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Track of the Day - 5/18/2007
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Jessica Lurie - Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby Listen to Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby on Rhapsody It may be fairly surprising to find out that some of our first exposure to music that can be classified as horror may have come from those early lullabies that were sung to us as infants.  Okay, so it might not be quite as prevalent these days with manufactured CD's that give us plenty of other material to work with, but even some of those simple songs more than likely had a few lyrics that modern day artists tend to skip over. I have to admit that I spent a lot of time researching this particular track and will continue to do so even after this entry.  For the most part, it is relatively contemporary.  We all know it as “the siren song” from the film and/or soundtrack, O Brother, Where Art Thou?.  In that case, Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby was sung a cappella by Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris and Alison Krauss.  In fact, with the exception of the first verse, the words were all penned by Welch for the film.  The film was a take on Homer's The Odyssey and they needed a song that would capture the moment where the main characters are lured to sleep by the sirens of the river.  The song worked to perfection and made for one of the best scenes in the movie.  However, despite the fact that some of the lyrics were penned quite recently, it has deep-seated roots in the dark lullabies of old. Somewhere in my research, I heard a claim that the song was based on an old ballad about a father (either a slave owner and the child was a product of an affair with one of his slaves or the father was a slave himself) that poisons a child and places the body in the river, after the mother (a slave herself) is sold away or dies and he is unable (or doesn't want to) care for the child.  While interesting, it was really hard to find anything to substantiate this. There are three major influences for this particular track.  The first was a lullaby titled All the Pretty Ponies, which is what is credited as the major influence by Welch, which is a simple lullaby.  The second is the original version of Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby (which basically consists of the first verse repeated over and over).  Finally, the last is another variation called Go To Sleep Little Baby, which is a similar take of a mother (in this case "daddy's gone away") luring the child to sleep as the family goes to work in the nearby fields.  All are more than likely inspired from one another in one form or another and for the most part, the lyrics are fairly tame and are not overtly menacing. Go to sleep you little baby Come and lay your bones on the alabaster stones And be my ever loving baby So if this songs this was based on are fairly innocuous, how did lyrics like above or "She's long gone with her red shoes on" or "You and me and the devil makes three" that seem to imply something a little more nefarious get added on ?  Well, the truth is probably as simple as they fit the scene for the movie. However, that is not to say that it isn't faithful to the lullabies of old.  In fact, one variation of the above songs titled All the Pretty Horses has the line, "Bees and butterflies/Plucking out his eyes/And poor little baby cries Mammy", which fits the meter and rhyme of the song perfectly. At the end of the day, it is all a matter of interpretation though.  Some could listen to this song and not interpret the lyrics to be anything more than nice flowing rhymes.  In fact, one could interpret the line, "Honey in the rock and the sugar don't stop" to be a Biblical reference.  Jessica Lurie's version here, from her 2005 album Licorice & Smoke, has a more unsettling feel than even the a cappella version sung in the film.  This version of Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby features varied warped and scratched notes and sometimes distorted vocals to create a very surreal world that has a real dark edge to it.  As for my own personal interpretation?  Well, the fact that I am writing about it on a horror site pretty much answers that question.
Filed under: Music, Dark Lullabies, Track of the Day	May 18, 2007, 5:32 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments
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Elret Jun 06 2007, 03:06 AM UTC You know what I find the creepiest about this song? If mama and daddy are gone away, and everybody's gone in the cotton and the corn, and there really is nobody but the baby, then who is singing the song?
TheCabinet Jun 06 2007, 05:07 PM UTC I think the lines goes, "You're mama's gone away but you're daddy's going to stay" and "You and me and the devil makes three" which implies that the father is still around to some degree. Maybe it is my demented mind, but I always wonder if there isn't something slightly sinister to the way they sing "You're mama's gone away..." Maybe I just have listened to too many Eminem songs... I'm glad to see you use the word "creepy". I was wondering if I was the only one that found this song to be more than a little haunting. Any thoughts to what it all means?
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