Great Music Monday-Bringing Mary Home

I haven't posted one of these for a few weeks.  My heart just wasn't in it.  But tonight seemed like a good night to get back in the swing.

When I started rendezvousing in 1998, one of the greatest things about it was sitting around a fire listening to music (this is not to say that there isn't still good music, because there is, but I am now part of the performance instead of just a wide-eyed kid wishing I could be that good).

I remember one night in particular at the Galesburg Heritage Days Rendezvous around 1999.  We were still camping West of the main pavillion and on Saturday night, there was a good group sitting around doing music.  Somebody asked Rod and Ollie to do an old Smiley Bates tune, Bringing Mary Home.

The song is the story of man driving down a lonely road when he see a girl in a formal dress along the side of the road.  The driver stops to pick up the girl and take her to her home.  They drive down the road and the girls tells the man to pull into a driveway.  But when he stops the car, the girl is gone.  He goes up to the house.  He tells her the story and the woman smiled, and told how her daughter had been killed 13 years ago, and every year, someone brought Mary home.

The story is loosely based on a Chicago area legend and one of the most famous ghost stories in the country.  The story of Resurrection Mary.

This song is still one of my favorites and every time I hear it I am taken back to that rendezvous where I first heard it, and then I picture myself on the dark, dusty, lonely road and bringing Mary home.