2:37
A Carolina Jubilee, 2003
Written by Scott Avett, Seth Avett, and Bob Crawford
Featuring rapid-fire banjo picking that would make Del McCoury proud, this is an old-timey bluegrass murder ballad. Finding the titular Sally in bed with another man, the narrator calls for his shotgun and pocket blade and slays the adulterer. Unlike in many of these songs, though, he doesn't then direct the violence toward his faithless paramour: "But I just ain't that mean / So I go and get my murder tools / I throw them in the lake / Gonna steal me an automobile / And drive so far away." But he doesn't get far, ending the song, as is traditional, with advice to other poor sad sacks who may be moved to crimes of passion: "A bleeding heart is better than the penitentiary." Avett screams the last lyrics, the anguish of a man breaking rocks while Sally lives it large with her new lover.
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