Origin: Long Black Veil

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Guest Joan F
Date: 18 Aug 22 - 10:17 AM

I honestly grew up thinking "galore" was a Yiddish word. It is of course Irish Gaelic. But we (Jews) really needed it, so we took it.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GerryM
Date: 15 Aug 22 - 11:16 PM

I've now had some correspondence with Peter Viney. He writes, "No idea where I got that from!"
Whatever he may have thought when he made that post in 1998, he certainly knows now that Danny Dill didn't write Strets Of Laredo.

He says the website where he made the incorrect attribution is "frozen" and regrets that he can't correct it.

Hey, we all make mistakes. I used to be certain that "spatula" was Yiddish, and "tiramisu" Japanese or Korean.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 15 Aug 22 - 10:03 AM

Okay. I think it's hilarious that Peter Viney thinks Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo."

Some years ago a prominent folk deejay remarked to me, "I didn't know John Stewart wrote 'Jesse James'." He wasn't being sarcastic.

Since traditional music is in the public domain, anyone can claim composer credits and attendant royalties for a particular song. Most listeners of any sophistication understand that. (The proper attribution should read, "Trad. Arr.," of course.) I'm always surprised when I come upon someone sufficiently naive to think, say, that Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo."

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GerryM
Date: 14 Aug 22 - 06:15 PM

*I think it's hilarious that Robbie Robertson thinks Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo."*

Jerome, I'm sure Robbie Robertson knows that Danny Dill didn't write Streets Of Laredo. A closer look at the post to which you are probably responding makes it clear that it was Peter Viney, not Robbie Robertson, who made that attribution.

Viney has a music blog at https://peterviney.com/peter-viney-music-rock-the-band-record-cover/

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 14 Aug 22 - 11:49 AM

I think it's hilarious that Robbie Robertson thinks Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo."

In the real world, "Cowboy's Lament" -- now better known as "Streets of Laredo" -- was written and published in 1876. Francis Henry Maynard, who wrote the lyrics to a traditional tune, was an actual cowboy. The melody was/is related to "Bard of Armagh," "Handful of Laurel," "Unfortunate Rake," and others united by a common theme of a young man's untimely death.

In the late 1950s and '60s country songwriters and stars wrote and/or performed pseudo-folk songs to cash in on the folk boom. (Arkansas folksinger/composer Jimmy Driftwood contributed "Battle of New Orleans" to Johnny Horton, as but one of many examples.) "Long Black Veil" was composed in the fashion of a traditional ballad for a growing popular audience then attracted to that sort of thing. Lefty Frizzell had a hit with it, but the first version I heard was on a folk-oriented mid-1960s Johnny Cash album;

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GerryM
Date: 13 Aug 22 - 06:34 PM

Joan, Goodman may have done it different ways on different occasions. In a live performance posted to https://youtu.be/8QUSQJQml40 he sings,

Ever since the dog got drunk and died, and Momma went to prison,
Why, nothing 'round this farm's been the same.
John, you know, when Mom broke out last Christmas,
She drove that old getaway laundry truck right into a train.

I think John Prine must have been in the wings, otherwise I'm not sure what the "John" in line three is about. Then there's a live performance with John Prine at https://youtu.be/J0J1ISJLRb0 where they sing,

Ever since the day my Momma went to prison,
There's nothin' 'round this farm that's been the same.
You know that when they let her out last Tuesday,
She drove her pickup truck into a train.

So, you may well have heard him do it the way you remember it.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Guest Joan F
Date: 13 Aug 22 - 09:47 AM

My version of the Goodman song goes:

I got drunk the day my Ma got outta prison
Took my dog & went to fetch her in the rai-ai-ai-ain
But before I could pick her up
In my good old pickup truck
She went & got run over by a damned old train

At this point I don't know if I heard Steve do it like this or its mine own embellishment.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Guest Joan F
Date: 13 Aug 22 - 09:40 AM

Those of us who learned it from Joan Baez, who sings it *goodly*, always flinch when we hear people singing "there were few at the scene" instead of "the people at the scene" even though "few" is how it turns out to have been written.

Better to flinch at why if you were gonna stab somebody on a *dark* night you would choose the town hall light to do it 'neath.

Need to make sure you've got the right stabbee?

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GerryM
Date: 13 Aug 22 - 12:58 AM

Mrrzy must be referring to

I was drunk the day my mama got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in the pickup truck
She got ran over by a damned old train.

from Steve Goodman's You Never Even Called Me By My Name.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Aug 22 - 11:02 PM

Um, perfect country song? It doesn't exactly mention prison, and where are mama, a train, a truck, and getting drunk?

[I couldn't resist.]

