads" about a broken love affair and the death of a coal mining town.

Once I thanked God for our treasure
Now like rust it corrodes
And I can't help but blamin' your goin'
On the coming, the coming of the roads
No, I can't help but blamin' your goin'
On the coming, coming of the roads 

While I value the song writing of Billy Edd Wheeler most for his incredible contributions to the genre of coal mine music, I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that Wheeler also wrote a couple of other songs which were even more favorably regarded by the market place.  He was also the author of the songs "Coward Of The County" which was a Number 1 song for Kenny Rogers; "Jackson" which was often regarded as the signature song of Johnny Cash and June Carter; and the humorous "The Little Brown Shack Out Back" which Wheeler  himself took into the Top 10.  He is a member of the Nashville Song Writers Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame; and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.  That, my friends, is a career. 

 

Colonel Hugh X. Lewis, In Memoriam, December 25, 1930--December 30, 2020

  

Hubert Bradley Lewis, known professionally as Colonel Hugh X. Lewis, died in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 29, 2020, only 4 days after hie 90th birthday due to Covid 19.  He had been born on Christmas Day 1930, in Yeadis, Kentucky, during the heart of the Great Depression and rose to nationwide fame as a country music singer and songwriter.  He was not touring but was still actively working until he became ill.  He was hosting a weekly radio show on WSGS-FM 101 in Hazard, Kentucky, and was a regular caller to the Faron And Scott Show on that station.  During those telephone calls, he would tell some of his thousands of stories about his life as a star in the world of country music from the 1950's to the time of his death. He had known, worked with, and often written songs for many of the biggest names in country music.  He had been married to his wife, Anna Mae Lewis, for 69 years at the time of his death.  He was always devoted to his wife and family and could accurately be described as a "family man" as you can see in the photo below.  He reputedly began hitchhiking from Southeastern Kentucky to Nashville to try to get a start in the music business shortly after he was married and working as a coal miner.  He was a fascinating man with a wonderful memory right up until his death, loved to meet and come to know people, no matter who they were, and could literally talk about any subject.  He will be greatly missed and long remembered both by those who knew and worked with him and by thousands who knew him only as a wonderful story teller on WSGS. 

 

 I have been a regular listener to WSGS-FM 101 in Hazard, KY, for more than 60 years and in the last few years one of the best aspects of that station, which I consider to be the best radio station around, was the fact that about once a week The Colonel would call in to the Faron And Scott Show and talk at length about his long career in country music, the stars and common people he knew, the places he played, the songs and poetry he wrote, and the long happy, productive life he had led. I'm sorry I never got to know him personally. It is a real tragedy that he died at a time when he was still being productive and from a pandemic which never had to happen if the federal government had done its job in early 2020. Hugh X. Lewis has now joined Charley Pride, Joe Diffy, and John Prine on the list of innocent victims of this American tragedy. Somewhere, that is a pretty damn good band! 

 

 

Suicide As A Theme In Country And Bluegrass Music

This is a topic which I have considered writing about on this blog for quite some time after having written my previous post about what I call "Dead Baby Music" in Bluegrass.  I recently heard a song by Bluegrass banjo player and comedian David "String Bean" Akemon called "Suicide Blues" which is so strongly and clearly about suicide that I knew I had to write this blog post.  With the general public perception of String Bean as being primarily a comedian, I know many of you probably don't think he ever recorded a serious song. I am uncertain about who wrote the song since I have also located a 1919 version of it recorded by a man named Arthur Collins who was known as a ragtime singer.

