Comments on: A Mother’s Plea For Her Son

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:13:11 +0000

What a terrible tale about Blind Willy Johnson, and how curious, the many parallels to the Oedipus myth.

Oedipus’ mother didn’t die when he was a child, but gave him away when he was a baby. Then as an adult, he killed the man who (he had no idea) was his father and married the woman (he had no idea) was his mother. When he realised what he’d done, he blinded himself!

By: Soup Greens » I’m Taking Care Of Mother (While Daddy’s Gone Away)

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:01:36 +0000

[...] a comment on one of the mother songs, Spiegs (who is a politics junkie) brought up this totally obscure [...]

By: Soup Greens » “Mother’s Plea For Her Son” how-to

Soup Greens » “Mother’s Plea For Her Son” how-to — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:58:38 +0000

[...] was the overwrought pathos of Mother’s Plea For Her Son that pulled me in and made me sing along. I couldn’t [...]

By: gurdonark

gurdonark — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:45:56 +0000

So recognizable and yet so alien. Things change so much–and so little–in 100 years.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:46:25 +0000

On the subject of songs about motherhood, an interesting piece of history is that Pappy O’Daniel, then a radio host in Texas in the 1930s, wrote songs like ‘Mother you fashioned me, Bore me and rationed me’ and ‘The Boy Who Never Grew Too Old to Comb His Mother’s Hair’ and had his hillbilly band play them on the air.

O’Daniel went on to become Governor of Texas, defeated Lyndon Johnson for a Senate seat in the special election of 1941, and served as the model for the corrupt Governor of Mississippi in ‘O Brother Where Art Thou?’.

I wonder if those songs exist in the Internet Archive?