Country Murder Ballads
edith head
5,106 Posts
Can anyone recommend any folk, blues or country albums/artists that are dark and gothic sounding? Not Johnny Cash please. I'm looking for that kind of grim backwoodsy country/folk/blues ish with storytelling jawns about revenge, jealousy, contempt and the like, lyrics like taking the wifey to the woods and chopping her hands off or finding the body of the local farmer with his head missing, 
Leadbelly's 'In the Pines' is basically the gist of itany recommendations are appreciated
Leadbelly's 'In the Pines' is basically the gist of itany recommendations are appreciated
Comments
Our fathers, they say, were just like us;
Our children will all be the same -
Hair like black leather and skin brown as wood,
Speaking a low Spanish name.
Remember our mothers who gave us our lives,
Like grass in the spring of their years?
They left us behind with hearts light as wine,
Their breasts undissolved in our tears.
The things that I do are all very bad things;
I do them and then don't know why.
You hold up your sons with their blue or brown eyes
And tell me they're better than I.
My friends, they too all despise me;
I do all the wrong they had planned;
And all that I have for the years of my life
Is a cross that I've carved on my hand.
They put me in jail behind iron bars,
You'll find me with blood on my hands;
And tomorrow I'll stand up in front of the guns
And I'll give you the life you demand.
But tonight, as you sit at your table,
With your wife and your child close by,
Remember this corrido my young blood has made.
And now, mi amigos, goodbye.
Utah Phillips wrote about this song in his songbook, Starlight On The Rails:
When Ammon Hennacy first came to Salt Lake, it was to do a number of things - to set up the Joe Hill House, to picket the Federal Building concerning war taxes, to talk, picket and leaflet about Hiroshima, and to protest against capital punishment.
When Ammon came to Salt Lake there was a boy named Jesse Garcia on death row. He had originally been put in the penitentiary on a murder rap when he was 16 years old. Jesse had been as close to being an orphan as you can get, battered around from family to family. He got into a lot of trouble and had a pretty ugly life.
There was a big sex and dope scandal at the state penitentiary. Evidently one of the convicts had a very loose lip, so the king con, Billy Randall, suggested that Jake Varner ought to be killed. Varner was found up in the attic of the penitentiary with slash marks on his throat.
Jesse Garcia was just a kid - he was used by the other cons. He was used sexually, he was used to do their dirty work. He was a patsy - he didn't know what was going on. During the murder, Billy Randall locked himself in his cell so that he was clear. He turned in state's evidence. He finally had to be transferred to another penitentiary because he couldn't have stayed alive there any longer.
It was a long, ugly trial when all this came out about the drugs and the sex. In the end, three boys - Rivenberg, Bowen and Garcia - were found guilty and sentenced to death. Now it's not that we thought that these folks should be turned loose on the street. We wanted the death sentence commuted to life. We just didn't think they ought to be killed.
Ethel C. Hale, a fine radical, started the Life for Garcia Committee. Ammon Hennacy was very much involved, and I was writing songs we would sing up on the steps of the state capitol during rallies. But all appeals to the Board of Pardons failed to get the death sentence commuted.
It came time for the execution. Ammon decided there should be an all?night vigil on the road by Point of the Mountain, where the penitentiary is. We would be there with our picket signs when the sun came up, and would hear the sound of the guns. I'd been involved for so long that I didn't want to do that. I just couldn't see any sense in it. So I stayed home, and along about midnight I wrote the song for Jesse Garcia.
Sometime during the night Rivenberg committed suicide. The Board of Pardons met in emergency session and decided that they had their pound of flesh. So, just before sunrise, Jesse's sentence was commuted.
A court psychiatrist during the trial had said that Jesse was a dumb kid, that he couldn't be educated, that he would have to be institutionalized all his life. A very fine Swiss professor teaching at the University of Utah, named Dr. Wieler, spent hours and hours with Jesse from the time his sentence was commuted, taking him through grade school and high school, and Jesse learned a hell of a lot. He can learn, he's bright, he knows what he's doing. It's my understanding that, in spite of this, Jesse Garcia has been in solitary confinement since 1961.
Another good song of the same vein is Bob Dylan's "Ballad of Hollis Brown", which Nina Simone covered if you're offended by Dylan's voice.
