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Do you remember Vicki Lawrence's #1 song from 1973?
"The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" was a family affair!
Yes, that Vicki Lawrence. As if being the second banana on The Carol Burnett Show wasn't enough, Lawrence had hit songs, too. Because being on one of America's biggest and most influential sketch shows didn't fully scratch her creative itch, Vicki Lawrence went and became a multi-hyphenate, etching her name into multiple entertainment history books.
The song in question is "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," written in 1972 by Lawrence's then-husband Bobby Russell. Vicki was, by then, a bona fide celebrity. The Carol Burnett Show pulled her out of teenaged obscurity and planted her onto the television sets of millions of viewers. The Burnett show proved that Lawrence was one of the most capable performers in show business, regularly and gamely doing anything for a laugh, including singing.
Country justice is the tune's primary preoccupation. It's a Southern Gothic murder ballad told from the perspective of a woman singing about her brother. Her brother, having just returned from a trip, learns of his wife's adultery. He confronts the man with whom she had an affair, only to find the man dead. The brother is arrested and hanged for this crime he didn't commit. He had plenty of motive, and he had the means and the opportunity to kill the other man. But he didn't do it.
Spoiler Alert: It's the song's narrator who enacted revenge and killed the man who slept with her brother's wife.
Phew! That was complicated. But that didn't keep listeners from sending the song all the way to number one in 1973. Even though the song was written in '72 and released in November of that year, "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" didn't top the Billboard chart until April 7th, 1973, when it spent two weeks at number one.
Do you like this version of the song? Or is your favorite the Reba McEntire recording? Do you prefer Vicki Lawrence in The Carol Burnett Show, or in Mama's Family? Let us know in the comments section below!
29 Comments
I guess the writer of the story didn't listen to the song. (sigh)
I like Vicki Lawrence's version better.
Another great story telling song of that genre back then is Ode to Billie Joe, I love that one too.
Well, they hung my brother before I could say
The tracks he saw while on his way to Andy's house in back that night were mine...
I preferred the family sketches on The Carol Burnett show to Mama's Family, or at least the syndicated version, because Carol and Harvey left because Carol divorced the producer Joe Hamilton and she actually dissociated herself in the whole production and didn't speak to Vicky for years when she found out Vicky was doing the syndicated version, and Betty White and Rue McClanahan had committed to The Golden Girls while they were waiting to see if Mama's Family would go into syndication after the network canceled it,
although Betty made ay least one appearance on the syndicated Mama's Family. The show was never the same without Eunice and Ellen though.
I also note the song "Little Green Apples". I wonder if Vicki sings it with the first word of the lyrics being "and"; I've got a list of songs that start with the word, and that tune in particular has versions both with and without "and" as the first word.
On the other hand, while I grew up on The Carol Burnett Show and love it to pieces, you'd have to pay me to watch Mama's Family. And there's not enough money in the world on any given day..!