Murder Ballads Old & New - A Dark & Bloody Record

Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record is an exploration of an age-old topic our human need to document the horrors of the world around us. The murder ballad, here expanded to include songs about traumatic loss in modern variants and multiple styles, including punk, post-punk, alt-country, and folk. The book is a graveyard stroll past tombs both well-kept and half-hidden. Murder Ballads Old & New excavates facts about killers, victims, and the folkloric storytellers who disseminated their tales in song.

List of contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One: Ancient History,
Origins of the Modern Murder Ballad

            Digging for
Clues in the Fatal Flower Garden

                        Featuring the
songs:

                        “Fatal
Flower Garden” by Nelstone’s
Hawaiians                                                                   “Little Sir Hugh” as interpreted by
Steeleye Span                                          

            You Can't Win a Race with a
Cannonball

                        Featuring the
songs:

                        “My Son John” as interpreted by Boiled in
Lead,                                                                              Tim Hart & Maddie Pryor

                        “Mrs.
McGraw” as interpreted by Burl Ives, Tommy Makem, Bruce                                           Springsteen,
and The Weavers                                               

            The Triplett
Tragedy

                        Featuring the
songs:

                        “The
Triplett Tragedy” by Sophronie
Miller Greer/The Watson                                                   Family

                        “The
Butcher’s Boy as interpreted by Buell Kazee

                        “Masters
of War” by Bob Dylan

            Pat Hare Murders His Baby

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” by Pat Hare

                        “Cheating
and Lying Blues” by Doctor Clayton

                        “Goin’ Down to Eli” by Robert Nighthawk

                        “Me
and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson

                        “Papa’s
‘Bout to Get Mad” by Pink Anderson & Simmie Doole

                        “Bring
Me My Shotgun” by Lightnin’ Hopkins

                        “Little
Sadie” by Clarence Ashley

                        “Delia’s Gone” as interpreted by Johnny Cash

Chapter Two: Hardly Getting Over It:
Contemporary Reckonings with Tragedy                    

            Suffer Little Children

                        Featuring the
songs:         

                        “Suffer
Little Children” by The Smiths

                        “Love
in a Faithless Country” by Richard Thompson

                        “No
One Is Innocent (A Punk Prayer)” by The Sex Pistols with                                                     Ronnie Biggs

                        “You
Need Hands” by Max Bygrave

                        “Nebraska”
by Bruce Springsteen                                

            Getting Home Alive

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Diane” by Hüsker Dü

                        “Pretty
Polly” as interpreted by Dock Boggs, B. F. Shelton

                        “Polly”
by Nirvana

                        “Long
Gone Lonesome Blues” by Hank Williams

                        “I
Saw the Light” by Hank Williams

            Like
a God with a Thunderbolt

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Drone Operator” by Jon Langford and the Skull
Orchard

                        “Funeral” by The Mekons

                        “Plenty
Tough and Union Made” by The Waco Brothers

            And Everybody Cried

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        "Two
Daughters and a Beautiful Wife” by Drive-By Truckers

                        “Remember
Me Well” by House of Freaks                       

Chapter Three: Hard Work and Hard Times, Songs of Labor and Strife

            And Who Killed
the Miner?

                        Featuring
the songs:         

                        “The
Bells of Rhymney” as interpreted by The Byrds, Pete Seeger

                        “Trimdon Grange Explosion” as
interpreted by Louis Killen,                                                         Martin Carthy,
Battlefield Band, The Mekons

                        “Down
in The Coal Hole” by The Mekons

                        “Abernant 1983/4” by The Mekons

                        “Coal Miner’s
Grave” by Hazel Dickens

            Honey Take a Whiff on Me         

                        Featuring the
songs:

                        “Tell
it to Me” by Grant Brothers & Their Music

                        “Cocaine Habit Blues” by The Memphis Jug Band

                        “Minnie
the Moocher” by Cab Calloway

                        “Minnie
the Moocher’s Wedding Day” by Cab Calloway

                        “Cocaine Lil” by The Mekons

            Hard Time Killing Floor

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Killing
Floor” by Howlin’ Wolf

                        “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”
by Skip James

            Worse Than the
Thing That Possessed Me

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Dora”
by The Mekons

                        “Ellen West” by Throwing Muses

                        “Annalisa” by Public Image Ltd.