David "String Bean" Akemon--Photo by Wide Open Country

But "Suicide Blues" is not the only serious song String Bean ever recorded.  He also wrote and recorded a strongly worded anti-Vietnam War song called "Crazy Vietnam War" which took me by surprise when I found it recently.  I also have to say that it surprised me even after I have known one of his banjo playing nephews, Phillip Akemon, who is a man of many talents in Gray Hawk, Kentucky, not far from where String Bean grew up in Annville, Kentucky.  But, to get to "Suicide Blues", here are the lyrics: 

I go downtown
Lay by the railroad tracks
I'm gonna go downtown
Lay down by the railroad tracks
You see I don't want nothin'
Since my baby, she ain't comin' back

My lady she's gone
Took all my reason to live
My baby she gone
Took all my reason to live
Since she don't want me
I got nothin' left to give

Chorus:
She won't see me
Won't pick up the telephone
I wonder if she knows
She's the reason that I'll be gone

Lay in my bed
Stare at the ceiling for a while
I'm gonna lay in my bed
Stare at the ceiling for a while
My baby gonna miss me
My lady gonna miss me when I die

(Repeat Chorus)

Got my pills
Got my bottle of gin
I'm gonna swallow my pills
Swallow my bottle of gin
When I close my eyes
I won't see the sun again

(Repeat Chorus)

Get me a gun
Go back into my room
I'm gonna get me a gun
One with a barrel or two
You know I'm better off dead than
Singing these suicide blues

There are no more clearly suicidal lyrics ever written than those above recorded by David "String Bean" Akemon and Arthur Collins.  Every verse has a clearly worded statement about suicide.  In the first verse, we read about the reason for the contemplated suicide "my baby, she ain't comin' back" and we also hear the first of several stated methods for suicide "I'm gonna go downtown Lay down by the railroad tracks".  In at least one recorded version of the song, String Bean changed the words in that stanza slightly in order to more directly reference suicide and sang  "I'm gonna go downtown and Lay my head on the railroad tracks".  The chorus expands on the blaming of the former girlfriend or wife   "I wonder if she knows She's the reason that I'll be gone".  In the second stanza, the reason for the suicide is discussed further  My lady she's gone Took all my reason to live."  The third stanza discusses a common theme among many actual victims of suicide and attempted suicide, the concept of having the person who is being blamed know about the suicide and the fact that "It is their fault".  I should also state here that I am a trained mental health and substance abuse therapist with a Master of Education degree in Counseling and Human Development, a Bachelor of Social Work degree, and more than twenty years experience in the field.  I have dealt with hundreds of potentially suicidal clients in my professional life.  The wording in that third stanza says "My baby gonna miss me My lady gonna miss me when I die".  The fourth stanza references a new method of suicide, substance abuse, with these words  "I'm gonna swallow my pills Swallow my bottle of gin When I close my eyes  I won't see the sun again".  This wording is also introducing the common idea among suicidal people of the world, either before or after death, as a dark place with the words "when I close my eyes I won't see the sun again". The fifth and concluding stanza of String Bean's "Suicide Blues" introduces the most common suicide method for men, gunfire, with the words  "I'm gonna get me a gun One with a barrel or two You know I'm better off dead than Singing these suicide blues".  I have no idea or information that David "String Bean" Akemon ever actually contemplated suicide but we all know that he had thought enough about it to record "Suicide Blues".  

Now, let's discuss the most popular song in country music of which I know that mentions suicide. That one is "The Ballad of Billy Joe"  which was recorded by Bobbie Gentry.  I am not including the full lyrics to the song here but, in the first stanza the song bluntly references the suicide of the character Billy Joe McAllister "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge  Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge".  Unlike "Suicide Blues", this song is written in the third person and it is the narrator who discusses the suicide in a manner which tells the listener that the suicide was unexpected.  In the second stanza, we see a common element which is seen after actual suicides when the lyrics place blame on the victim by saying "And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please." These words lead us to understand that the victim was not considered reasonable or reasonably intelligent and that the character "Papa" blames "Billy Joe" for his own death.  This is one of the most enigmatic songs in all of country music in that it never clearly establishes a reason for the suicide being discussed but does establish a relationship between the victim and the narrator and her family. 

