Origin: Long Black Veil

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: michaelr
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:17 PM

No, Van's contribution to that album is his less than brilliant "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You". And Sting does "Mo Ghile Mear", badly... The Chieftains could have benefited from a producer on a lot of their collaborations with rock and pop stars, to tell them "no, no, no... this sucks!"

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Francy
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:11 PM

No Noreen....Van does "Have I Told You Lately" with the Chieiftains and it is wonderful.....It is Mick Jagger trying to do "Long Black Veil"....Frank of Toledo

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Noreen
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:07 PM

Isn't it Van Morrison singing it on that CD, Dicho? Haven't got it to hand but that's my memory.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Francy
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 06:53 PM

I enjoyed this thread up to the Mick Jagger doing this song well.....Sorry but you've got to hear Burl Ives...Lefty Frizzell.....Bobby Bare...Joan Baez.....Johnny Cash and many others...Please don't include Mick Jagger in that company.......Leave him where he belongs....in rock n roll

Frank of Toledo

Subject: Lyr Add: THE LONG BLACK VEIL (Jagger/Chieftains)
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 05:58 PM

Mick Jagger and the Chieftains recorded a fine version of the "Long Black Veil." It is closer to the original lyrics than the one in the DT.

THE LONG BLACK VEIL

Ten years ago, on a dark cold night
Someone was killed 'neath the town hall light.
There were a few at the scene, and they all did agree,
That the man who ran looked a lot like me.

The judge said, "Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else, you won't have to die."
I spoke not a word, though it meant my life,
For I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife.

She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows. Nobody sees.
Nobody knows but me.

The scaffold is high and eternity's near
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear.
Sometimes at night when the dark wind moans,
In a long black veil, she cries over my bones.

She walks these hills in a long black veil.
She visits my grave when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows. Nobody sees.
Nobody knows but me.

Revised from M. J. Wilkin and D. Dill
Slightly different chords from those offered in the DT (Baez?) may be found at: Long Black Veil

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Midchuck
Date: 27 Jun 00 - 12:38 PM

When we do it for audiences, we like to introduce it by saying that it's not a bluegrass song, no matter how many bluegrass groups may have done it, because the chick survives.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Vixen
Date: 27 Jun 00 - 08:29 AM

Wow! As usual, D'Cats come through with the goods! Thanks a million, folks!

While I'm disappointed to learn that it's not an "ancient tune," I am fascinated to learn its origins.

Thanks again,

V

Subject: Origins: Long Black Veil
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Jun 00 - 03:36 AM

Here's a quote from Danny Dill

"I got on a kick with Burl Ives songs—those old songs—but I –didn't know any, and I had no way to find any at the time, or was too lazy I said, 'I'll write me a folksong' - an instant folksong, if you will So I worked on it for months, and then it all came to me. There's three incidents I've read about in my life that really please me. There was a Catholic priest killed in New Jersey many years ago under a town hall light, and there was no less than 50 witnesses. They never found a motive. They never found the man. Until this day, it's an unsolved murder. That always intrigued me, so that's "under the town hall light." Then the Rudolph Valentino story's always impressed me—about the woman that always used to visit his grave. She always wore a long black veil—now there's the title for the song. And the third component was Red Foley's "God Walks These Hills With Me." I always thought that was a great song, so I got that in there, too. I just scrambled it all up, and that's what came out.

(from Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, by Dorothy Horstman, ©1975, 1986, 1996 by Country Music Foundation Press). The song was published in 1959.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 10:25 PM

As far as I know, Long Black Veil was composed in the 1940s, and first recorded by Lefty Frizell. Pure commercial country. Good, though.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: balladeer
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 10:22 PM

Long Black veil: composed in this century.

Streets of Laredo: almost as old as the streets of Laredo.

Or so tradition has it, i.e. that's what I've believed for the past forty years.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 02:57 PM

*phew* I was dizzy there for a moment. Thanks, Malcolm!

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 02:55 PM

Danny Dill certainly recorded The Streets of Laredo (in 1960) but, as the song has been known since at least 1886 (see  The Traditional Ballad Index ), I think that we're fairly safe sticking with "trad" for that one!!

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: MMario
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 02:17 PM

that's what they say

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 02:12 PM

You mean the Streets of Laredo isn't trad either?????

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: MMario
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 01:53 PM

some very interesting information here

url=http://theband.hiof.no/articles/long_black_veil_viney.html

It seems it was designed to sound like a traditional song.

---

Robbie Robertson
I just remembered the song somewhere back in my memory and sang it for Rick one day and he remembered it very well. It fit well with the other songs.

