Murder ballads

[Bob Sayers]

Jody Stecher's great version of "Oh the Wind and Rain" on his Going Up On The Mountain CD. He plays an extended version of the song (accompanied by an oud!!!) on has later Oh the Wind and Rain CD. Also good, but I think the earlier version is the classic one.

Bob

[John Ritchhart]

Wind and Rain is a version of the Two Sister's I think.
Jerry Garcia did a version of Sweet Ellender that has two murders and a suicide.
Colleen Malone died. We don't know, could have been murdered.
How about MacPherson's Lament. He was hung for sheep stealing. That's murder ain't it?

[RobinG]

"Contrabando y traición" by los Tigres del Norte. Just one of many by this great, and extremely intense group!

[Fred_Murtz]

OK, I'm actaully kind of bugged by some of these tunes. #I mean when you listen to a song like "Little Girl And The Dreadful Snake" I have to wonder why someone would write a tune and like, why someone else would want to play it, and why anyone would want to hear it. #Why do the guys in these bluegrass tunes kill their girlfriends and throw them in the river?

That said, here are two more death tunes.....

Red Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson......"He shot her so quick they had no time to warn her....."

Lighthouse by Nickel Creek.....the lighthouse keeper jumps off the lighthouse.

The whole death theme gives me the creeps.

[clopez]

Great thread. I'm with Grimm "I'm more than guilty of loving murder ballads, I could be accused of playing little else..." Pickins (great handle, btw). Death Is An Easy Plot Device just might be the title of volume II in my Dead Folks and How They Got That Way cd series (shameless self-promotion). Tragedy, dark and creepy, has worked really well for balladeers, and songwriters through the ages. I don't what that says about the human condition (and I'm biased, being a Cormac McCarthy fan).

Two of my favorite murder/dead-folk ballads (no dead girls in either!) are:

"King's Highway" Joe Henry
"Billy Gray" Norman Blake

[RobinG]

I have always been attracted to murder ballads too. there is something about the guy who kills his girlfriend and turns himself over without understanding why he has done what he has done that reaches deep somewhere. If you read about a real event of this type, it's just horrible, but in song it seems like an allegory of the stupid way we all (or a lot of us) destroy what we love the most.
Actually more than Cormac McCarthy the songs often remind me of Raymond Carver..

[Staramouche]

"Crazy Man Michael" Fairport Convention
"Stagger Lee" Greatful Dead
"Bohemian Rhapsody" Queen
"Fair Ellender" Garcia/Grisman
"John Barleycorn" Traffic (not a real person, but still perty brutal!)
"Blue Ridge Mountain" Greatful Dead

Great thread! Funny how rap music gets all the press about being violent!

[morgan]

Me and my Uncle (and I left his dead %ss there by the side of the road).

Moving back a few posts to McPherson's Lament (aka McPherson's Farewell), I thing McPherson was actually hung for being a half-gypsy, which was a capital offense at the time in scotland. Fine tune regardless.

Here's a reference: American Murder Ballads and Their Stories, by Olive Woolley Burt.

[bsny]

(Pardon me) I've got someone to kill - Paycheck

[MASadict]

Long Black Veil is a murder song, somebody got murdered, the guy that hangs for it just didn't do the crime.

I guess that would make that a double murder ballad?

[Jim Yates]

Has anyone mentioned Deliah's Gone? Especially the verse that says:
Deliah, Deliah, How could it be
You loved all them rounders, but you never really did love me?
Deliah's gone, one more round,
Deliah's gone, one more round,
Deliah's gone, one more round,
Deliah's gone.

