Ten Favorite Real People Songs: Marie Laveau (#4)

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There are oh, so many songs about real people out there. Many of those people have their name used as the title of a song, or included in the title of a song. @teamfreak16 started (and has since completed) a countdown of favorite songs with real people in the title, and I figured that was a good enough theme to steal, so here’s the next song on my list! #4: Marie Laveau - Bobby Bare Bobby Bare’s Lullabys, Legends, and Lies album was the first in a long line of records that I bought in my teenage years that my dad disapproved of. It sort of “pushed the envelope” for him, even though it was hardly out of the realm of “country music” the way the heavily orchestrated “countrypolitan” of the era was. No, dad didn’t care for the lyrical content. (I’ll leave it for you to appreaciate the humor of that oxymoron.) Oh, well. I still have this album, and still love it. And I suppose Dad still disapproves (although nowhere near how he felt when I got into Elton John!). Marie Laveau was a legendary voodoo queen in New Orleans. That’s about all the “truth” that people know. As with a lot of people in such an occupation, the lines between fact and fiction are very, very blurry. So, needless to say, Silverstein, who wrote a huge number of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show’s songs (in fact, they recorded this before Bare did!), utilized that to his advantage and created his own myth about her (well, the album is called “Lullabys, Legends, and LIES! ). In this probably artificial story (you never know!) a man named Handsome Jack comes to Marie Laveau and offers matrimony if she’ll give him a million dollars. Excited about the prospect of marriage, she grants his wish, then declares, “I’m getting ready for my wedding day.” (In reality, Laveau was married at least twice, plus had a live-in lover.) Quickly, though, Handsome Jack forgets his promise, because Marie is “too damned ugly for a rich man like me!” As you can guess, he never gets to spend the money. Here’s another interesting take on Marie Laveau related to music: according to Picky Wedia, members of the punk band the Misfits were arrested in New Orleans for trying to exhume her body after a 1982 concert. Anyway, what may surprise you is that — for all those classic hits like “Detroit City” — this was Bobby Bare’s only #1 song on the country charts. Marie cast her spell on the charts, too. Marie Laveau Written by Shel Silverstein and Baxter Taylor Recorded by Bobby Bare From Lullabys, Legends, and Lies, 1974 Another man done gone!