Po Lazarus: O Brother, Song By Song

Track One of the Greatest Soundtrack of All Time

Recently, I was pleased to receive as a gift the 25th anniversary edition of the O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack on vinyl. The greatest soundtrack of all time provides more than the musical backdrop for the film. Each of the songs appears in the action of the film making it something close to—but not quite—a musical. Songs are heard from passing campaign supporters on a pick up truck, from a blind man on a rail car, from little girls at a campaign rally, from a traveling guitar player (who has recently sold his soul to the devil), from Pappy O’Daniel’s Flour Hour radio show, from the record player at WEZY radio studio on the road to Tishamingo, and, of course, we hear songs from the main characters themselves, performing as the “Soggy Bottom Boys.” As a result, there is almost no “background” music in O Brother at all. The album is a celebration of—and a great introduction to—traditional Americana music, sometimes called “roots music” or in the parlance of the film, “old timey music.”

The songs were selected by T. Bone Burnett and recorded before the Coen brothers began shooting the movie. While the script was based (very loosely) on The Odyssey and while it won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Coens claim to have never read the epic. In important ways, the soundtrack came first. Each of the songs plays a critical role in the film and merits consideration. With Nineteen songs on the soundtrack, I am not going to attempt to address them all now, only the first—“Po Lazarus.”

The soundtrack version of the song “Po Lazarus” was performed in 1959 by James Carter and his fellow inmates, actual prisoners from Camp B in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Lambert and recorded by Alan Lomax as part of a project documenting the music of the rural South. After the O Brother soundtrack became a commercial success, Lomax’s daughter helped find Carter (who did not recall the performance), paying him royalties and inviting him to attend the Grammy awards where the album won Album of the year.

Before anything happens in O Brother Where Art Thou, before we even see the title, while the screen is still spinning the “Universal” globe, we hear the first dull thud of hammers on rocks, the sound of a chain gang at work. The rhythmic pounding continues as a the screen goes black and few credits appear followed by this quote from The Odyssey:

O Muse!

Sing in me and tell the story

Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending,

A wanderer, harried for years on end . . .

Under this epigraph, a voice calls out “Po Lazarus!” and it is repeated by other voices down the line (still not shown on screen), “Po Lazarus!,” “Po Lazarus!” Finally the sepia toned landscape comes into view as the voices of the now visible chain gang rise up, singing as they continue swinging their hammers and axes:

Well the high sheriff

He told the Deputy

Won’t you go out and bring me Lazarus

Bring him dead or alive, Lord, Lord

Bring him dead or alive

Well the Deputy, he told the high Sheriff

I ain’t gonna mess with Lazarus

He’s a dangerous man, Lord, Lord

He’s a dangerous man

Their voices interplay with changing emphasis and slightly varied timing, the dull thuds rolling down the line and different voices climbing to the fore. The song is earnest and we see the prisoners on screen drawing inspiration from the words as they work. Under the singing there is some banter emphasizing the subservient position of prisoners, “pick up that hammer, boy.” “Yessir.” This is a grim situation despite the beautiful song.

What does this song tell us about the story that is about to unfold?

It sets up a few of the big themes to come—the relationship between man, the law, and God. In the song, the Sheriff and the Deputy Sheriff fear Lazarus because he is a “dangerous man.” Isn’t that the Sheriff’s job, to deal with dangerous men? What kind of danger does Lazarus represent?

Lazarus is a weighty name. It calls to mind first the “poor Lazarus” of Jesus’ parable, the poor man who lays at the rich man’s gate, full of sores, and who will receive his reward while the rich man will be punished (Luke 16: 20-31). One important reading of this parable is to see the cosmic burden of the rich and the poor, but there is another profound lesson in it. This parable ends not only with a warning about the eternal risks of inordinate attachments to things of the world, but with direction about how to care for our brothers and where we should go to find answers. The rich man, suffering in hell, pleads to “father Abraham” to go warn his (oh?) brothers so that they may choose a better path. But he is rebuked, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.”

The end of this parable—one rising from the dead—points of course to Jesus’ resurrection, but it also points to the other Lazarus, the real Lazarus, Jesus’ friend. Martha and Mary did not believe he could be brought back from the dead, knowing Lazarus had been dead for three days, yet Jesus says, “Come out” and Lazarus emerges from the tomb (John 11:43). Who can be saved? If Lazarus can come back from the dead, then all things are possible with God.

What kind of danger does Lazarus represent in the song “Po Lazarus”? The risk of true justice, transformation, faith, and redemption, all profound ideas for a group of prisoners and themes that remerges throughout the movie.

At about two minutes in, we haven’t seen the main characters. We haven’t even seen the title of the movie yet, and already, “Po Lazarus” has placed these stories and their weighty themes into the atmosphere of the film—gravity for the madcap comedy that is about to unfold. In the following hour and forty-five minutes, we will get to know three prisoners who have escaped from a chain gang as they seek a “treasure,” transformation, reunion with family, and redemption from God. We will also meet the “high” Sheriff in pursuit, who may be the devil himself. The implications of “Po Lazarus” may be just what these characters need as the adventure begins.

Next up: “Big Rock Candy Mountain” begins to play as we finally see the title of the movie on screen.