The Gory Stories Behind The Murder Ballads Cheerfully vulgar, revelling in gore, and always with an eye on the main chance, murder ballads are tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying word of the latest ‘orrible murders to an insatiable public. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers often hanged, but the songs themselves never die. Instead, they mutate – morphing to suit local place names as they criss cross the Atlantic and continue to fascinate each generation’s biggest musical stars. Paul Slade traces this fascinating genre’s history through eight of its greatest songs. Stagger Lee’s “biographers” alone include Duke Ellington, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Dr John, The Clash and Nick Cave. No two tell his story in quite the same way. Covering eight classic murder ballads, including “Knoxville Girl”, “Tom Dooley” and “Frankie & Johnny”, Slade investigates the real-life murder which inspired each song and traces its musical development down the decades. Billy Bragg, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey, Laura Cantrell, Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family and a host of other leading musicians add their own insights.
Poetry. "Rather than introspection, sensationalism, or mere entertainment, remembering becomes an act of engagement, one that propels the poet toward a fierce intellectual and moral reckoning. And we in turn are held rapt by the lyric enactments of this poet who takes dangerous materials into his hands; who stubbornly pulls at the poisonous sumac obscuring a furnace's ruins; who probes old wound, transfiguring them into new patterns. MURDER BALLADS is wondrous and essential reading, a compelling debut" Jane Satterfield."
In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were engaged in a top secret experiment. This was not, as many assume, the creation of a book of poetry. A book emerged, to be sure--the landmark Lyrical Ballads. But in Murder Ballads, David John Brennan posits that the two poets were in fact pursuing far different ends: to birth from their poems a singular, idealized Poet. Despite their success, such Frankensteinian pursuits proved rife with consequence for the men. Doubts and questions plagued them: What does it mean to be a poet if your work is not your own? Who is best fit to lay claim to a parcel of poetic property that was collaboratively crafted and bequeathed to a fictitious Poet? How does one kill a Poet born of one's own hand? Blending critical examination with jocular playlets-in-verse featuring the authors of the two books in baffled conversation, Murder Ballads reopens a 200-year-old cold case that never received a proper investigation: Who was the first true Author of Lyrical Ballads, and how exactly did he die?
The murder ballad holds a rock-solid position in US roots music and the Great American Songbook for decades. Telling the stories of sometimes true and often not-so-true-crimes and other horrific events, they are raw stories full of unrequited love, betrayal, life, and death. The song form stems from the Anglo-Saxon ballad tradition, where stories were orally passed on to a mostly illiterate population. Dutch cartoonist Erik Kriek was inspired by five old and new murder ballads — including songs by modern masters such as Nick Cave, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch — and used them as a launching point for five special and ruthless graphic narratives that dig deep into the darkness of Americana, in which guns and religion maintain an uneasy balance.
Edinburgh, 1791. Isobel Duguid and her friend Clessidro are the stars of the Edinburgh Musical Society. Clessidro sings opera and Isobel sings famously dark Scottish ballads, despite her cavalier attitude to holding a tune. They roam the streets of Edinburgh, enjoying an opulent lifestyle. One night a note arrives from the mysterious Mrs Abercorn, asking if Isobel's most notorious song, The Fiddler's Wrath, might be included in a book. It's the tale of a prima donna who died of heartbreak after her husband committed murder and was sent to the gallows. Isobel is intrigued. But Mrs. Abercorn's curiosity about the ballad is far more than a fickle interest. When Clessidro goes missing, Isobel is forced to confront her past and the truth about The Fiddler's Wrath begins to emerge. Using the geography of Edinburgh to guide us through the story, this dark tale becomes more complicated than anyone could have imagined and awakens the chilling retribution of a once buried secret.
Murder Ballads is a truly unique package, AGraphic Novel with an an accompanying soundtrack by Dan Auerbach and RobertFinley. It deftly weaves the music into an narrative that is a meditation onmusic, race, obsession, and how far someone will go to see their vision becomereal, Murder Ballads follows the fall and reinvention of Nate Theodore, thedead-broke and deadbeat owner of a failed record label who is on a cross-countrydrive in the dead of winter with his wife Mary, fleeing the wreckage of theirbusiness and heading towards the destruction of their marriage. But Nate isgiven an unexpected chance to redeem himself when, during an unscheduled detour,he "discovers" Donny and Marvell Fontweathers,two African-American brothers who play a singular version of doom-laden countryblues. Convinced that the brothers arethe key to his salvation, Nate's desperate to make an album with the brothersbefore someone else finds out about them-but he needs money. Money he doesn'thave and can't get through any conventional means. So he persuades Donny andMarvell to join him in a crazy scheme: they'll undertake a minor crime spree toraise the funds needed to produce their record. Naturally, complications arisefor this wannabe modern-day Alan Lomax and his soon-to-be stars, and just likein the murder ballads the Fontweathers Brothers play, the body count starts togrow.. Music contributed by Dan Auerbach andRobert Finley."