[Frank Russell]

Arlene, by the Handsome Family (excerpt):

that night I decided that I was gonna marry you
my knife went through your screen door
and I went away with you
you were singing "please let me go"
all the way down to Miller's Cave
when I picked a stick up off the ground you cried
"I ain't ready for my grave."
Arlene, in the dark your hair's just as red
and this long dark cave will always be our wedding bed

It just doesn't get any more backwards than that. Frank

[JonT]

Oh, two I really like are "Wild Bill Jones and "The Ballad of Jack Dringo."
Peace - JFT

[Rroyd]

How about NGR's "Colly Davis", with one of my favorite mandolin intros of all time, with time honored revenge as its subject, Blue Highway's "Cry of the Whipporwill", and a one of my all-time favorites, LRB's "Carolyn, the Teenage Queen", with his plans to kill her thwarted by an auto accident, and the great line, "I looked at her face so deathly white, she cheated me once again."

[Jim Yates]

Miss Otis Regrets

[ll144]

I heard Bill Kirchen do a song called Cold Hard Facts Of Life thats killer,I think it's a Stonewall Jackson song.

[high_lonesome_sound]

Fantastic thread.

I'm not a folklorist or historian, but I guess that these songs have their roots in illiterate (pre-literate?) oral traditions where a moral lesson and a vicarious thrill of the forbidden are presented to the listener at the same time. Forbidden fruit and death, that is a very strong "archetype" since the dawn of time.

HLS

[Steve Ostrander]

Louis Collins (trad)
Tom Dooley (trad)
Carrie Brown Steve Earle
Cold Rain and Snow Del McCoury, et al
Down By the River Neil Young
Gallows Pole trad Led Zeppelin

[Bob Clark]

Hi Folks,

Any readers of Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) in this thread? She was a New England regionalist writer who often wrote about the darker side of human character. Her short story "Old Woman Magoun" would be great fodder for a murder ballad, in case anybody is looking to write one. Old Woman Magoun is raising her grandaughter, Lily, in the Hamlet of Barry's Ford. Lily's good-for-nothing father has gambled and lost the little girl to another gambler, in a cardgame. Old Woman Magoun kills Lily by allowing her to eat nightshade berries, to save her from that fate. Great read that would make a terrific ballad. Even the names are made for it.

Bob

[dcoventry]

Little Sadie is just about a perfect song!

[jaycat]

I heard Bill Kirchen do a song called Cold Hard Facts Of Life thats killer,I think it's a Stonewall Jackson song.

Porter Wagoner, the one and only.

Has anyone listed Two Sisters? Someone early on listed a bunch of Tom Waits songs -- he does a great version of this.

Oh, and Sam McGee's is my favorite version of Little Sadie. I think he calls it by some other title.

[testore]

I wrote one after a dream I had. You can check it out a lot of spots on the web. My bands name is Red Dog Ash, song is called "On the Run".

[grassrootphilosopher]

The Lawson Family Murder:

´t was on one Christmas evening
the snow laid on the ground
when in his home in North Carolina
in this murder he was found
(killing his whole family)


The House Carpenter

Boston Boy (war)

I like Niles´ Hokkanen´s initial post (with some non bluegrass and related tunes. Tom Waits does great stuff)

[LastMohican]

"Possum Kingdom" by The Toadies drove real hard but the content was always just a little too twisted for me!
"The Wind & Rain" the Crooked Still version
"Banks of the Ohio" the Tony Rice Version
"Darlin' Corey" the 23 String Band version

[Marty Henrickson]

Interesting that this thread has been "resurrected". I find myself drawn to murder ballads, as well. I actually have two playlists saved on my PC of murder- or death-related songs. After scanning this thread, here's a few from my collection that I think have been left off the list:

Duncan and Brady -The Johnson Mountain Boys (always wondered why the guy was called "King Brady")
Fishtrap Joe - Bearfoot (from their "Back Home CD)
The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle - Sam Bush
Otto Wood - Doc Watson - how has this been missed?
Silver Dagger - Old Crow Medicine Show (but I think it's a traditional song that's been done a bunch)
Dupree's Diamond Blues - Grateful Dead (armed robbery, murder, and execution)
Pretty Polly - Ralph Stanley (again, how was this song left off the list?)
Ruination Day, Pt. 2 - Gillian Welch:
"And the great boat sank, and the Okies fled,
and the Great Emancipator took a bullet in the head.
In the hea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ead, took a bullet in the back of the head..."