Long Black Veil

DESCRIPTION: "Ten years ago on a cold dark night, Someone was killed 'neath the town hall light." The singer is accused of murder. He wasn't there, but can't give an alibi, because "I'd been in the arms of my best friend's wife." She visits his grave in the long veil
AUTHOR: Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin (source: Wikipedia and many other web sites)
EARLIEST DATE: 1959 (recording, Lefty Frizzell)
KEYWORDS: homicide punishment execution wife adultery
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REFERENCES (1 citation):
DT LGBLVEIL*
Roud #18510
NOTES [195 words]: This has been recorded by so many folk and bluegrass sources (including Johnny Cash and Joan Baez) that people sometimes seem to assume it is traditional. It certainly isn't by origin, although Max Hunter did collect a version sung by Ollie Gilbert a decade after the song was first recorded.
The story is not exactly based on reality; rather, Dill and Wilkin combined two unrelated elements -- an unsolved murder (of a priest, under a "town hall light"), plus an account of an unidentified woman in a veil who regularly visited the grave of Rudolph Valentino -- and the general mood of some spooky religious songs (in particular, Red Foley's "God Walks These Hills With Me") and combined them to produce this.
Apparently it became so well-known that someone even wrote a book based on the song.
Several people have pointed out that this bears some resemblance to the story of Joe Hill and his refusal to give an alibi for the murder with which he was charged. The parallel is very real (for background, see the notes to "Joe Hill"), but the authors of this song would have known of that -- or taken it as inspiration. "Death before dishonor" is real, for some people. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: DTlgblve

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