Bobbie Gentry--Photo by Rolling Stone

It also mentions the fact that the narrator is affected by the news and does not eat normally with these words from the fourth stanza "And mama said to me, child, what's happened to your appetite? I've been cookin' all morning, and you haven't touched a single bite".  That fourth stanza is just loaded with information, lack of information, and  is the basis of the major enigma of the song as well as what I believe is the source of much of its undying popularity with these further words  "He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge".    The final stanza has the narrator tell us "And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge".  This stanza seals the deal on the enigma(s) of the song in more than one way.  It establishes that the narrator has returned to the Tallahatchie Bridge to throw flowers, a common sign of mourning, into the river where Billie Joe McAllister commited suicide and where the two of them were presumably seen throwing something off the bridge.  What it does not tell us is what the two people were seen throwing off the bridge, why Billie Joe actually committed suicide, or exactly what constituted their connection.

One of my favorite performers and song writers of all time, Tom T. Hall, wrote a song called "The Rolling Mills Of Middletown" in which the narrators friend disappears in a steel mill in the Ohio steel town of Middletown to which hundreds, if not thousands, of native Appalachians moved in the Great Migration.  In that song, the narrator tells a story of his friend who is a worker in a steel mill who marries a woman of questionable morals.  "I knew he shouldn't marry any woman quite that wild Then later on I learned that she had been expectin' a child."  After the marriage, things go down hill as they often do, both in real life and in country music songs.  "He worked all night she shopped all day bought everything that fit A helper on the BOF three thousand degrees at a round His wife was just about that hot in the bars in old Middletown  Of course he was the last to know".  Those lines continue the story of the deteriorating marriage and are reinforced by the line in the repeated refrain "the rolling mills of Middletown roll on, roll on, roll on".  That refrain is a clear indicator of the inevitability of life both for a steel mill worker and for the subject of the song in his unsalvageable marriage.  Then Tom T. Hall, who is one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived in my opinion, brings us to his own enigmatic conclusion.  "One night the foreman on his turn said, "Cool down No 2" And he told my friend to go on home as soon as he was through He stopped into a little bar to have a good cold beer His woman and some dayturn guy were dancing closely there Oh, I knew him well and in his mind there must have been a storm  While the rolling mills of Middletown roll on, roll, on roll on They say he never spoke a word he just turned and walked away".  The jilted husband now has irrevocable proof of his wife's infidelity and instead of confronting her and her companion "he just turned and walked away.  And no one knows exactly what took place that fateful day."  Hall, "The Storyteller" as he has been known for many years, has nearly brought this story to its sad conclusion.  He has left us with that lack of knowledge again and we don't know "what took place that fateful day."  All Hall leaves us with is the enigma of exactly what happened to his friend.  "Some say they saw him near the tracks at furnace No 1 With heat so hot the hubs of hell would seem just barely warm Well, they never saw my friend again did he do something wrong While the rolling mills of Middletown Ohio roll on, roll on, roll on."  He has left us with the friend's last known location "near the tracks at furnace No 1 With heat so hot the hubs of hell would seem just barely warm".  We do know that the friend was near the furnace which is described in that incredibly grapic line "With heat so hot the hubs of hell would seem just barely warm".  By using the words "hubs of hell" Hall has also inserted a reminder of the puritanical vision of Hell as a punishment for suicide which is often considered to be an unpardonable sin.  Just as we must come to our own conclusions about Billy Joe and the narrator in the previous song, we also must reach our own conclusions about the subject of Hall's wonderful suicide song.  The natural assumption is that either the distraught husband "did something wrong"  or that he deliberately walked into the death zone of the furnace.  No matter how you personally believe the man responded to his wife's infidelity, you have to conclude that it is a fine suicide song by one of the world's great songwriters.