Ballads are a fascinating subject of study not least because of their endless variety. It is quite remarkable that ballads taken down or recorded from singers separated by centuries in time and by hundreds of kilometres in distance, should be both different and yet recognizably the same. In The English Traditional Ballad, David Atkinson examines the ways in which the body of ballads known in England make reference both to ballads from elsewhere and to other English folk songs. The book outlines current theoretical directions in ballad scholarship: structuralism, traditional referentiality, genre and context, print and oral transmission, and the theory of tradition and revival. These are combined to offer readers a method of approaching the central issue in ballad studies - the creation of meaning(s) out of ballad texts. Atkinson focuses on some of the most interesting problems in ballad studies: the 'wit-combat' in versions of The Unquiet Grave; variable perspectives in comic ballads about marriage; incest as a ballad theme; problems of feminine motivation in ballads like The Outlandish Knight and The Broomfield Hill; murder ballads and murder in other instances of early popular literature. Through discussion of these issues and themes in ballad texts, the book outlines a way of tracing tradition(s) in English balladry, while recognizing that ballad tradition is far from being simply chronological and linear.
"Readers will relish this story's superior tension ... A riveting mystery designed to keep readers on their toes." ~Midwest Book Review Laurel Falls, N.C. 2005: "Our small town is in an uproar—there’s a serial killer on the loose in the mountains of North Carolina. At first we thought it was just one tragedy, but by the third murder, the FBI finally got involved. Trouble is, I know they’re looking in all the wrong places. I have a keen sense of what’s really going on, but of course the FBI won’t take me serious. I’ll keep at it—too much at stake. I’m working with Wallis Harding, a well-known musicologist, and we’ve got a theory we’ll keep at till they can’t ignore us. Bluegrass music may sound like something to practice and perform, but we know it’s the key to finding the killer. And keeping our families safe. Usually Della Kincaid, my longtime friend, helps me out when I get into something like this. But she’s too busy with troubles of her own. A former crime reporter in Washington, D.C., she’s investigating some kinda fraud case that a whistleblower laid in her lap. She can't let a good story pass, but the deeper she goes, the darker it gets. Turns out we both have information that could help the FBI, if they’ll just listen to us … before the culprits strike again." ~Abit Bradshaw You'll enjoy this suspenseful standalone mystery because who doesn’t long to find justice in this crazy world? If you love Jacqueline Winspear, Sue Grafton, and Cheryl Bradshaw (no relation to Abit Bradshaw that we know of), you're sure to enjoy the Appalachian Mountain Mysteries series. Get it now—for the rich natural setting, colorful characters, and suspenseful investigations. Murder Ballad Blues is the fourth book—and a standalone novel—in the Appalachian Mountain Mysteries series by award-winning author Lynda McDaniel. Interview with the Author Q: Where does this fourth book pick up in the lives of Abit Bradshaw and Della Kincaid? A: It's a year after the last scenes in Welcome the Little Children, but eight years after they solved the family secrets and lies surrounding Astrid Holt's mother. Life has been reasonably quiet for the two. Abit, Fiona, and their 8-year-old son, Conor, perform regularly with the Ramblin' Rollers, and Della has settled into a natural rhythm at Coburn's General Store. Then everything goes crazy with murder and money-laundering crimes. Q: What's new in the series? A: New crimes, of course--especially the murders across Western North Carolina. Abit and Della get involved, working with new characters like Wallis Harding, a self-taught expert on mountain music, and Ezra Stoltz, an FBI agent. I am especially smitten with Wallis Harding. I named him after Phil Harding, archaeologist with the British television show "Time Team." Phil is such a live wire, and his namesake doesn't let him down. Wallis' physical appearance is modeled after Mick Aston, fellow archaeologist on "Time Team." Q: Why should readers give this series a try? A: Because these are serious mysteries without over-the-top violence. And readers tell me the character development makes them eager to read more: "a pair of unforgettable crime-solving characters," one reader shared, and another wrote, "I became intrigued by and attached to the characters -- Della, Abit, Alex, even the dog, Jake, the villagers and their dialogue." Q: In what order was this series written? A: Murder Ballad Blues is a standalone, so readers won't be confused if they start with this book. Actually, I worked to make all the books in the series easy to understand, wherever readers started in the series. The other books in the series: A Life for a Life, The Roads to Damascus, Welcome the Little Children, Deep in the Forest, Up the Creek, Unwrapped, After Dusk, and Waiting for You (free prequel novelette).
Across Europe, from the dawn of print until the early twentieth century, the news of crime and criminals' public executions was printed in song form on cheap broadsides and pamphlets to be sold in streets and marketplaces by ballad-singers. Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 looks at how and why song was employed across Europe for centuries as a vehicle for broadcasting news about crime and executions, exploring how this performative medium could frame and mediate the message of punishment and repentance. Examining ballads in English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian across four centuries, author Una McIlvenna offers the first multilingual and longue durée study of the complex and fascinating phenomenon of popular songs about brutal public death. Ballads were frequently written in the first-person voice, and often purported to be the last words, confession or 'dying speech' of the condemned criminal, yet were ironically on sale the day of the execution itself. Musical notation was generally not required as ballads were set to well-known tunes. Execution ballads were therefore a medium accessible to all, regardless of literacy, social class, age, gender or location. A genre that retained extraordinary continuities in form and content across time, space, and language, the execution ballad grew in popularity in the nineteenth century, and only began to fade as executions themselves were removed from the public eye. With an accompanying database of recordings, Singing the News of Death brings these centuries-old songs of death back to life.
