31 Days of Halloween Hits: "Marie Laveau" by Bobby Bare

by Julian Spivey
As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! 
 
That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. 

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Photo: RCA Records

Many people likely know Shel Silverstein as a children’s author for award-winning works like The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, but he was also a successful songwriter – mostly with songs with a bit of black humor to them. Among his notable songwriting works are “A Boy Named Sue,” one of Johnny Cash’s biggest career hits, and “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” for Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show.
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But his number one hit country song “Marie Laveau,” as recorded by Bobby Bare (on an album of Silverstein songs titled Lullabys, Legends and Lies), is his most perfect tune for a Halloween playlist.

The song tells the tale of unsightly looking voodoo witch named Marie Laveau who has a “bent, bony body and stringy hair” and is looking for a man to give her love to for $1 million. When “Handsome Jack” takes the witch up on the deal but attempts to stiff her by leaving with the money she lets go this horrifying screech and well, as the song says, “another man done gone.”

“Marie Laveau,” co-written with Baxter Taylor, was first recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show in 1971, but Bare’s version that went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1974 is the most famous version.

The Marie Laveau in the song is fictitious, but there was a real Louisiana Creole practitioner of voodoo in the 1800s by the same name that probably gave some inspiration to the song. 

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