A Wreck On The Highway (MP3s)

If you like songs about car crashes and their horrific aftermaths, then you probably already know that country music tends to be a bit more extreme than any other genre.  Hell, probably more than all the others combined for that matter. 

In many ways, the songs below can be considered a fine aural complement to the gruesome blood-soaked drivers' ed films to which so many high school students were subjected in the past.  As seen in the riveting documentary Hell's Highway, these films were full of horrifying and grotesque footage shot on site at grisly car crashes.  Like those films, the songs below do not flinch when it comes to depicting the devastating results of vehicular mayhem.

Listen up and learn the grim consequences of riding the bus, walking alongside the highway, parking on train tracks, hot rodding, drunk driving, and dope smoking.  Even speeding to the hospital to see your daughter in the emergency room can result in catastrophic tragedy!

You've been warned.

MP3s:

• Roy Acuff - A Wreck On The Highway (2:25).  Originally recorded in 1942, this is Roy's1962 remake.
• Howard Vokes - A Death On The Highway (2:02)   
• Howard Vokes - The Yellow Tomb (3:24) - LP cover  This one tells the true story of a school bus that plunged into the freezing waters of the Levisas Fork of the Big Sandy River, just outside of Prestonsburg, Kentucky. For some reason, this song reports the number of dead at 20, rather than the actual 27.
• Ralph Bowman - The Tragedy Of School Bus 27 (2:39)  Label shot  Another telling of the same horrific accident, which happened on February 28, 1958.  Both this and the song below were borrowed from over here.
• The Stanley Brothers - No School Bus In Heaven (2:43)  Another mournful ballad concerning the Prestonsburg tragedy.
• Jim McGinnis - 11 W. Bloody Highway (3:13)  Label shot  One more bus accident record, though this time it's a Greyhound in Tennessee, and not a school bus in Kentucky
  
• Porter Wagoner - The Carroll County Accident (2:51)
• Johnny & The J.C.L. Rangers - The Tragedy (We Were There) (2:49)  Label shot  Suicide by train.
  
• Cal Veale - Paralyzed (3:16)  Label shot   This one first came to my attention via the truly warped country compilation known as God Less America.  A total misery overdose.
  
• Ferlin Husky - The Drunken Driver (1:59)  "Get out of the road, you little fools!"
• Stonewall Jackson - Drinking and Driving (2:46)  Label shot
• Trooper Jim Foster - Four Chrome Wheels (2:30)  LP cover  Trooper Jim Foster (pictured above) was an actual highway patrolman for the state of Florida.   
• Trooper Jim Foster - Four On The Floor (And A Fifth Under The Seat) (2:33)   Worth noting: Foster was the co-author of Chesley Carroll's Hippie From Mississippi, which can be heard here.
• Trooper Jim Foster - Four On The Floor (And A Fifth Under The Seat) (2:38)  Label shot  Believe it or not, Foster actually cut this one twice.  This version, with spiffed up major label production, was recorded for United Artists.
• Red Sovine - I'm Only Seventeen (4:19)  Label shot   This graphically repulsive recitation was taken from the pages of Dear Abby's advice column.  It's a dead teen's sorrow-wracked recounting of the car accident that took his life and the terrible grief his family and friends suffered upon learning of the death of their loved one.  The words were originally penned in 1967 by John Berrio, a father of five from Rochester, New Hampshire, who wrote the piece after one of his son's friends died in an auto accident.

Comments

[Bastien DK]

Hey,

Have an ear on Sylvester Staline's, "I drive drunk to smash cop kids", one minute of pure Northern French Hardcore.

[travis]

this makes my grim morning! as for making the bus death count 20 instead of 27, well...it just flows better, man. screw those other 7 kids. all that rhymes with seven is heaven, and using that rhyme in a song about dead kids is just old hat.

[just john]

You're forgetting Nervous Norvus' "Transfusion"!

I took the liberty of recording an a capella version: http://just-john.com/sound/Transfusion01.mp3

(I emailed that to Kenny G last year or so.)

[Pudd]

I guess that Jimmy Martin's classic "Widowmaker" would probably belong in a whole other type of post of exclusively truck driving accident songs? Not quite so grisly, but good stuff anyhow.

[Scott]

Another great Stonewall Jackson piece of roadkill, dear to all our hearts, is "B.J. The D.J." His momma always turned on the radio to know BJ made it to work OK. Hear it here

[Scott Anger]

no ID3 tags on these? really? you couldn't be bothered? what good is it going to do me when one of these tracks comes on randomly and all i have in the artist/album fields is "Unknown". c'mon now.

Author's reply: This wasn't deliberate laziness on my part. The sad truth is I've never heard of ID3 tags. Maybe I can figure out a way to be less substandard next time.

[cathy]

These are great, but a lot of the files are cut-off.

[yragentman]

and let's not forget "Last Kiss" by Wayne Cochran

[Jeff]

You left out Bruce Springsteen's "Wreck on the Highway", which is a revised (and much spookier) version of Roy Acuff's song. Not really country, but he's listened to a lot of old country and it shows.