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The author tells how she found the songs and gives details of the actual murders, and in some instances supplies the music.
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.
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.
Includes a plot summary, brief history, and list of selected recordings for each ballad! Presented here are thirty of the most popular stateside ballads of murder by pistol, axe, penknife and poison. Whether based on true crimes or traditional tales from the Old World, these tragic stories are American as apple pie, albeit one seasoned with a generous pinch of arsenic.
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."
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.