Georgia Lee

    

Back in the 1990's, Tom Waits wrote a song called "Georgia Lee". He wrote it after the body of a 12-year-old girl was found not far from his house.

If I remember the story correctly, she'd been dumped there in a patch of trees, although her death barely made the newspapers. It was around the time of the Polly Klaas case — or during some other headline-making search for an abducted girl — and Waits was disturbed at the possibility that kids like Georgia Lee don't get as much coverage because they're too poor or too black or too troubled or they're not photogenic enough or ...

While he was doing the final editing of Mule Variations, Tom Waits cut "Georgia Lee" from the CD. Tom's daughter — who was near the age Georgia Lee had been when she died — was appalled. Here Georgia Lee is used up, murdered, and thrown away and nobody cares ... but finally somebody writes a song about her ... and it GETS CUT FROM THE ALBUM?

So, Waits took a deep sigh and restored the song to Mule Variations, wistfully remembering the simplicity of his single days when the only people meddling with his art were record company executives, producers, accountants, lawyers ...

Anyway, with that background, I'll get to the point. The lyrics begin:

Cold was the night and hard was the ground
They found her in a small grove of trees
And lonesome was the place where Georgia was found
She's too young to be out on the street

[Chorus]
Why wasn't God watching?
Why wasn't God listening?
Why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee?

Probably, the first line refers to Blind Willie Johnson's 1927 "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," certainly the most famous recording with that kind of phrase — cold was the night, hard was the ground. Johnson's recording is essentially wordless, though, except for its title. The vocals consist of humming, or moans delivered like sighs of grief. Occasionally, he says "Ah well." The song is a contemplation, and a profound one ... but on what?

Blind Willie Johnson came first in my discovery of "the old stuff" (largely because "Dark Was the Night" is on the Voyager Record). It took a while for me to decide whether this song was about the burial of Jesus in his tomb, or about the humble circumstances of his birth. Its full title is "Dark Was The Night Cold Was the Ground On Which Our Lord Was Laid," and the body of Jesus was placed on the cold, dark ground twice, at birth and at death.

Both stories — especially thought of together, as bookends — are capable of eliciting the grief Johnson expresses on the record, especially from the perspective of the African American spiritual tradition. You follow? To black, blind Johnson, either story might sound pretty damned sad. Today, we usually miss the pity in the Christmas story ... bad for sales, presumably.

In the end, I decided "Dark Was the Night" was a contemplation of the Crucifixion on through to the burial. After all, that's what Samuel Charters says in his liner notes, and once I started understanding who Charters is, I guessed maybe he might know what he's saying.

Besides, those three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection — days I never thought much about until puzzling over "Dark Was the Night" — are a powerful symbol of not just grief, but despair, the total lack of hope. It's from those three days that the Resurrection takes on much of its emotional impact — especially if you happen to be a slave, or the descendant of one.

(I was reminded of this again when listening to Bruce Springsteen's version of "Oh Mary Don't You Weep." It's jammed with references to the Old Testament, which puzzled me until I realized it was comfort for an old Jewish woman upon the death of her son — that is, to Mary during those three days. A song against despair. No wonder the Torah so electrified the Negro Spiritual — they're both the cultural products of slavery.)

But the Christ child stayed in my head nevertheless. The tension between those images of the baby Jesus and Crucifixion reminded me of something I'd learned in college art history classes. There's a long tradition in European art of depicting the baby Jesus with the features of an old man, and of depicting a pieta (Mary with the crucified Jesus) with strong suggestions of a Madonna and child. Birth and Crucifixion are mixed up together. At least in the way I've heard "Dark Was The Night," Blind Willie Johnson and Michelangelo share that ambivalence, that refusal to decide.

And that's where it stood until Mule Variations was released. There was Tom Waits referring to "Dark Was the Night" at the start of "Georgia Lee" — a song about a dead child. Whether intended or not, "Georgia Lee" revives this confusion between the pieta and the Madonna and child, and does it through Blind Willie Johnson. Tom's song also evokes "Dark Was the Night" in a subtler way. Waits writes a lot of wonderfully sad songs, but I think "Georgia Lee" is unusual in his body of work, being perhaps his only song that lacks any hope whatsoever. Like "Dark Was the Night," it's as if "Georgia Lee" were recorded during the three days — it's entirely despairing. It's about that, as the chorus powerfully suggests.

 

Editor's Note: This is installment 24 of 28 entries in which I seek to post something to The Celestial Monochord every day ... every stinkin day ... for the entire month of February.