I can certainly respect Kurt Cobain’s choice of Leadbelly as his favorite artist. Leadbelly was one of the first country blues artists that took hold of my soul. Just one listen to Midnight Special, coupled with the knowledge of the roots of that song, and it’s likely to happen to you too.
I journeyed back in 1995 to Leadbelly’s grave, but that’s another story for another time.
Also known as Frankie and Johnny, as performed by other artists, this one is the story of a man who wins a dance competition with a woman other than his own, and when he returns home, he is shot in the stomach by his scorned woman. Infidelity? It was only dancing. But that’s enough for a scorned woman, and apparently Frankie had had enough at that point.
Marie is not the typical murder ballad. There’s no real murder. It’s a death by poverty. But poverty is murder, and this song’s as sad as any of the others I’ve posted.
Some of the greatest songwriters in our nation’s history have written some excellent murder ballads. Woody Guthrie is a bright, shining example. 1913 Massacre describes a miner’s Christmas ball that is disrupted by tragedy at the hands of the copper bosses and their thugs.
This one is another nasty murder ballad. This protagonist kills his three innocent children. Best heard in context of the entire Hazards of Love album by the extraordinarily talented Decemberists.
This isn’t my favorite Nick Cave murder ballad, but it’s a damned good one, and since he released a whole album of them, I feel like it deserves the spotlight. I am especially fond of murder ballads sung in the first person, and especially grateful to those who continue the age-old tradition. I may spotlight another modern murder ballad slinger next week, then perhaps I’ll dig back into the past again.
Another classic murder ballad, probably the oldest recorded version of this song. I mentioned the Nick Cave updated version in a recent post about watching the film 20,000 Days On Earth. I decided to present the Dick Justice version here for this week.
Also known as Love, Henry, or Young Hunting, or Earl Richard, or The Proud Girl. May slso be related to Young Benjie, Child Waters, and The False Lover Won Back, and may share the same origin. Goes back to the early 1800s in Glasgow, according to one source.
I heard this one for the first time a few months ago on the SiriusXM channel Bluegrass Junction. It has all of the earmarks of an old murder ballad, but it’s relatively recent, written and recorded by Don Humphries in 1997.