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Aug 22 - 08:52 AM

Johnny Cash covered LBV on 'Live from Folsom Prison' LP.
The voice, the venue and the lyrics are just spooky.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GerryM
Date: 08 Aug 22 - 11:43 PM

Joe, MMario gave that same link way back in the 2nd post in this thread. It confirms what I've read elsewhere, except for its allegation that Dill was the composer of Streets of Laredo, an allegation that has been laughed out of court elsewhere on this thread.

I read on another site the author's opinion that it was the greatest country song ever, and that one of the things in its favor is that it's so great you can't sing it badly. Then I looked elsewhere and saw folks suggest Johnny Cash sang it badly, Joni Mitchell sang it badly, Joan Baez sang it badly, Lefty Frizzell sang it badly, Mick Jagger sang it badly....

Anyway, I think the preponderance of evidence is that it's correctly attributed to Dill and Wilkin, circa 1959.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Aug 22 - 05:56 PM

So, is this traditional, or not? I said trad, and people at the Mudcat Singaround corrected me.

See http://theband.hiof.no/articles/long_black_veil_viney.html

My own message quotes Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy saying it was written by Danny Dill and published in 1959.

But another message from Malcolm Douglas says the song is traditional, so who's a person to believe? Joe Offer or Malcolm Douglas? Personally, I'd believe Malcolm.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 02:51 PM

Janie,

I listened to Lefty Frizell along with the others and include his version as not at all to my taste, not very convincing.

Hoot

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: Janie
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 09:05 AM

Lefty's recording, Hoot. Becky linked to it in her above post.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 07:36 AM

I agree that this is a a great song, a well-crafted song, a fun song to sing, and one very much in the tradition of Appalachian ballads.

But--it's been done an awful lot by bluegrass bands, and requested of them even when they had not planned to do it..

And so, at a bluegrass festival years ago I heard an adjustment to part of the lyrics of the last verse:

"Now the scaffold is high and eternity near
She stood in the crowd and had hotdogs and beer."

I can't remember if, having sung that, they even finished the song.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Jaze
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 04:57 PM

I love a song written by a ghost.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: meself
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 10:54 AM

The first version I heard was by The Band, on their first or second album. It made quite an impression on me - course I was about 15; lots of things made quite an impression on me ....

-----------------------------------------------

Now, on the subject of writers who don't know basic grammar:

"Unlike most other versions, producer Don Law ...... "

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 08:25 AM

This is a song that I really like but I don't think that any of the above versions do it justice, in fact I couldn't listen to any of them all through. Mitchell most unsuited to do it with Cash and as for the Dave Matthews sung with absolutely no feeling and masses of over produced sound behind him. I can say in all honesty that I have heard it sung with more sincerity and feeling by an ex-pat American dobro player who plays in sessions in London.

Are there any commercially recorded versions out there that really are worth hearing?

Hoot

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 31 Oct 13 - 10:45 PM

I have the lp (or had it) of Danny Dill called "Folk Songs of the Wild West", which I think was released in 1960. He recorded Long Black Veil on it, and it sounds absolutely nothing like any of the other versions.   I'm not sure if that's how he originally intended it to sound......but his version is pretty awful.

Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 31 Oct 13 - 01:30 PM

The Long Black Veil is the Perfect Country Song And the Perfect Halloween Song

by Betsy Phillips
guest at the Culture blog at ThinkProgress.org
October 31, 2013

It's Halloween, which means it's a fine time to talk about the greatest country and western song, hands down, ever. Now, I'm sure you've been mislead into believing that it's something like "He Stopped Loving Her Today" or something by Hank Williams or, hell, "Red Solo Cup." But no.

The greatest country song, ever, is "The Long Black Veil."

It is literally the perfect country song. It contains all the elements a country song should have — infidelity, murder, and people needlessly suffering because of outdated senses of honor. It sounds like it could be an ancient Appalachian ballad, even though Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin wrote it just over sixty years ago. Almost everyone who sings it manages not to butcher it. And, best of all (and appropriate for today), it's sung from the perspective of a skeleton.

In Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles (in which the song comes in at an inexplicable 222), David Cantwell writes, " 'The Long Black Veil,' in which a man can't clear his name because to do so would require admitting that he's been 'in the arms of [his] best friend's wife," is a gothic cheating song — where love and guilt stretch beyond the grave and mourning never ceases." Yes, this is it exactly. The song conjures up the most tender sore spot imaginable and then lets you wallow in the painful pleasure of poking at it for three whole minutes.

Lefty Frizzell did the first and best version. His voice is as beautiful as it ever was, though you can hear a kind of hiss on some of his s-es, at the end of "hills" and "knows" that sound like he might have been nursing a hurt jaw. The accompaniment is sparse — just a simple guitar and an occasional crying fiddle. Unlike most other versions, producer Don Law resisted the temptation to use the music to hit you over the head with the spookiness of the song.