Another of my favorite song writers of all time in both Country and Bluegrass Music is Dolly Parton who has written numerous songs in categories which I loosely call "Songs For Social Workers".  She wrote and recorded a song called "The Bridge" about a young pregnant woman who is contemplating suicide and that song is narrated in the first person. "You kissed me for the first time here An' held me awfully tight And the bridge became our favorite place We came here often in the night."  Parton, who is a songwriter in that same class among the greatest in both genres as is Tom T. Hall, has told us that the affair began on the bridge and she raises the symbolism of darkness by saying  "We came here often in the night".  And that mention of the night is naturally a premonition of the young woman's death.  The concluding stanza clearly leaves us knowing that the narrator has committed suicide when she says:   "To think that you could leave me here My heart is beating wild  Tonight, while standing on the bridge With our unborn child My feet are moving slowly Closer to the edge Here is where it started And here is where I'll end it....  Parton has left us with no doubt that her young, pregnant narrator will "end it" and step off the bridge to her death before her fatherless child can be born.  Interestingly, this song is only one of several which Parton has written and recorded about young women who become pregnant by men who later desert them although all the other female characters in those songs do not commit suicide.
 

A Young Dolly Parton--Photo by Good Housekeeping

While every singer and songwriter in Country and Bluegrass Music does not perform or write songs about suicide, enough of such songs have been written and recorded by musicians and writers in the two genres to make the subject of suicide a common theme in both types of music.  And both Dolly Parton and Tom T. Hall have strong histories and lifelong commitments to both genres.  Each of them has written and performed for many decades in both genres.  Both have written numerous songs in each genre which are among the best known in all of American music.  I am sure that we will never see the end of suicide as a subject in both Country and Bluegrass. 

DEAD BABY MUSIC, A SUB-GENRE OF BLUEGRASS

DID I REALLY SAY "DEAD BABY MUSIC" YOU ASK?  YES, I DID!

Growing up in  Eastern Kentucky in the 1950's & 1960's I listened to a lot of bluegrass & classic country music primarily because that was what most of the people around me listened to and most of the radio stations I could pick up also played it daily.  But I also loved the music in all its manifestations.  As I became a hippie in the late 1960's, I ceased to listen to bluegrass and country for several years and listened primarily to rock and folk until about the middle 1970's.  At about that time, I returned to the music of my childhood and have listened to it nearly every day of my life since.  I generally prefer bluegrass over most other forms of music but do still periodically listen to classic rock, folk, blues, classical, jazz, and zydeco.  But, when I want to feel at peace, at home, comfortable and rested, I listen to bluegrass.  My favorite musicians include the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Reno & Smiley, Bill Monroe, Dailey & Vincent, the Carter Family, Tom T. Hall, Doc Watson, Area Code 615, Dale McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, Dolly Parton, Clarence Kelly, Patty Loveless, Don Rigsby, and Larry Cordle.  Nearly every one of these people is an above average musician and there are some of the best songwriters in America in this group.  Nearly every one of them has written and/or recorded at least one American classic song which has woven its way into the hearts of the general public.  Several of them such as Bill Monroe, Tom T. Hall, Ricky Skaggs, Flatt & Scruggs, Dolly Parton, and Larry Cordle have written and recorded several such songs.

Bluegrass music is the music of the Appalachian working class, the poor, the disenfranchised, and many of the people in the country who seek to move upward from an economic or social condition which they do not wish to live in for the rest of their lives.  Bluegrass music shares these qualities with both country music and rap. Like country music, bluegrass has commonly heard themes of love, drinking, unrequited love, cheating, home & family, hard work, prison, Christianity, and love of place, an Appalachian Value I have discussed at length in several other posts. Bluegrass also shares several of these themes with rap and at some time in the future, I will also write a post about common themes in bluegrass and rap.  But for now, my topic is a sub-genre of bluegrass music which I have always referred to as Dead Baby Music. And I have to give credit for the name Dead Baby Music to my wife Candice, a transplanted Wisconsin native, who first heard bluegrass with every negative opinion possible and has since come to know and love it.  I have searched for a slightly less off putting name for this type of music and to be honest, I cannot find one that is more accurate or more appropriately descriptive of the music I am discussing.  What I mean by Dead Baby Music is music which almost always has a central character, usually a child, who dies an untimely and often painful or cruel death.  In some of these songs, that death may have even come at the hands of a parent, family member or friend. 

