Hollis Brown Revisited

 

Editor’s Note: The following is a “guest entry” by Lyle Lofgren, written in response to my “Hollis Brown’s South Dakota.” Lyle is a member of the legendary Minneapolis stringband The Brandy Snifters (whose members also include Jon Pankake) and he’s a frequent contributor to Inside Bluegrass. Thanks, Lyle!

 

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I’m convinced that “Hollis Brown,” like “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” is based on a real incident that Dylan read about in a newspaper. Hollis Brown might not have been his real name and it might not have happened in South Dakota, but the isolation there provides a perfect poetic landscape. A major difference between the two songs is that the Hattie Carroll story, which happened at a time of national racial conflict, was widely reported. A Hollis Brown story would have been only of local interest because it’s so common. Horrifying murder-suicides happen all the time.

When I was only a few weeks old, in 1936, my small community of Harris, Minnesota, was startled when the Albin Johnson farmhouse burned down in the middle of the night. Inside were the bodies of Mrs. Johnson and her seven children. Their heads were missing, later found buried in a field. Albin himself was never found, although there were reports from Montana and Canada of someone who looked like him. I haven’t bothered to check the newspaper accounts, but I’ll bet it was not front-page news in the metro newspapers, even though locals were still talking about it when I was old enough to understand what they were saying.

I grew up on a dairy farm where we had little cash, though we didn’t need much because my grandfather had already paid for the farm. The truly poor people in the neighborhood were those with mortgages, because cash flow is a serious problem on a farm. People who lived in the country but worked in town were in even worse shape, because a downturn in the farm economy amplifies small-town unemployment. The government had no safety net for small farmers, small-town merchants, or the rural poor — until the late 1950s, they couldn’t even get social security, assuming they lived until age 65.

This left only two support avenues: family and church. But in a rural community, you couldn’t ask for help from either: everyone knows you and your history, so, paradoxically, failing is an unforgivable sin. If you have any pride, you can’t ask, and if you don’t have any pride, they won’t help. Besides, the churches at that time were obsessed with sending missionaries to convert the world, and so couldn’t be bothered with local poverty.

Perhaps the strongest message society sent to the individual was that the basic definition of a man’s worth (a woman’s place was in the home) was his ability to provide for his family. If you failed at that, you failed the test of life. Some failed men pulled up stakes and took their families west for a new start. Others moved west without taking their families, although most did not follow Albin Johnson’s example of killing them first. Others, such as my cousin (twice removed), killed only themselves, leaving the families to survive somehow. None of those options made the newspapers at all — only the Hollis Brown solution could rate a sidebar on an inside page.

I regard “Hollis Brown” as one of Dylan’s best early compositions. I wish more people would sing it, as it should enter the body of traditional ballads alongside its tune-mate “Pretty Polly.” I would argue, though, that the stories are completely different. “Pretty Polly” is a standard pregnancy ballad of a callous murder, but the story, although first person narration, never gets inside the murderer’s brain. You’re correct in identifying the song’s empathy. Dylan’s song expresses a sense of doom and desperation that’s not like any other composition I’ve heard.

It might be interesting to compare an analogous song, “The Murder of the Lawson Family,” by the Carolina Buddies (Columbia 15537-D, recorded in March 1930). The song is based on a true story: on Christmas Day, 1929, Charlie Lawson murdered his wife and 8 (not 6) children near Lawsonville in Stokes County, NC. The waltz tune is close to that used for “Fatal Flower Garden” in the Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music.

1. It was on last Christmas evening,
    a snow was on the ground,
    near his home in North Carolina
    where this murderer, he was found.

2. His name was Charlie Lawson,
    and he had a loving wife,
    but we’ll never know what caused him
    to take his family’s life.

3. They say he killed his wife at first,
    and the little ones did cry,
    “Please, Papa, won’t you spare our lives,
    for it is so hard to die.”

4. But the ragin’ man could not be stopped,
    he would not heed their call
    and kept on firing fatal shots
    until he killed them all.

5. And when the sad, sad news was heard,
    It was a great surprise.
    He killed six children and his wife,
    and then he closed their eyes.

6. “And now farewell, kind friends and home.
    I’ll see you all no more.
    Into my heart I’ll fire one shot,
    then my troubles will by o’er.”

7. They did not carry him to jail,
    No lawyers did he pay.
    He will have his trial in another world
    on the final judgement day.

8. They all were buried in a crowded grave.
    While the angels watched above.
    “Come home, come home, my little ones,
    to the land of peace and love.”

This is almost the epitome of a conventional topical song with 19th century themes. Insanity is implied, but, in spite of the imagined dialogue, the composer never gets close to understanding what happened. It even has a happy ending in heaven. When I sing this song, it doesn’t disturb me. I’m quite sure that, at the time he composed “Hollis Brown,” Dylan had not heard the Carolina Buddies song (tape dubs of it didn’t circulate much until late in the 1960s), but even if he had, there’s no relation between the two.

In “Hollis Brown,” Dylan’s choice of subject matter, and his diction, owe a lot to Woody Guthrie, but the artistic stance is Dylan’s own (I regard Dylan’s “Song to Woody” as being, on one level, a declaration of independence). If Woody had written the song, he would have emphasized the class and economic conditions that led to Brown’s plight, such as the rapacious bankers or the railroad tycoons. Dylan’s version has no social or political commentary, but instead shows you alienation and depression from the inside. It’s a second-person ballad that sounds like first person.

The last verse,

There’s seven people dead on a South Dakota farm (2)
Somewhere in the distance there’s seven new people born

is probably the coldest piece of poetry I’ve ever heard, and it goes far beyond the “limits of empathy.” It implies that, not only was Hollis Brown a failed breadwinner, he was a failed evolutionary experiment. Intentionally wiping out everyone in your progeny is a special kind of failure. Woody’s socio-political explanations could never encompass such an idea.

I can’t imagine how Dylan got the inspiration to suddenly shift from a view inside a doomed man’s brain to God’s view: it’s over for them, but life renews itself, and there’s always a new throw of the dice. The denouement reminds me of James Joyce’s description of the artist’s role after the work is done:

“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

But as a listener, I can’t be that indifferent, particularly given the coincidence of my birth with the Albin Johnson family deaths, with the implication that maybe I was one of the new people to take their places. You can imagine how impressed I was by Dylan’s last verse.