But over the years, there have been some really interesting takes on it. Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell did a great version, where Mitchell sings like she's haunted herself. Dave Matthews does a very "Dave Matthews" take on the song that is worth it to hear Emmylou Harris's voice cutting through all the ridiculousness. And probably my favorite cover is, weirdly enough, Mick Jagger and the Chieftains, who make the song sound like it's a thousand years old.

I envy those of you who've never heard it before, because the chills you're about to get come only the first time you hear the song: Lefty Frizzell sings Long Black Veil.

----

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Mar 04 - 12:33 AM

Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, my favourite version of Long Black Veil, as for the Chieftains, well in the book by John Glatt, Paddy would play with anyone just for the publicity.
eric

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Stewie
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 04:54 PM

Put 'Long Black Veil' into the Google newsgroups archives search box and you will get a vast number of hits. Select 'Search all groups':

Click Here.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 03:45 PM

I just remembered: I heard it on a Country Gentlemen album also "Good Woman's Love".

My memory seems to be returning, does that mean I'm well again?

CB

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Mar 04 - 12:34 PM

Lefty Frizzell's hit, "The Long Black Veil," is at the Record Lady, Real Country page 2: Record Lady

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,THE REAL POOP
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 12:57 PM

A friend of mine's mother-in-law said her daughter heard that a neighbor had read an article in a newspaper that a guy from out of town told the New York Times editor that his uncle DEFINITELY knew that DANNY DILL was the AUTHOR of the lyrics to LONG BLACK VEIL and had pitched it to MARIJOHN WILKIN, who wrote the MUSIC for the DIRGE...

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 02:48 AM

You gotta admit, Joan Baez'Nashville version is really quite good.

Subject: Chords Add: LONG BLACK VEIL (Wilkin/Dill)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 11 Dec 02 - 02:23 AM

I found this version of the chords here (click)
-Joe Offer-

---

Long Black Veil
by M.J.Wilkin and D.Dill. Album: Music from Big Pink

  G
  Ten years ago on a cool dark night  
            D                         C         G
  There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light
  G  
  There were few at the scene and they all did agree  
           D                    C        G
  That the man who ran looked a lot like me
  
  The judge said "Son, what is your alibi?  
  If you were somewhere else then you won't have to die"
  I spoke not a word although it meant my life  
  I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife
  
      C           G          C          G
  She walks these hills in a long black veil  
      C         G               C           G
  She visits my grave where the night winds wail
  G                     C      G  
  Nobody knows, no, and nobody sees  
  C      G     D   C
  Nobody knows but me 
  
  The scaffold was high and eternity neared  
  She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear  
  But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans  
  In a long black veil she cries over my bones

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 02 - 12:43 PM

Streets of Laredo-Bard of Armagh-Rake's Lament have all been discussed and lamented over in several threads here. St. James Infirmary usually has a different tune. There are also threads diagnosing that one as well.

47312 has more Long Black Veil. Long Black Veil

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 01 Oct 02 - 10:25 AM

The "Streets of Laredo" has virtually the same tune and plot to the much older british "Rake's Lament", "Young Sailor/Soldier cut down in his prime" group of songs. Just as the song was modified for the central character to be a soldier, Sailor, Highwayman etc. someone, presumably across the Atlantic changed it to a Cowboy - perhaps that was done by Dill.



I always understood that "Saint James Imfirmary" was a later adaption of "Laredo".

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 01 Oct 02 - 04:56 AM

CB
Sounds like you're thinking of the "Lock Hospital" versions - Christy Moore recorded one many years ago, for example. There was indeed a "Lock Hospital" for the treatment of VD in Townsend St. in Dublin - but there were lots of others wherever the British Army went! There is a St. James Hospital in Dublin, alright, but no relation.

Regards

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 08:20 PM

The fidelity that transcends life itself... Well now, I've been doing this song for years, all enthusiasticly like Ms.Baez, and I heard other versions much like it... Then I started hearing a creepy rendition done in song circles and open mics where the beat seemed all heavy and the singer miserable and twitching... And yes, sure enough, the awesome chieftons CD that I heard at a party had this miserable rendition on it by none other than Mick Jagger. I was so sad hearing good local musicians doing Mick's version... just seemed wrong...

