1972 Country Song, Covered by Reba McEntire, Became a Career-Defining No. 1 Hit

Vicki Lawrence was already famous for making people laugh when a murder ballad put her on top of the charts.

Lawrence joined The Carol Burnett Show in 1967, fresh out of high school, after writing Burnett a fan letter and inviting her to a local pageant. She stayed with the CBS sketch series for its entire 11-season run and became especially well known for playing Thelma “Mama” Harper.

Music was not entirely new to Lawrence. She had sung throughout high school and performed with the Young Americans before television took over her life. Still, nothing in her career suggested that she was about to record one of the most memorable story songs of the 1970s.

“The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” was written by Lawrence’s then-husband, songwriter Bobby Russell. Released in November 1972, the track tells the story of a man wrongly executed for murder. Its final verse reveals that his sister, who has been narrating the song, committed the crime herself.

Listeners followed the complicated tale all the way to the top. In April 1973, the single reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained there for two weeks. It was Lawrence’s only song to crack the chart’s top 40, making it the clear musical high point of a career otherwise centered on comedy and acting.

Oddly enough, Russell did not even like the song. Lawrence believed in it enough to sing the demo, but producer Snuff Garrett first considered Liza Minnelli and Cher. After neither woman recorded it, Garrett went back to the voice already on the tape.

“So, I sort of inherited that thing by default,” Lawrence later told Lyndsanity. “Nobody else really wanted it.”

Lawrence released more music after her surprise success, but she soon turned her attention back to television. Her “Mama” character eventually led to Mama’s Family, which ran for six seasons across two separate runs.

The song did not disappear with Lawrence’s recording career. Reba McEntire covered it for her 1991 album For My Broken Heart, the best-selling album of McEntire’s career. Her version introduced the murder mystery to country listeners nearly two decades after Lawrence first sang it.

For Lawrence, one unexpected studio session produced the biggest song of her career. For everyone else, it produced a Southern murder mystery with a chorus that has proved very hard to forget.

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