My Favorite One Hit Wonders of the 70s: The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (#6)

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Our great music geek Scott (@teamfreak16 ) is missing in action after his girlfriend ended up in the emergency room on the 4th of July. Keep them in your thoughts, prayers, and well wishes. He's counting down his favorite 70s one-hit wonders, and so am I. Here's my next one. #6: The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia - Vicki Lawrence Vicki Lawrence was known to a generation as the "Carol Burnett look-alike" on The Carol Burnett Show, one of the most classic variety shows in history. (If you're too young to remember that series, let me tell you, you really missed a good show!) In 1972 she was not only an Emmy nominee but, thanks to her then-husband Bobby Russell's composition, owner of a #1 song. Bobby Russell had a schizophrenic-type career as a songwriter. He wrote one of the most hideous songs in pop music history, the horrid "H*ney" (a #1 hit by Bobby Goldsboro); then, on the other hand, he had his own hit with the lighthearted look at family life, "Saturday Morning Confusion." (Russell died of coronary artery disease at the age of 52 in 1992.) Russell and Lawrence were only married for two years, but in that time he wrote and she recorded "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," a fabulous story song about the "good ol' boys" way of enacting justice in the deep south. (And, truthfully, I wouldn't say this song was all that inaccurate in its criticism.) A man comes back to town and is told by his friend, Andy Wolloe, that his wife has been cheating with dang near every man in town while he's been out of town. The man goes home in a fit of rage and gets "the only thing papa had left him, and that was a gun." He goes to Andy's house and sees he's already dead. Scared, he fires a shot to attract the police, and they slap the cuffs on him, and proceed to try him in a kangaroo court and hang him in a hurry because "supper's waitin' at home and I gotta get to it." As it turns out, the woman telling the story is the little sister of the man, and she says she knows they tried and convicted the wrong person. She didn't get the chance, due to the speedy nature of the execution, to tell the police that those were her footprints at Andy's house, or that her sister-in-law "had never left town, but that's one body that'll never be found; you see, little sister don't miss when she aims her gun." It's a fascinating story, troubling in many regards (because, as I said, there's elements of this that probably happened in rural areas of the south: find someone, anyone, convict them, and close the books on the case, regardless of the facts or any innocence), and a wonderful story song. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia Written by Bobby Russell Recorded by Vicki Lawrence From The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, 1972 Vicki Lawrence singing her one and only hit, which went to #1: