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I was listening to the radio yesterday when Bobby Osborne came on singing "I Just Got To Get A Message To You". I know that in bluegrass serious and sad themes are played to upbeat music, but that song is about a guy on death row who is gonna be executed in about an hour. I'd never really listened to the lyrics before when the Bee Jees sang it. It was my wife who brought it to my attention. Just kinda weird.
Not too uncommon to have deathrow songs have upbeat or faster paced music. Johnny Cash's 25 Minutes To Go comes to mind. They Might Be Giants always seemed to have happy music and sad lyrics. Tom Dooly is another. Murder ballads are 50-50 with music that seems different than the lyrical context.
Jamie
Melancholy lyrics, sung to a happy tune. Sometimes it really works. Snowbird comes to mind.
Stock and trade of the Carter Family.
I'm thinking that the Bee Gees song is FAR LESS of a downer than the thousands of murder ballads accumulated over the past few hundred years that that many of us happily sing, some of us along the Banks of the Ohio. Ya know: If I can't have her, nobody else will either? Yikes!Quote:
Originally Posted by FLATROCK HILL
I Found Her Little Footprints In the Snow
You Are My Sunshine always gives me a chuckle when I hear folks using it for a happy state of mind song. Most of the murder and death songs I can think of in BG are upbeat musically.
The Louvin Brothers did the song Knoxville Girl, a gruesome murder ballad, completely without affect. The result is chilling, serial killer chilling.
Exemplifying what? A happy song in medium up tempo (in Monroe's version).Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Visentin
Yep,
"Just because your dog died, doesn't mean you can't have a good time singing about it!"
Mitch Jayne
(I think)
To be more precise, Footprints in the Snow is not about death at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timbofood
My comment had nothing to do with "Footprints in the snow" BTW
Lighten up Ralph, geez.
See posts 1-4!
I dropped in to see her there was a big round moonQuote:
Originally Posted by ralph johansson
Her mother said she just stepped out but would be returning soon
I found her little footprints and I traced them in the snow
I found her when the snow was on the ground
Now she's up in heaven she's with the angel band
I know I'm going to meet her in that promised land
But every time the snow falls it brings back memories
For I found her when the snow was on the ground
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timbofood
Really? Even the part about where the old old man traces the fox hound's footprints on up the hill only to find it bitten to death by the awful dreadful snake?Quote:
Originally Posted by ralph johansson
No need to quote these verses. I've known this song for 58 or 59 years, including the first verse and the refrain that you leave out. Clearly, the singer is reminiscing about his departed sweetheart/wife or whatever. She's dead, to be sure, but the song is not about her death. It's about "that happy day when Nellie lost her way", tracing her footsteps and finding her.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Visentin
The original(?) from around 1880 is more detailed: he finds he in a state of "blank dismay", they walk back home and she promises to never stray from his side. Eventually they marry. The version that Monroe adopted leaves all that to our imgination, and takes a forward leap in time: "Now she's up in Heaven etc." - which makes it a much better song.
Perhaps the song would have profited from a more reflective type of melody (but then it wouldn't fit Monroe's band style), but it's certainly not a sad or somber song.
"Poor Ellen Smith, how was she found? Shot through the heart, lying cold on the ground."
Here is another one that has a great upbeat melody about murder and prison. I think it works.
Blue - grass > [ˈblo͞oˌɡras] ... Noun .... Sad songs played fast.:grin:Quote:
Originally Posted by banjoboy