I found this forum and I began reading some of the posts. My thoughts. In the original version, Vicki Lawrence does not mention Little Sister’s brother’s name. It’s just Little Sister and “My Brother.” It’s ‘he.’ Wohoe is Andy’s last name. I’m indebted to the forum to know that Candletop was the name of a jail. Now, that makes sense. What does a big-bellied sheriff have to do with it? That was the stereotype of the prejudiced, ignorant, fascist Southern Sheriff. Before Boss Hogg, there was the pot-bellied sheriff. And there was no power failure in the lights going out. That meant that goodness, justice, “the Light” went out. Rod Serling used a similar metaphor in a Twilight Zone episode, aired years before when a man was hanged and the all the lights, including the sun, went out. My wife caught on to the make-believe trial being so quick that Little Sister didn’t have a chance to come forth and tell her story. I always thought Brother was poor white, but after seeing Netflix’s Innocent Project series, I’m wondering if he was black. Little Sister doesn’t sound black in the Vicki version, but one wonders…
Welcome, I like your write up.
This is a very old thread!
And you know, I dont know how wrong the verdict was since he was gonna use the gun anyway.
There are a lot of things going on in this song that, to this day, cannot be talked about.
This night is directly linked to things that do not seem to be related at first glance.
Billy Jo McAllister did NOT jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge. He was whacked and dumped, and this night in Georgia is just retribution for that.
Candletop seems more like a jail than a prison. Who gets sent to prison for two weeks?
I wonder if Andy had been Seth Amos’s rival for the favors of Mrs. Bigbrother. And Andy thought they had run off together, so he ratted out Seth when the guy got back from Candletop. The “I been with her myself” bit could have been an effort to make his friend feel like he was well rid of the traitorous vixen.
I have been watching a lot of Sopranos lately.
I think the true line is “Hi, what’s doin, Wo?” - “Wo” being short for Andy’s last name. Most of the lyrics sites agree with this.
But as a kid, I always heard it as “Hi, what’s doin’ woe?” and decided that “What’s doin’ woe?” was a Southern expression meaning “What’s wrong?” since he could tell something was bothering Andy. Even though I never heard the expression in any other context, I labored under this assumption for many years, and still hear it that way.
Incidentally, I found one site that shows:
“He said, ‘Hi, what’s new?’ and Wo said, ‘Sit down, I got some bad news…’” It tracks rhythmically, though it sure does sound like a D and not an N to me.
In the movie Reservoir Dogs, one of the characters talks about how he just realized for the first time that the narrator of the song was the one who committed the murder (at 3:20):
I always thought it odd that even though he’s been gone from his wife for two weeks, he’s not eager to get home to her and instead stops off at a bar. Is he an alcoholic? Or does have reservations about his marriage?
I travel 26 weeks of the year for my job. I can relate to Brother. Sometimes it’s nice to get a cognac before going home.
I am a Godfather kind of guy.
It’s a common type of thing, driving in from Candletop, wherever that is, he may want to calm down and relax before he sees his wife. Or maybe she’s one of those Baptists who won’t allow any alcohol in the house. Or maybe he’s not in that much of a hurry anyway cuz it doesn’t sound like him and the wife have been getting along all that well lately.
It also looks like the lyrics were chosen because they rhyme more than forming a consistent story.
“He went off to Andy’s house,
Slipping through the backwoods quiet as a mouse”
Sounds to me like Andy didn’t live in town, and there weren’t any neighbours close enough to see what was going on.