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I Don't Want Nothin' 'Bout My Life Wrote out, Because I Had It Too Rough in Life

2000; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

1534-1488

Patrick Huber, Kathleen Morgan Drowne,

Music History and Culture

Dorsey Dixon's Autobiographical Writings Dorsey Dixon, a forty-year-old weaver then employed at the Entwistle Mill in East Rockingham, North Carolina, was tending his looms one rainy morning in the winter of 1938 when he heard the news of a deadly automobile accident on nearby U.S. Highway 1. After his shift, Dixon and another worker went to view the crumpled Ford in which two local residents had been instantly killed. So we put out around there where they'd pulled the old wreck in, Dixon later recalled. that car was completely demolished; it was tore up. And was looking in on the floorboard and seen bottles -- broken bottles--and blood all mixed up there. 'Course, they probably was Co`-Cola bottles. But it was glass, you know, all broken to pieces and mixed up with blood there on the floorboard of that old wrecked car. And the thought came across my mind that many times cars had wrecked and killed people and that whiskey was mixed up with the broken glass and blood. And that's how was inspired to write `Wreck on the Highway.' Originally tided I Didn't Hear Nobody Pray, Dixon's composition is more than just another country song about a fatal drunk-driving accident. As one music historian has noted, what is even more horrifying [to Dixon] than the violence itself is the reaction of those who run out from their homes to witness the tragedy--namely, their failure to lift even a single voice in prayer for the souls of the dead and the dying. Thus, in his song, Dixon transforms a grisly scene on a small southern highway into a sweeping indictment of an increasingly secular and godless society. Dixon warns: Please give up the game and stop drinking, For is pleading with you. It cost Him a lot in redeeming, Redeeming the promise for you. But it'll be too late if tomorrow In a crash you should fall by the way, With whiskey and blood all around you, And you cain't hear nobody pray. For more than thirty-five years, Dorsey Dixon struggled to earn a living in the textile mills of the Carolina Piedmont, but by calling he was a guitarist, singer, and songwriter who believed that his special purpose in life was to spread the gospel through music. A devout Free Will Baptist and regular churchgoer, Dixon translated accounts of small-town tragedies and national disasters into universal songs about the wages of sin, the unknown hour of death, and the promise of eternal salvation. Wreck on the Highway, which Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff turned into a national hit in 1942, remains Dixon's most famous composition, but many of his other songs similarly recount tragic events--millpond drownings, train wrecks, schoolhouse fires, ship sinkings, and other catastrophes. And, as jeremiads intended to generate spiritual renewal, his songs usually conclude with sober warnings to listeners to get right with Jesus and to lead righteous Christian lives. When you think that you are wise, / Then you need not be surprised / the hand of God should stop you on life's sea, Dixon cautions on Down with the Old Canoe, a 1938 recording inspired by the sinking of the Titanic. If you go on in your sin, / You will find out in the end / That you are just as foolish as can be. Perhaps such dreadful incidents resonated with Dixon in part because, as he makes clear in his autobiographical writings, hardship and suffering deeply scarred his own life. But Dixon's music and religious faith sustained him throughout fragile health, grueling labor, unstable relationships, and--despite a small measure of songwriting success--relentless poverty. friends, he once wrote, I know that the Great Power of God help[ed] me to win in every battle that fought to stay in the world. Beginning in 1932, Dorsey Dixon and his younger brother Howard performed together in East Rockingham as a guitar and steel-guitar duo known as the Dixon Brothers. Their haunting tragic numbers and inspiring sacred songs, sung in a rough, gospel harmony, made the Dixons one of the most popular hillbilly acts in the Carolina Piedmont during the Great Depression. …