Buttkickin' Halloween Songs: "Open Pit Mine" -- George Jones (1962)

I loved my sweet Rosey and she loved me too
There was nothin’ for Rosey that I wouldn’t do
Her hugs and her kisses they were something devine
Gave me reason for working the open pit mine.

No Halloween playlist — and I mean it, NO HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST — can be considered a self-respecting Halloween Playlist without a creepy old-timey country song.

And boy oh boy do we have a creepy old-timey country song for you today, courtesy of George Jones’s 1962 exercise in yeesh-that’s-disturbia, Open Pit Mine.

There’s really not a whole lot of story to discuss here. Guy works in a mine, guy meets the girl of his dreams, he loves her, she seems to love him, and he subsidizes their happiness by breaking his back working in the copper mines of Morenci, Arizona.

Things of course go sideways real fast:

Her love would bring heartbreak that I would soon learn
‘Cause she would two time me when my back was turned
Rosey would go dancin’ and drink the red wine
While I worked like a slave in that open pit mine.

Well I mean, given that this is a creepy old-timey country song, and it’s on a Halloween playlist, there’s no way things are going to end well for Rosey and her paramour. And that’s exactly what makes Open Pit Mine work. It’s a simple story of love, heartbreak, obsessive anger, revenge… and murder.

He shoots Rosey and her lover. And the commits suicide in the mine, next to her dead body. Fade to black…

I took a look at my future and what did I see
There was nothin’ but trouble a-waiting for me
But on the sun’s next rising I’ll be satisfied
‘Cause they’ll find me there sleepin’ by my sweet Rosey’s side…