The three best examples of Dead Baby Music I can think of are "Little Bessie" written by Bill Emerson, Doyle Lawson, & Charley Waller, "Bringing Mary Home" written by Red Sovine, and "The Water Lily" written by Tom T. Hall. "Little Bessie" is an absolute classic which has been recorded by hundreds of bluegrass artists but the two best versions are by Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs.  Skaggs recorded a version which is nearly 14 minutes long and is timeless in its musical skill & heart wrenching vocals.  In the song, Little Bessie, a terminally ill child tells her mother of a dream or vision in which "a window opened on a field of lambs and sheep. Some far out in a brook were drinking.  Some were lying fast asleep."  The next stanza describes "a world that was filled with little children and they seemed so happy there."  These clearly Christian symbols of pairing children with lambs lead into the next stanza in which Bessie asks if the Savior "saw me would he speak to such as me".    Bessie does go on to describe a conversation with Jesus in the next two stanzas in which he tells her "come up here my Little Bessie. Come up here and live with me".  Then the poor sick child tells her mother that she had just been getting ready to go when the mother called and she proceeds to tell her mother goodbye.  "Oh to sleep and never suffer Mother don't be crying so" is a request by the child for permission to die.  At this point, the "mother pressed her closer to her own dear burdened breast. On the heart so near its breaking lay the heart so near its rest".   And naturally, Little Bessie must die and go to join Jesus as the final stanza says "at the solemn hour of midnight in the darkness calm and deep lying on her mother's bosom Little Bessie fell asleep".  That is Dead Baby Music at its finest.  "Little Bessie" personifies nearly everything that Dead Baby Music is. It is played by thousands of bluegrass musicians ranging from the great to the miserably ordinary.  It is a crowd favorite at bluegrass concerts and festivals and will continue to be so long as bluegrass music is played in public.

Tom T. Hall, one of America's greatest living songwriters, with a portfolio of classics to his credit also wrote one of the finest pieces of Dead Baby Music when he penned "The Water Lily" which is best heard on the Hall & Stanley duet on Ralph Stanley's "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" recordings.  The song also begins with a dream, another common element in Dead Baby Music.   But this time, the mother is dreaming "of a lily decked pool with a border of ferns and a beautiful child with butterfly wings trips down to the edge of the water and sings."  Hall has probably consciously reversed some of the best elements of the earlier classic by having the mother dream and the child beckoning from the dreamland asking the mother to come.  But he has also consciously kept the elements of the dream, the mother, the child, and the water.  Tom T. Hall did not become the unequaled songwriter he is accidentally. He has studied and written both novels and short stories.  His public nickname has for many years been the Story Teller.  During the time he worked as a regularly touring musician, his band was known as the Story Tellers.  And in the story of "The Water Lily", he has woven one of his finest and one of the favorites of all followers of Dead Baby Music.  The lyrics of the song are woven together by the chorus of the child with butterfly wings singing to her mother "come mother, come quick follow me. Step out on the leaves of the water lily."  And, naturally, the mother attempts to join the beckoning child "but the lily leaves sink and she wakes from her dream".  And of course, the writer and the mother let us all know the inevitable for "waking is sad for the tears that it brings and she knows it is her dead baby's spirit that sings".  There is no finer example of Dead Baby Music in the world today.  Hall kept the best themes from "Little Bessie" but reversed the position of the mother and child.  He has the child already dead and begging her mother who is unable to comply to come and join her.  But, like "Little Bessie" we still have the grieving mother left behind by the dead child.

