Who did the music for O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Q: What song did the little girls sing in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Three Sirens - Go to Sleep Little Baby from O Brother, Where Art Thou? - YouTube.

The brothers' Coen bring us their latest comic masterwork in the form of a Southern-fried, Musical Comedy Fable, a sub-subgenre only they would dare tackle and only they could tackle it so well. O Brother, Where Art Thou is a loose retelling of Homer's "The Odyssey" set in 1930's depression-era Mississippi. The ensuing soundtrack album contains many songs from that era, and does an excellent job in bringing to life the sepia-colored fantasy film.

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Who actually sang in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Did George Clooney do his own singing in Oh Brother?
Did Ralph Stanley sing in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
What song did the little girls sing in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The 18 cuts on the O Brother soundtrack, culled from nearly 70 re-recordings of classic blue-grass and old-tyme music supervised by T Bone Burnett, is a wonderful and at times exhilarating trip through a period of music oft neglected by an MTV generation doped up on re-mixes, re-makes and soft-core rap/metal fusion. It is a breath of fresh air with wonderful recordings by John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Norman Blake, Ralph Stanley and others. The most recognizable track, "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" appears three times, with three different recordings from: The Soggy Bottom Boys (George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson lip synched version in the film), Norman Blake and John Hartford. Though clearly the most widely appealing song on the album, its triple appearance feels like padding in an otherwise beautifully constructed collection. Why not give the listener two distinct tracks rather than rehashing a recording that is already wonderful?

Aside from that odd decision, the remainder of the disc is lots of fun and a good change-up to the usual soundtrack efforts from most major studio releases. Tracks like, "Down To the River To Pray" (Alison Krauss), "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" (Chris Thomas King) and "O Death" (Ralph Stanley) are standouts in an album packed with winners. T Bone Burnett has done a masterful job in assembling this soundtrack, and it should stand the test of time nicely. Pick it up, and after a couple of listens you'll be tapping your toes and searching for more.

Every Ulysses needs a little traveling music, and in the case of George Clooney's Everett Ulysses McGill, the 1930s incarnation of Western civilization's archetypal wanderer, it's the old folk lament "Man of Constant Sorrow."

That tune is the recurring centerpiece in a feast of traditional music that enriches "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," Joel and Ethan Coen's loose, comedic adaptation of "The Odyssey" set in Depression-era Mississippi.

The black gospel, blues and work songs, the white spirituals and Carter Family classics, the hill tunes and string-band dance music that form the film's score not only define the story's time and place, but also reinforce themes shared by Homer's hero and Americans uprooted by the Depression - exile and haven, the dream of a better place ahead.

Even if the Coen Brothers, post-"Fargo," aren't a box-office given, this might amount to the most significant airing of core American folk music in a popular film since "Deliverance" inspired an epidemic of dueling banjos in the early '70s.

In "O Brother," though, the music isn't isolated to one scene or relegated to background flavoring - it's so integral to the film that it seems to become a character, a Greek chorus with a twang propelling the picaresque plot.

"As we developed the story more, the music became an increasingly important element in it and really began to sort of inform the story itself," says Joel Coen, who directed the movie and co-wrote it with his brother, Ethan. "It also started to inform the tone and the feeling of the whole thing."

True to the Coen Brothers' fondness for counterpoint, the music's earthiness and directness often play against the film's exaggerated, almost cartoon-like visual and acting style.

That - and the brothers' track record of irreverence - might have given pause to some musical traditionalists, but the end product has the endorsement of one fierce guardian of the music's integrity.

"I have to give huge credit to the Coens, because across the board they did it right," says singer-songwriter Gillian Welch.

"It would have been a big drag to marshal this kind of musical cast and to have (the movie) be lame," she adds. "In the past, a lot of people haven't done it right, it's been the coarsest of stereotypes. And this one kind of hit the nail on the head. Death and slapstick really abut each other in mountain music. This balance is necessary, I think. ... You find yourself tending to alleviate the darkness with some jokes."

This treasure trove of Southern culture is the brainchild of two New York-based Minneapolis natives (the Coens), an Angeleno who now lives in Nashville (Welch) and the Texas-to-L.A. transplant who served as the music producer for both the film and the soundtrack album - T Bone Burnett.

Actually, Burnett's reemergence is one of the notable byproducts of the "O Brother" saga.

The St. Louis-born, Fort Worth-raised musician left the game at a time when he was one of rock's most in-demand record producers, and a singer and songwriter whose four albums gave him a strong critical reputation and a loyal following.

Burnett befriended the Coens by calling them to say how much he liked their 1987 comedy "Raising Arizona." They hired him on as "music archivist" on "The Big Lebowski," their 1998 "Fargo" follow-up, but that was hardly preparation for the consuming work that "O Brother" would require.

"The goal from the beginning was to find these stories and find themes for the different characters," says Burnett, 52. "Then the challenge was to find where they fit and who should do them and what the tone of them was and how they fit the scene."

When the Coens finished their script, they sent Burnett a CD with 20 to 30 songs for consideration, including Harry McClintock's 1928 hobo's fantasy, "Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Burnett scoured his archives - and bought about 1,000 more albums - to come up with some additional songs. Among them was "Oh Death," which would be sung for the film in a chilling, a cappella version by bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley.

The Coens, Burnett and Welch brainstormed for three months before starting to record in Nashville with a roster that included veterans (Stanley, Emmylou Harris, John Hartford) and the new guard (Alison Krauss and her band Union Station, the Cox Family, the Whites).

Who actually sang in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

One of biggest hits from the film, I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, sung by the fictional Soggy Bottom Boys, which included Clooney, Blake-Nelson, and Turturro, does not include Clooney's voice. It was actually bluegrass musician Dan Tyminski.

Did George Clooney do his own singing in Oh Brother?

George Clooney practiced his singing for weeks, but in the end his singing voice was dubbed by country blues singer Dan Tyminski.

Did Ralph Stanley sing in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Ralph Stanley of The Stanley Brothers personally recorded the a cappella folk song "O Death". "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" has five variations: two are used in the film, one in the music video, and two in the album.