It’s also the song with the most obviously ‘country’ melody and lyric, and has a classic Americana sound and storyline. It is not an old country song at all, and maybe that was part of its appeal to The Band. The song - like much of their work - is a contemporary deliberate creation of a mythologically American piece. It was written by Nashville songwriters Danny Dill (composer of The Streets of Laredo) and Marijohn Wilkin (the writer of Jimmy Dean’s two hits, the JFK-mythologising P.T. Boat 109 and Big Bad John) in March 1959. The Long Black Veil (its full original title) was inspired by the real life murder of a New Jersey priest combined with newspaper accounts of a woman in a black veil who regularly visited Rudolph Valentino’s grave. Dill and Wilkin set out to make it sound like an old Appalachian ballad so as to hang onto the coat tails of the then burgeoning folk music revival. Within days of writing it, they got the then fast-fading country star Lefty Frizell to record the song in March 1959 (with a line-up that included Grady Martin and Harold Bradley on guitars and Marijohn Wilkin on piano). The result was released in May 1959 and the hit record revived Frizell’s career. Other artists have recorded the song, including Johnny Cash, Joan Baez and The Country Gentlemen, but The Band learned the song from Frizell’s original version. The song fits the mood of the album perfectly (it would have fit the next album too).

It’s instructive to compare their version with the Frizell version. Frizell sounds pure country. The accents are in completely different places, the beat is lilting, the drums are played with brushes, and a faint pedal steel plays around in the background. Every hick and hokey technique is on display, from hissing through the teeth on sibillants to a sincere gulp or two when the emotion of the words gets too much.

Then turn to The Band. The sound and words may be country, but on closer examination none of the instrumentation is. Levon slaps the drums with his classic hiccuping sound, this time with a tambourine fixed to the kit. Rick Danko takes the lead vocal with Levon echoing in behind then Richard adding a third layer on the chorus. The acoustic guitar is loud, the organ is prominent and high up, Richard Manuel holds the whole thing together with persistent Wurlitzer electric piano, then the whole thing is underpinned low down both by Danko’s melodic bass line and by John Simon on baritone horn. The instrumental track sounds like nothing except classic Band, but through it all the mood is still the country murder ballad. Danko takes the vocal with as much intensity as Frizell, but Danko is the more subtle actor, though maybe ‘kilt’ for ‘killed’ is over-playing it. He also likes to change voices for the judge’s immortal line, The judge said, "son what is your alibi, if you were someomewhere else then you won’t have to die."

One of Rick Danko’s personal specialities was country music send-ups, and there was always that edge of send-up in it:

Levon Helm
We knew it from Lefty Frizell’s version and liked the story of the young man who goes to the gallows for a murder he didn’t commit because his alibi was that he was "in the arms of his best friend’s wife." I guess we thought it was funny.

The air of send-up (as in Big Bad John) is almost certainly intrinsic and intentional. By the 1990s Long Black Veil had become a regular solo Danko number, and usually he hammed it up for all he was worth. By Rick Danko in Concert (1997) it had stretched to 6 minutes 42 seconds. The last verse is spoken in the mode of Elvis Presley’s It’s Now or Never. Then there’s another new addition, a semi-spoken bit about a train at the station, and everybody getting the urge to roam (which is a quote from Twilight).

VERSIONS:
Lefty Frizell original:
Single. Now onColumbia Country Classics 3: Americana (Columbia) or The Best of Lefty Frizell (Rhino).

The hit revived Frizell’s career. Co-writer Marijohn Wilkin then recorded an answer disc herself in 1961 with barely changed lyrics as My Long Black Veil (The few at the scene were wrong as could be, cos the man they had killed that night was with me … The scaffold was high, I knew his death was near, I stood in the crowd and shed unseen tears … so there). It has a much less country and more elaborate arrangement, a lot of elaborate strings and thudding bass.

Colin Escott (Sleeve notes to: And the Answer Is … )
Marijohn tried to double her money by cutting an answer disc. It would have worked better if she’d added a new wrinkle to the plot, but she didn’t.

Both versions are available side-by-side on And The Answer Is … Great Country Answer Discs From The 50s (Bear Family BCD15793). The And the Answer Is … The 60s compilation is even more fun if you’re into so-bad-that-it’s-good.

Band versions:
Music From Big Pink - the only non-original (or non-Dylan song)on their first four albums.

Live on video:The Band: Japan Tour and The Reunion Concert in 1984.

Live on Woodstock 25th Anniversary Collection 4 CD set.
The selection of three Band songs from the Woodstock Festival covers country (The Long Black Veil), soul (Lovin’ You Is Sweeter than Ever) and their final meeting point (The Weight).

Rick Danko in Concert, 1997

They started doing it again live in 1996 / 97, following Rick Danko’s frequent airings on 90s solo shows.

Covered by Mick Jagger with The Chieftains in 1994 with the obvious source as The Band rather than Lefty Frizell.

Lefty Frizell recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDcYdldTat4

Subject: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Vixen
Date: 26 Jun 00 - 01:48 PM

D'Cats, o experts on all folk-musical:

Is "Long Black Veil" a traditional song?

The DT says it was written by Danny Dill and Marijon Wilkin. However, two times in the last two weeks I have heard from two different sources that it was written by....Johnny Cash!??! I have always thought it was an old song (read "author unknown") made popular during the 60s folk revival by Joan Baez and PPM.

Will someone enlighten me with the truth please?

Thanks,

V