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.