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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.
Singing the News is the first study to concentrate on sixteenth-century ballads, when there was no regular and reliable alternative means of finding out news and information. It is a highly readable and accessible account of the important role played by ballads in spreading news during a period when discussing politics was treason. The study provides a new analytical framework for understanding the ways in which balladeers spread their messages to the masses. Jenni Hyde focusses on the melody as much as the words, showing how music helped to shape the understanding of texts. Music provided an emotive soundtrack to words which helped to shape sixteenth-century understandings of gendered monarchy, heresy and the social cohesion of the commonwealth. By combining the study of ballads in manuscript and print with sources such as letters and state records, the study shows that when their topics edged too close to sedition, balladeers were more than capable of using sophisticated methods to disguise their true meaning in order to safeguard themselves and their audience, and above all to ensure that their news hit home.