Red Sovine used a different approach but achieved an equally touching effect with "Bringing Mary Home".  The song begins with a narrator stopping in the night to pick up a small girl from the side of the road.  The child climbs into the car and tells the narrator "my name is Mary please won't you take me home."  And the narrator goes on to give us a touching physical description of the little girl.  "She must have been so frightened all alone there in the night.  There was something strange about her cause her face was deathly white."  Here we also see another common theme in Dead Baby Music with white symbolizing purity as it has in literature for hundreds of years.  Then the narrator and driver takes the little girl to the house where she asks him to go and when he gets out to open the car door for her  "I just could not believe my eyes the back seat was bare.  I looked all around the car but Mary wasn't there." And finally, Sovine brings the mother into the song with these words " A small light shown from the porch a woman opened up the door. I asked about the little girl that I was looking for. Then the lady gently smiled and brushed a tear away. She said it sure was nice of you to go out of your way. But thirteen years ago today in a wreck just down the road our darling Mary lost her life and we miss her so."  This time the mother is providing the consolation for the innocent stranger who has just happened to become an element in the child's quest to return to the home and grieving mother."  And then we reach the somewhat surprising and chilling end of the song when the mother tells the man  "so thank you for your trouble and the kindness you have shown.  You're the thirteenth one who's been here bringing Mary home."  At this point, it is not uncommon to see tears in an audience when a good singer and band deliver that line.

Dolly Parton has also written and recorded some of the finest Dead Baby Music I have ever heard.  She, too, is one of America's finest song writers with more than a few classic songs to her credit in the fields of country, pop, and bluegrass.  But her best Dead Baby Music is rarely heard outside the world of bluegrass.  On her classic bluegrass CD "Little Sparrow", Parton actually recorded two fine examples of Dead Baby Music,  "Mountain Angel" and "Down From Dover".  Parton did some of her best writing in "Mountain Angel".  It is a song about a girl who was born as close to perfect as it is possible to be. "Skin as fair as lily's. Hair as golden as the corn. She was her momma's baby. She was her Daddy's pride."  And then a man enters the picture and changes everything in this woman's life.  He gets her pregnant and disappears before the child is born.  "They say she had a baby.  Some say that it had died.  They say it's just as well as it had been the devil's child".  And now the grief-stricken mother disappears "into the wild".  The most powerful lyrics in the song come in the last couple of stanzas.  "She waited for him as her beauty faded. Her parents died from grief before their time." Not only has the tragedy consumed the mother of the dead baby in this song, it has also consumed the grandparents as well.  And like the other mothers in the other examples, this mother tries to deal with her grief but cannot. "She tried to gather pieces of her life, they wouldn't fit. Beside the tiny grave deep in the woods is where she'd sit. Talking to the child, herself, to him, who knew for sure. Possessed they say by Satan's insane lure."  At this point in the song, she has now completely lost her mind and become an outcast "high a'top the mountain"  And that is how she lives out her life roaming the mountains, grieving for the dead child and the man who ruined her. Parton takes her out into the hills and leaves her for all eternity where "for years they say she's seen. Looking down upon the town where she had once been queen. She'd sneak around the playground, watch the little children play. They'd see the crazy lady then run away. They say she roamed these hills for years, wearing not a stitch. The lovely mountain angel now thought to be a witch."

Parton also narrowly misses the genre of Dead Baby Music in another of her songs, "These Old Bones" from the "Halos And Horns" CD.  In that song, she tells a story of witchcraft or clairvoyance about another woman who lives alone in the mountains with her bag of bones, a dog, a cat, and a goat.  The narrator turns out to be a daughter of the woman which "the country took you from me said I wasn't right in my mind."  But this child lives to find the mother and takes care of her, burying her, and assuming her position of telling fortunes and living in the mountain with "These Old Bones".

In the other example of Dead Baby Music on the "Little Sparrow" CD, Parton writes about another young girl who has become pregnant by a man who deserts her.  But this girl leaves her family and home and goes to take "care of that old lady" as a way to have a home away from her family who have ostracized her.  As childbirth gets closer, she keeps repeating the chorus line "I know he'll be coming down from Dover."  But the girl delivers the child still born and sings "dying was her way of telling me he wasn't coming down from Dover".  All the songs I have discussed here are fine examples of Dead Baby Music.  They share several common elements.  There are many more in bluegrass which fit the genre.  They are part of what makes bluegrass unique and wonderful.  Rarely would anyone wish to listen to these songs all day long.  But when you mix them in among the other standard bluegrass themes of love, work, prison, heartbreak, and religion, they are well worth paying attention to and accepting as a treasured part of the bluegrass music many of us will love to our dying day.