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Art Thieme
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 07:48 PM

Friends, I do feel that this is about as close to a song about ghosts and other supernatural / occult topics that you will ever see in a commercially produced and distributed song in these still terribly puritanical United States. In the world of folk lyrics, hovering in the mists of the oral tradition for all to see, are the ghosts conversing with family etc. in songs like "The Lady Gay", "Lost Jimmy Whalen", "Tamlyn" and a few others derived from the English and Scottish (Irish too) Popular Ballads. But only this and, maybe, the Country Gentlemen's "Bringing Mary Home" are all that vome to mind at present.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Leadfingers
Date: 30 Sep 02 - 05:44 PM

Streets of Laredo/St James Infirmary and a whole lot of others have their roots in The Rakes Lament,which was adapted by both the Army and the Navy and transported round the world in the eighteenth century.Or very early nineteenth.I think.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 21 Jul 02 - 03:24 AM

I've always liked and often sang Long Black Veil but I think the guy was a jerk since the gal chose to stay with her husband rather than save her lover's life, sheesh!

As for Streets of Laredo, I understood it to be a very close relative of the Saint James Hospital-Saint James Infirmary, also to be Irish in origin and further also to be of a young man dying of "the pox" The version I sing is a bit more graphic than the usual version in that the young cowboy asks that roses be strewn over his coffin to mask the smell and in the last verse he asks the singer for a glass of cold water and "...but when I returned the spirit had left him and gone to his maker, the poor boy had died." I cannot remember where I learned the song in the first place or where I had heard of its ties to Dublin's St. James Hospital (if there ever was such a place)

Life is full of mysteries.

CB

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,K
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 10:17 AM

MY LONG BLACK VEIL
Alternative lyrics as recorded by Marijohn Wilkin herself on a 45 rpm in 1961

Ten years ago on a cold dark night
There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light
The few at the scene were wrong as could be
Cause the man they accused that night was with me

But what could he do and what could he say
For that one stolen night he just had to pay
He couldn't tell a soul that I was out with him
Cause the whole town knew I belonged to his best friend

Now I walk these hills in my long black veil
I visit his grave when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows but me

The scaffold was high I knew his dead was near
I stood in the crowd and shed unseen tears
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
In my long black veil I weep for his bones

I walk these hills in my long black veil
I visit his grave when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows but me

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Noreen
Date: 10 Jul 02 - 09:39 PM

Yes, Pluiméir Ceolmhar, that can be the only reason for including Marianne Faithful on the album... (cringe)

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: boglion
Date: 10 Jul 02 - 04:22 PM

Apparantly, Mick Jagger was first lined up to sing The Foggy Dew but baulked at its Republican connotations - he might not have got his knighthood!!

He settled for Long Black Veil and I've had the governor of my local pub in Kerry taking the p*ss every time I sing it - claiming it's a Stones song. I learned it from Ms Baez many many years ago.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 08:56 PM

Just last night on a hot summer's night,
Disdaining the disguise of a long black veil,
I killed a man 'neath the town hall light-
The Irish bard and unfortunate rake I helped to kick the pail
Had begun another thread on the Streets of Laredo.
Nobody knows, Nobody sees,
Only the Shadow knows.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From:
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 06:19 PM

Keith and Glen,

According to Bruce Olson, he ties Streets of Laredo to the Unfortunate Rake and the Buck's Elegy.

... all wrapped in white linen

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From:
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 06:09 PM

Guest K., from the link posted by MMario way up near the top:

      The hit revived Frizells 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.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 04:25 PM

I think the whole thing in all it's permutations was a prequel to OJ Simpson.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 06:29 AM

The Streets of Laredo is certainly sung to the same tune as the Bard of Armagh, but chances are that the tune had already been recycled. The Bard of Armagh was someone called "Bold Phelim Brady", but I think his only claim to fame (if he even existed) is the song about him.

BTW, we owe a lot to the Chieftains, but much of that album just sucks. In keeping with Paddy Moloney's less attractive character trait (and the "authorised biography" of the Chieftains), it's just one long exercise in name-dropping.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,K
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 04:14 AM

Marijohn Wilkin, co-author of the song, recorded a version herself in 1961. With slight different lytrics, like: The few at the scene were wrong as can be, cause the man they accused that night was with me. Etc

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,KeithA o Hertford at work
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 03:27 AM

They all come from Ireland don't they, but some think it derives from the English " The Soldier/Sailor Cut Down In His Prime"

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: GUEST,Glen Reid
Date: 09 Jul 02 - 12:27 AM

I had heard, that the Streets of Larado was borrowed from the trad. Irish tune called, The Bard of Armagh. Any takers?

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 08:50 PM

Gee jumping jelly beans, I guess not everybody likes Mick Jagger's rendition.
I used to like Burl Ives when I was in school, but I find his singing shallow now. (Ducking again!)

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:31 PM

Well that must be a very strange version of either the Streets of Laredo or the Boston Burglar, or both.

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:23 PM

I thought I'd heard the Band do it, or is that just false memory?

Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:23 PM

I've been given to understand that the tune and central idea for Streets of Laredo is an older traditional song called The Boston Burglar.

Dave Oesterreich