So, Andy’s lil sis killed the cheatin’ wife AND Andy. No, wait–Seth’s lil sis killed Andy and Andy’s wife…
Great song, I could never make out all the words. And who is Reba to redo it–it belongs to Vicki, dammit!
Maybe I’m a sick bastard, but it occurred to me there might be an element of incestuous jealousy. That theme has a long history in English and Scottish ballads.
What REALLY doesn’t make sense is the speed with which the execution took place.
Sorry, folks, but even in the most conservative, red states, NOBODY gets executed the night they’re arrested!
bup
You stated an interesting “take” on the song. I’m not 100% sure of this, but I think prisons use their own electrical generators for executions. (probably to absolve the electric company and their customers of any guilt and responsibility particularly if they execute an innocent man the occurrence of which is clearly stated in the song.)
Therefore, the probability of an execution by electric chair precipitating a statewide blackout is nil.
Rube E. Tuesday - do you really think we’re over-analyziing this song? 
No one has yet assayed a line by line analysis?
Technically correct, but there is a longstanding notion (melodramatic and maudlin) that when they flip the switch the lights will dim in the surrounding area because so much juice is being drawn off. Totally untrue, of course, but when I first heard the song as a child, that’s what I thought the chorus meant.
This whole thing may have been avoided if Jerry Springer had been around back then. Lil sis could have vented her anger by calling Andy’s wife a Ho and ripping her wig off on national TV.
Of course they do–but judgemental Yankees call it “lynching.”
But the guy wasn’t lynched! He was, apparently, arrested, given a 5 second trial, and hanged (by the sheriff???).
So, a sheriff arrests a guy, brings him to a judge who says, “Hang him now, I’m later for supper,” and you don’t question for a moment how plausible that is?
Of course not! It’s the South. “They sleep with their cousins down here.”
(PAUSE).
“Well, some of them do!”
Not hanging, but electrocution. And the weird thing was, they would hold the execution in the same courtroom as the trial had been. So they’d bring in a truck with a dynamo, set up the electric chair in the courtroom, and march the condemned up from the jail in the basement, while everybody waited outside for the show. There wasn’t and empty tree limb available.
I think I’m the only one in America who actually saw the movie (starring Kristy McNichol and Dennis Quaid as siblings :eek: ). I remember it ended sadly but I’m pretty sure Dennis Quaid wasn’t hanged. Anyone else remember?
She knew about Andy and her brother’s wife in some other way, probably gossip. The rest she heard from people who were at the trial.
Possibly just a tad…
I think like Hamlet. Dennis Quaid and the asshole bully guy (Seth, perhaps?) killed each other with guns.