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
With his wife and five children
And his cabin fallin' down
You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don't know how to smile
Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
You walk the floor and wonder why
With every breath you breathe
The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there's anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
Your empty pockets tell yuh
That you ain't a-got no friend
Your babies are crying louder
It's pounding on your brain
Your babies are crying louder
It's pounding on your brain
Your wife's screams are stabbin' you
Like the dirty drivin' rain
Your grass it is turning black
There's no water in your well
Your grass is turning black
There's no water in your well
You spent your last lone dollar
On seven shotgun shells
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That's hangin' on the wall
Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That you're holdin' in your hand
There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around the cabin door
There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean's pounding roar
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There's seven new people born
I'd also personally recommend you go see Judith & Holofernes the next time they play in San Francisco, as 90% of their songs are murder/suicide ballads:
"Throw Your Skinny Body Down"
The cold grey ocean is calling you
To throw yourself into it
So why don't you?
(Someone DJ Neta knows made a video for the song)
if you like the "in the pines" song, also see roscoe holcomb's version... "louis collins" by mississippi john hurt is fucking fantastic, but might be more delta blues than country, and in delta blues, every song is about killing something.
I would recommend the Wilburn Brothers version 1st and the Louvin
Brothers version 2nd.
It will give you the willies...
I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know well
And every sunday evening
In her home I'd dwell
We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And I knocked that fair girl down
She fell down on her bended knees
For mercy she did cry
"Oh Willy, dear, don't kill me yet
I'm unprepared to die"
She never spoke another word
I only beat her more
Until the ground around me
With her blood did flow
I took her by her golden curls
And I dragged her 'round and 'round
Throwing her into the river
That flows from Knoxville town
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl
With your dark and roving eyes
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl
You can never be my bride
I started back to Knoxville
Got there about midnight
My mother, she was worried
She woke up in a fright
Saying, "Dear son, what have you done
To bloody up your clothes?"
I told my anxious mother
That I was bleading in my nose
I called for me a candle
And I called for me a bed
And I called for me a handkerchief
To bind my aching head
I rolled and thrashed the whole night through
All horrors I did see
The devil stood at the foot of my bed
Pointing his finger at me
They carried me down to Knoxville
And put me in a cell
My friends all tried to get me out
But none could go my bail
I'm here to waste my life away
Down in this dirty old jail
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl
The girl I loved so well.
Not really country murder ballads, but this guy is certainly backwoodsy, paranoid, and creepy (and recently mentioned in another thread?)
Kristin Hersh, of Throwing Muses, fame recorded an album of covers that may prove compellin' if you're into that aesthetic -
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/h/hersh_kristin/murder-misery-and-then-goodnight.shtml
"long black veil" is a great one... skip james is great (and mental)...
any Leadbelly is great... any hank williams is great, tho he's more kinda woe is me spooky imagrey than bodys in the woods:
We met in the springtime when blossoms unfold
The pastures were green and the meadows were gold
Our love was in flower as summer grew on
Her love like the leaves now has withered and gone.
The roses have faded, there???s frost at my door
The birds in the morning don???t sing anymore
The grass in the valley is starting to die
And out in the darkness the whippoorwills cry.
Refrain
Alone and forsaken by fate and by man
Oh, lord, if you hear me please hold to my hand
Oh, please understand.
Oh, where has she gone to, oh, where can she be
She may have forsaken some other like me
She promised to honor, to love and obey
Each vow was a plaything that she threw away.
The darkness is falling, the sky has turned gray
A hound in the distance is starting to "bay"
I wonder, I wonder - what she???s thinking of
Forsaken, forgotten - without any love.
for real great country ballads:
Down in the Willow garden
Where me and my love did meet
As we sat a-courtin'
My love fell off to sleep
I had a bottle of Burgundy wine
My love she did not know
So I poisoned that dear little girl
On the banks below
I drew a sabre through her
It was a bloody knife
I threw her in the river
Which was a dreadful sign
My father often told me
That money would set me free
If I would murder that dear little girl
Whose name was Rose Connolly
My father sits at his cabin door
Wiping his tear-dimmed eyes
For his only son soon shall walk
To yonder scaffold high
My race is run, beneath the sun
The scaffold now waits for me
For I did murder that dear little girl
Whose name was Rose Connelly
also, early howlin wolf like "down at the bottom", "i asked for water, she gave me gasoline" or "somebody in my home" have that vibe (which makes sense b/c he learned to play from Robert Johnson and those other Delta guys)
Yes. He does that Pretty Polly song which is the definition of a murder ballad. That song's also on the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album by the Byrds.