Chapter Four: Game Changers, Outlaws, and Folk Heroes                       

            A Walkin’ Chunk
a Mean-Mad

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Pretty
Boy Floyd” by Woody Guthrie

                        and interpreted by
The Byrds, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Wall of                                                 Voodoo

                        “Al Capone” by Prince Buster

                        “Bankrobber” by The Clash

                        “The
Message” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five

                        “Robin Hood” by The Mekons

            Postcards of the Hanging

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday

                        “Miss Otis Regrets” as interpreted by Ella
Fitzgerald, Josh White, and                                      The Pogues with Kirsty
MacColl

                        “Beer
for My Horses” by Toby Keith with Willie Nelson

                        “Supper
Time” by Ella Fitzgerald

                        “Southern
Man” by Neil Young

                        “Sweet
Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

                        “Alabama”
by Neil Young

            The Day John
Kennedy Died

                        Featuring
the songs:

                         “The Day John Kennedy Died” by Lou
Reed

                        “He
Was a Friend of Mine” as interpreted by Bob Dylan,                                                              The
Byrds

                        The Ballad of JFK:
A Musical History of the John F. Kennedy                                                         Assassination
(1963-1968) (album) by Various Artists

            Charles
Manson Murders the ‘60s

                        Featuring
the songs:

                        “Death
Valley ’

About the author

Steven L. Jones is an artist, writer, musician, and former instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kentucky-born, the son of a choir director and violinist, he lives with his wife Catherine and dog Mojo in his adopted hometown, Chicago. A longtime writer for magazines and online journals, including the Woody Guthrie Foundation magazine “Sing Out.” Murder Ballads Old & New is his first book.

Summary

Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record is an exploration of an age-old topic— our human need to document the horrors of the world around us.  The murder ballad, here expanded to include songs about traumatic loss in modern variants and multiple styles, including punk, post-punk, alt-country, and folk. The book is a graveyard stroll past tombs both well-kept and half-hidden. Murder Ballads Old & New excavates facts about killers, victims, and the folkloric storytellers who disseminated their tales in song.

Author Steven L. Jones focuses the tragic ballad as “an act of remembering and a soul-reckoning with the ineffable.” Songs examined range from obscure tunes from the founding days of the United States to familiar canonical songs learned in schoolrooms and honkytonks. Jones tackles each song in a manner that’s equal parts musicological, psychosocial, and genealogical as he uncovers stories that reveal larger contexts and maps the lineages of songs and themes, forebears, and ancestors. 
Murder Ballads Old & New includes a wide range of songs and performers from the relatively unknown (Boiled in Lead, Freakons, Nelstone’s Hawaiians) to the ironically famous (Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth). Highlights include tales of Muddy Waters guitar sideman Pat Hare, whose incendiary blues boast “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” proved grimly prophetic. And honky-tonk pioneer Eddie Noack, whose morbid stab at late-career rebirth, “Psycho,” couldn’t match the bottomless tragedy of his own life.  As well as Depression-era holdup man Pretty Boy Floyd, Schubert’s mythical Erlkönig, and the Manson Family.

Murder Ballads Old & New is a compelling delve into the perennial American fascination with True Crime. Includes archival and historical black & white images.

Product details

• Authors: Steven L Jones, Steven L. Jones, Steven L Jones
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.11.2023
• EAN: 9781627311335
• ISBN: 978-1-62731-133-5
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music; MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Folk & Traditional, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Country & Bluegrass, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Blues, MUSIC / Philosophy & Social Aspects, MUSIC / Essays