Folks, we’re now just a week or so away from Hallow’s Eve. I’m a big fan of “Spooky Season,” which is why I’ve previously done a deep dive on the ghost of Hank Williams haunting Downtown Nashville, as well as analyzed what I believe to be the creepiest song of Johnny Cash’s catalogue.
And fortunately for you, I’ve got yet another spook-tacular story ready to go before the spooky season passes us up and gets eaten up by Christmas.
If you’ve never heard the song “Gravedigger” before, you are in for a treat (no tricks required). The first version of the song I ever heard was by Willie Nelson, even though the song was actually first written and recorded by Dave Matthews.
The front man of the Dave Matthews Band released the song in 2003, and was apparently inspired to write it after strolling through a cemetery:
“It’s kind of these different stories that are brought together by walking through a graveyard with their names and the dates of their births and their deaths, and the stories that came out of their lives.
It’s sort of just telling those stories and some others as you wander through a graveyard and what you might think if you could walk into the graves and find out what people went through to get there.”
Nothing scarier than a song that was brought to life while walking amongst the dead.
And though its written by Matthews, and provided plenty of success for “Crash Into Me” singer, I personally feel like the essence of the morbid song was really captured by Willie Nelson. It’s one of those situations where each version is great in its own right… I just happen to prefer the country music legend’s cover.
Willie included the song in is 2008 album Moment of Forever, and even made an eerie black and white music video to go with it. There’s just something about hearing Nelson’s patented southern delivery telling the stories that come along with each verse that screams “Halloween” to me.
The first verse focuses in on a fictional person named Cyrus Jones who lived to be 103-years-old:
“Cyrus Jones, 1810 to 1913
He made his great grandchildren believe
He could live to a hundred and three
A hundred and three is forever
When you’re just a little kid
So Cyrus Jones lived forever”
Each verse is linked by a repeating chorus that’s directed at the “Gravedigger,” asking for them to make the narrator’s grave shallow so that they can “feel the rain.” When the song gets into the second verse, the subject matters gets devastating as it focuses on Muriel Stonewall:
“Muriel Stonewall, 1903 to 1954
She lost both of her babies in the second great war
You should never have to watch
As your only children lowered in the ground
I mean… never have to bury your own babies”
Willie not only nailed the emotion of the song. He also should have won an Academy Award for the acting job he did in the music video. Nelson played the gravedigger, the priest, and the hearse driver. The music video concludes (shortly after it shows a spry Nelson jumping out of the six-foot hole he had just dug) with Willie even playing someone that’s deceased.
