Friday Five: Wells

Kenny Rogers, Ryan Bingham, The Greencards, Buddy Miller, Caitlin Rose and more have all recorded their own songs about wells of the wishing and non-wishing varieties, but here are my five favorites.

• 5. “The Well” – Rose’s Pawn Shop

  Drowning in a well of sorrow sounds doesn’t sound like much fun, but if this rowdy bluegrass band is there with you, at least there will be some good music. And probably some hooch.

• 4. “Deeper Well” – Emmylou Harris

  Every now and then I forget how good Emmylou sounds when she sings in her lower register. “Deeper Well,” from Wrecking Ball is a fantastic reminder.

• 3. “The Wishing Well” – The Gibson Brothers

  It’s almost a certainty that a song written by Shawn Camp and Paul Kennerly is going to be a good one, especially when it’s sung by Leigh Gibson; the lyric “the man who owns that water must be a millionaire/Because I’ve thrown away a fortune on the dreams that died down there” gets me every time.

• 2. “The Wishing Well (Down In The Well)” – Hank Snow

  There are lots of old wives’ tales about looking into a well and seeing the face of the one you’ll marry, but none of those biddies ever had a #7 hit with their superstitions like Snow did back in ’65.

• 1. “The Death Of Little Kathy Fiscus” – Jimmie Osborne

  This one’s a true story about Kathy Fiscus, a three-year old girl who died after falling into an abandoned well in 1949. Osborne’s song, written shortly after the event, sold over a million copies; he donated half of the proceeds to the Fiscus family. Kitty Wells also recorded a version.