O Death

O Death, also known as O, Death, Oh Death and Conversations with Death, is a traditional American folk song. In 2004, the Journal of Folklore Research asserted that "O, Death" is Lloyd Chandler's song "A Conversation with Death", which Chandler performed in the 1920s while preaching in Appalachia.

Country blues banjo player Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs recorded the song in the late 1920s. A recording from the 1938 National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C. is on file with the Library of Congress. Various folk music artists included O, Death on musical collections throughout the 1970s and '80s. It is sung in the 1976 Barbara Kopple documentary Harlan County, USA.

Among the most famous recordings is Ralph Stanley's version in the 2000 Coen brothers film (and soundtrack album) O Brother, Where Art Thou?, for which Stanley won the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 2002. The soundtrack's producer, T-Bone Burnett, originally asked for a banjo rendition emulating Dock Boggs, but Stanley convinced him otherwise with an a cappella performance in the style of the Appalachian Primitive Baptist Universalist church. The song also appears in episode 7 of the second season of television series Fargo, inspired by another Coen brothers film of the same name. The version used in this episode was recorded by Shakey Graves with Monica Martin of PHOX.

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