Murder Ballads Old and New : A Dark and Bloody Record / Steven L Jones.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jones, Steven L., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Murder.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (311 pages)

Place of Publication:

Port Townsend, WA : FERAL HOUSE, [2023]

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 Erlk ö nig , 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.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Table of Contents

Foreword By Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers

Introduction

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

Digging for Clues in the Fatal Flower Garden

You Can't Win a Race with a Cannonball

The Triplett Tragedy

Pat Hare Murders His Baby

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

Suffer Little Children

Getting Home Alive

Like a God with a Thunderbolt

And Everybody Cried

Chapter Three: Game Changers, Outlaws, and Folk Heroes

A Walkin' Chunk a Mean-Mad

Postcards of the Hanging

The Day John Kennedy Died

Charles Manson Murders the '60s

Chapter Four: Hard Work and Hard Times: Songs of Labor and Strife

And Who Killed the Miner?

Honey, Take a Whiff on Me

Hard Time Killing Floor

Worse than the Thing that Possessed Me

Chapter Five: Fancies of Love, Fantasies of Death

Whisperer in Darkness

Full Moon, Dark Heart

Murder in the Red Barn

When You Get to the Bottom, We'll Kiss You to Sleep

Chapter Six: Lost and Found

Wrecks on the Highway

In the Cool Room

On the Rails, Alive and Dead

Coda: Hurt

Outro

Acknowledgements

Song Licensing Acknowledgments

Index: The Victims, Crimes, &amp

Tragedies that Inspired the Songs

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Jones, Steven L Murder Ballads Old and New

ISBN:

1-62731-135-1