geoMp3 of The Week: The Statler Brothers’ “The Baptism of Jesse Taylor”
Eesh. I’m not sure how much more of this all-Statlers nonsense I can do. The problem isn’t listening to Statler Brothers records. I actually do, unironically, enjoy it (despite how critical I am of them). The problem is that their geospatial catalog, it were, is shallow. Musically they never do anything that really evokes a sense of place. And lyrically they tend to just set songs in geography, which means they mention a lot of places but don’t really craft anything that are about place (ostensibly the point of these geomp3 posts).
So that’s my excuse for some of these tracks that have very frail geographic elements in them. And that sentence is my segue to this week’s track, “The Baptism of Jesse Taylor,” by The Statler Brothers.
Let’s use shorthand, eh? Franklin County had itself a prick on the roster, named Jesse Taylor. Taylor boozed, fought, gambled, and of course ignored his wife and kids. They dunked his ass in Cedar Creek and — voila! — everything’s okay. This song fits very well into The Statlers’ catalog, of course, in that it’s about true, unadulturated dirtbaggery amidst a community of otherwise-exhalted souls. This is so common I won’t even bother to go into it with these posts. And although the boys’ band does a cute little thing with a gospel bridge (uh, that’s white gospel), it’s otherwise not that interesting.
In fact it’s so nondescript that it’s hard to tell where Franklin County is. The guys often sing about Virginia, but this one is probably supposed to be generically rural. However! I wanted to put this one on the map, so I did a search for all “Cedar” features, type “stream,” in county named “Franklin” at geonames.usgs.gov. There are “Cedar Creek” features in “Franklin” counties in Arkansas and North Carolina. But there’s also a “Little Cedar Creek” in Franklin County, Indi-fucking-ana, and you can be sure that — given what I’ve seen since moving to this state, which is lots and lots of Jesse Taylors milling around and just as many blue-eyed Christian spooks who would love, love to get that dirty fucker to pick up the way of the cross — I’ll be excusing the ‘little’ qualifier and dropping this track down there.
And for that reason, it’s“The Baptism of Jesse Taylor,” also from 1974’s Thank You World. Put down in the location for “Little Cedar Creek” recorded at GNIS.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
It’s too bad that you really didn’t understand the nature of this song. The man talked about in the song was a real man. He lived at Cedar Creek in Franklin County, Alabama. He went to Cedar Creek Missionary Baptist Church. And he was baptized in Cedar Creek. It wasn’t the baptism that changed him. He was changed before the baptism. The baptism just gave him membership with the Church. He had been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ before the baptism. And on the profession of his faith, he was baptized. How do I know these things? I was there that afternoon, where not only Jesse Lester Taylor was baptized but also two other men. All three of these men were over 65 years of age. I am sorry that you can’t understand everything about this. I hope that someday you will. I will be praying for that day.
May 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Yowza! I’ll be praying that this response is *not* the result of some crafty web bot work. “He lived at Cedar Creek in Franklin County”? Who “lives at Cedar Creek”? That sounds like robot talk. On the other hand, to inject some proper nouns and details that weren’t in the original post suggests the work of a real person. In which case “living at Cedar Creek” might just be country talk. Plus a robot would never waste time praying that a stranger re-evaluates his interpretation of a 35 year-old country record. And the technical minutiae of born-again hoo ha? Not even a computer can make sense of that.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Okay, since it appears you cannot understand English, I will try to make it plainer for you. The song you are referring to above is written about a man named Jessie Lester Taylor. Mr. Taylor actually resided in Franklin County, Alabama. The church he attended was Cedar Creek Missionary Baptist church. Mr. Taylor was baptized in a creek, near the church, named Cedar Creek after he had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Myself and John Randolph were present at this baptism because our father was the pastor of this church at the time and performed the baptism that day.
It saddens me to hear someone be so “la-dee-da” about such an important step of following God’s will. Our prayers will be with you that one day you will open your heart and life and allow God into your heart.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
It was a person! And now a squad, evidently. Listen, I understand several forms of English, and yours just happened to resemble the kind often written by web robots (albeit this time a fervent religious one). So Randolph was a real person. ~Sorry~
But it is interesting you would be offended by one stranger’s disinterest in the goofy liturgical ceremonies of a *different* stranger. Thirty-five years ago or more. In the same way I don’t regularly lose my shit when I encounter someone who doesn’t care for the taste of cilantro, why would you care at all when somebody gets their la-dee-da on about someone else’s baptism? There aren’t enough minutes in a lifetime for you to make a habit of worrying about what some internet blogger thinks about a ritual to which you were once privy. I’m sure of it. If I were you, I would spend that time working your way a little closer to the right hand of your lord and savior and a little less praying that some atheist blogger will work up some reverence for a phony and ostentatious baptismal rite about which he already, clearly, does not care.