'Poor Boy, You're Bound to Die' - Murder Ballads

[Disir]

I found this cool article on Murder Ballads. Cool because I could listen to a few songs whilst reading it.

Mississippi John Hurt plays the blues in Washington Square, New York City, in 1965. Hurt first recorded the murder ballad "Louis Collins," likely based on a real event, in 1928. (Bernard Gotfryd/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The text of this article originally appeared in the February 2014 edition of American History magazine. The author, Ron Soodalter, provided recordings of four songs mentioned here. To go directly to those recordings of murder ballads, click here.



Three verses and a chorus about murder, sung by identically dressed 
guitar- and banjo-playing harmonizers, launched a musical juggernaut—the folk revival of the 1960s. But the song wasn't new. The Kingston Trio's 1957 recording of "The Ballad of Tom Dooley," an unadorned, true tale of killing and retribution in the post–Civil War South, reintroduced Americans to the tradition of murder ballads that arrived here with the first settlers from England, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Borderlands.


In the 19th century, songs of violent death based on contemporary homegrown incidents supplanted the ancient European ballads of sword-wielding knights and their errant ladies, and pulled off the hat trick of reporting the news, thrilling the prurient listener with often gory details and providing a moral lesson. Frequently, the song outdid the actual event for blood. As popular singer Tom Waits observes, "These were the oral tabloids of the day….News just happens to be a meal best served hot."

The richest soil for the cultivation of murder ballads was in the Southern mountains. The cultural insulation of the Scots and Scots-Irish denizens of the hills and hollers, often coupled with an outsize concept of personal honor, preserved an age-old reliance on violence as an acceptable means of resolving problems. Isolated by geography from the world of electricity and internal combustion engines—and often of literacy—this tradition carried well into the 20th century, and with it came the songs that reported the deeds. Noted American folklorist Alan Lomax, who for decades collected and preserved traditional music both here and abroad, devoted an entire chapter of his classic 1960 volume Folk Songs of North America to murder ballads. As he saw it, "Willful and cold-blooded murders…came naturally to people whose ancestors were…moonshiners and feudists. The old [Scottish] Border ballad tradition, which linked love and death, fitted the code of the backwoods."

'Poor Boy, You're Bound to Die' ? Murder Ballads

[ame=http://youtu.be/L14UKBjC5Is]Marty Robbins - The Streets Of Laredo - YouTube[/ame]

The Streets of Laredo has been classified as both a murder ballad and a cowboy ballad. But, it has a cool history too.

It's a take off from the song St. James Infirmary.

Here is a little blog piece comparing the lyrics.
COWBOY?S LAMENT ? A HISTORY LESSON » ninebullets.net

 

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I can think of a bunch, but the first one that comes to mind for me is:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O317T6Zlno]Skid Row, 18 and Life[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j4OC7-g_84]Thin Lizzy, Whiskey in the Jar[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kBX0K9nxPc]Led Zeppelin, Gallows Pole[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwnyTZW0DOc]Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, Deep Cover[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXLcntIUbs]Mötley Crüe, You're All I Need[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VxMDwYfxvQ]Jimi Hendrix, Hey Joe[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxAa83gP9vc]Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKuc4nfJByc]Merle Haggard, Mama Tried[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkADj0TPrJA]Phil Collins, In the Air Tonight[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXIuAz7aryo]Guns 'N' Roses, Used to Love Her[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://youtu.be/x6bUSSiiWf0]The Handsome Family - Arlene - YouTube[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsU015JWNJs]Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (with Tom Morello), The Ghost of Tom Joad[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6f68Wd9dc]Warrant, Uncle Tom's Cabin[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7gNf_9njs]Dixie Chicks, Goodbye Earl[/ame]

 

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Well, actually a combination of murder and suicide, this one:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIWcLA4TM8E]Iron Maiden, Still Life[/ame]

 

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Sounds like straight-up, stone-frick'n-cold puppy love ta me, this vintage gem:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlGIFNS3Idc]Iron Maiden, Killers[/ame]

 

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About serial murderer Ed Gein, this one:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNFglDcW7dQ]Slayer, Dead Skin Mask[/ame]

 

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[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs02sQxNnV0]Alice in Chains, Dam That River[/ame]

 

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