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Discography / Long Black Veil

Long Black Veil

The one true country standard on Music from Big Pink, and the only song on the album the group didn't write themselves in some form. "Long Black Veil" was written in 1959 by Nashville songwriters Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill, built deliberately in the style of an old traditional ballad, and had already been recorded by Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, and others before the Band ever touched it. The song's narrator is a man executed for a murder he didn't commit, silent at his own trial because his alibi, an affair with his best friend's wife, would have destroyed her reputation to save his life. He goes to his death rather than speak, and his lover visits his grave for the rest of her days in a long black veil.

Rick Danko sang it for the Band's version, recorded during the Los Angeles sessions for the album, with a spare acoustic arrangement and a prominent electric piano part that gives it a slightly different color than the older, folkier versions. The choice to include it said something about the group's instincts from the start: rather than write their own version of an Americana murder ballad, they simply went and found a real one and treated it with the same seriousness as their own songs.

Notable versions