Gallows Pole: Ben Andrews, a man bedevilled by the blues

Ron Counte

In the age of the information superhighway there is an expectation that the sum total of human knowledge is accessible with one click and Google is seemingly omniscient. It is highly unusual, not to say curious, that the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of an internationally renowned musician should remain shrouded in mystery for years. But this is the case regarding the demise of Ben Andrews in April 2011 at the age of 51. You will trawl the internet in vain searching for answers.

Andrews was a latter-day Delta bluesman. A singer and guitarist of remarkable virtuosity, he was born in Belgrade, Serbia, then part of the former Yugoslavia. His birth parents were Serbian and Bosnian but he was adopted as a baby by an American couple. His adoptive father was a US diplomat, and Ben spent his childhood in Washington, Yugoslavia, Turkey and Poland.

He started classical guitar studies at the age of eight (he soon became ‘very bored with Bach fugues’) and later gravitated to blues and folk music after seeing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Big Joe Williams play at the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival. He first came to prominence as a member of The Blue Rider Trio with harmonica player Mark Wenner and bassist Jeff Sarli, before launching a highly successful solo career. He was a founding member of the DC Blues Society.

I saw him perform in London in 2002 around the time of his appearance on the Glastonbury Pyramid stage. He had recently completed his third solo album and apparently had the world at his feet.

Fast forward to 2011 and news of the Washington DC guitarist’s death emerged, not long after the release of his Live In London album. A feature on the WUSA9 TV channel reported that he was found alive in his apartment with substantial bleeding but could not be saved. He died in a hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia. One interviewee claimed that Ben had been suffering from domestic abuse for some considerable time. Ben’s family suspected foul play and the medical authorities said that further tests were necessary to identify the precise cause of death. There was an ongoing police investigation into the matter.

On a forum dedicated to Ben’s music an acquaintance claimed: ‘He had many problems and caused more than his fair share. From many people I speak to he had lost most people’s sympathy some time ago.’ Fourteen years later we are still no wiser as to the events surrounding his death. It is an enduring mystery.

The song with which Ben is most commonly associated is the title track on his third and final solo album, Gallows Pole. The song itself has a history going back many hundreds of years. It began as a Celtic folk ballad called The Maid Is Freed From The Gallows. It tells of a maiden standing on the scaffold awaiting execution. She pleads with the hangman to stay his hand for a while to give time for a friend or relative to turn up in time to buy her freedom. In successive verses various relatives appear without any money, apparently just there to watch the unfortunate woman perish.

Daughter, daughter, I brought no gold


For to pay this hangman’s fee


But I come to see you swingin’, swingin’


High from this hangman’s tree


High from this hangman’s tree

However, in the final verse her lover arrives with a bag of gold and buys her freedom.

Darling, darling, darling, I brought you that gold


For to pay this hangman’s fee


’Cause I don’t want to see you swingin’, swingin’

High from this hangman’s tree


High from this hangman’s tree

That was the basic structure of the song until 1939 when Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter recorded a much darker take on the tale. In his version, entitled The Gallis Pole, the prisoner is male. Eventually his brother brings silver and his sister offers sexual favours to the hangman who accepts both but then cruelly executes the man anyway.

Oh, yes, you got a fine sister

She warmed my blood from cold

Brought my blood to boiling hot

To keep you from the Gallows Pole

Your brother brought me silver

Your sister warmed my soul

But now I laugh and pull so hard

And see you swinging on the Gallows Pole

This became the template for succeeding versions of the tale, which often appeared under different names. In 1964 Judy Collins recorded the song Anathea, the name she gives to the sister of the condemned man. She turns up to offer herself to the judge despite her brother’s warnings.

Anathea, oh, my sister

Are you mad with grief and sorrow?


He will rob you of your honour

And he’ll hang me from the gallows

Sure enough, after giving herself to the judge she finds her brother hanging the next morning.

Collins sang the song at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. Another performer at that event penned his own version of the tale, Bob Dylan’s Seven Curses. This time it’s the victim’s daughter who brings gold and silver and attempts to buy her father’s freedom by sleeping with the judge. Once again the woman is taken advantage of but to no avail. Dylan’s song ends with the cruelly deceived woman issuing seven curses on the wicked judge, condemning him to endless torment.

These be seven curses on a judge so cruel

That one doctor can’t not save him

That two healers cannot heal him

That three eyes cannot see him

That four ears cannot hear him,

That five walls cannot hide him,

That six diggers cannot bury him

And that seven deaths shall never kill him

He should consider himself lucky. In Féher Anna, the Hungarian folk version, the unjust judge gets 13 curses for exactly the same offence.

In 1973 Led Zeppelin got in on the act featuring the song under the title Gallows Pole on their album Led Zeppelin III. It was basically a rehash of the Fred Gerlach arrangement of the Lead Belly version with some additional laughing and gloating tacked on to the end for good measure.

There is a YouTube clip of Ben Andrews performing the song with The Blue Riders (Tim Jarvis on drums and Hugh Feeley on harmonica) during which he offers an interesting piece of additional information. It would appear that in Celtic mythology people who were depressed were said to be ‘possessed by the Blue Devils’. It is this legend which gave rise to the phrase The Blues.

In a curious piece of synchronicity, therefore, what originated as a Celtic folk song eventually ended up becoming a classic example of the genre which took its name from the same Celtic tradition.

We may never know which blue devils haunted Ben Andrews in his final days and sadly no one arrived with a bag of gold to save him from his own Gallows Pole.

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