A little more modern, but Sixteen Horsepower are great for that murder in the kudzu vibe. Low Estate is creepy like the abandoned farmhouse up the road that nobody wants to go near.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002GP5/qid=1121274940/sr=8-4/ref=pd_bbs_ur_4/104-0317795-6346318?v=glance&s=music&n=507846
Also just heard these guys
http://www.smoochrecords.com/bands/munly.html
They have a song called "Another Song about Jesus, a Wedding Sheet and a Bowie Knife" which is
Best ever:
Porter Wagoner's The Cold Hard Facts of Life
About a guy who comes home from a trip early, stops in at a liquor store to grab a nice bottle for his wife as a surprise, hears some dude in line talking about "Her husband's out of towm/and there's a Party/He winked as if to say 'you know the rest'", so he follows dude out of the parking lot and the guy pulls into HIS DRIVEWAY. So he stabs his wife and her lover and laments from his cell "I guess I'll go to Hell/or rot here in this cell/but who taught who the Cold Hard Facts of Life".
i dunno if anyone i used to talk with in here is still here. but hey if you are.
if you don't know me my name's chazz and in portland, or. peace.
Leon Russell also did a a haunting contemporary version of Hollis Brown.
The Stapel Singers do a haunting version of Bob Dylan's John Brown. Very Relevant today, about a soldier who steps on a mine and has to rethink the meaning of life. It was first released on Epic I believe.
The Stanley Brothers were the kings of this stuff. All the bluegrass greats would slow things down for a murder ballad. I remember seeing Jim & Jesse once, the did a version of Banks Of The Ohio where the murder dragged the girl through town by her hair. As a matter of fact it was listening to all that violent music that caused the Hatfield and McCoy fued.
Here are some traditional titles:
Pretty Polly
By The Banks Of The Ohio
The House Carpenter
Barbara Allen
Wind And The Rain
Golden Vanity
The Cuckoo
Rose Connelly
Omie Wise
Tom Dula
Artists to look for:
Doc Boggs (as mentioned above)
Stanley Brothers
Bill Monroe
Hazel (Dickens) And Alice (Gerrard)
Doc Watson
Sister Cunningham
There are few songs more haunting than Leadbelly's version of In The Pines, but I think the Leon Russell one and the Staple Singers one a mentioned first are goose bump raising.
An another note many gospel and blues performers have done the scary When Death Comes Creeping In The Room.
Dan
http://atlantatimemachine.com/images/Cold%20Hard%20Facts%20of%20Life.mp3
sound clip
Yes, yes, yes. If you want your heart broken courtesy of your ears, check these guys out.
Terry Clubbup wrote:
I've hung out with Charlie Louvin. He gave me the willies.
Hey Chzz good to see you back.
Gary Davis does a haunting version of Death Come Creeping In The Room the title might be Soon One Morning. He also does a great version of Sampson & Delilah which may not be haunting but It is about a mass murderer who destroys a building and kills everyone inside including himself because he was betrayed by a woman. Kinda biblical really.
Well Delilah, she was a woman fine and fair
She had good looks, God knows and coal black hair
Delilah, she came to Samson's mind
The first he saw this woman that looked so fine
Delilah, she set down on Samson's knee
Said tell me where your strength lies if you please
She spoke so kind, God knows, she talked so fair
'til Samson said "Delilah, you can cut off my hair
You can shave my head, clean as my hand
And my strength 'come as natural as any a man"
If I had my way
If I had my way
In this wicked world
If I had my way
I would tear this old building down
Dan
COSIGN!
There's a couple good ones on there, including the very creepy "The First Mrs. Jones", complete with dead body buried in the woods:
Also don't sleep on Nick Cave's cover of "Long Black Veil" here:
or his album of (mostly?) original murder ballads, with guests PJ Harvey and Kylie Minogue(!):
hollar
"I'm gonna take you down by the riverside / and hang you up baby, by your neck / I got the madman blues"
for real! it's almost like a Blue Note cover
I have a hard time missing you baby, with my pistol in your mouth
You may be thinking about going north woman, but your brains are staying south
Even if you sneak away
I'll find you before nightfall
You're tied to me girl
I can feel your sweetblood call
"Hollis Brown" is tough to beat, though. Most of these tunes use their last verse to kinda ham-fistedly hammer their point home ("And that is why I..."), but "Hollis Brown" just quietly closes the circle, simply, finally, and terrifyingly, and the whole thing just kind of...goes...away, like it was written in water. So apocalyptic, but ultimately so small...but still: so apocalyptic. Things fall apart, you know? The Neville Brothers do a surprisingly compelling version.
The back cover is great - it's almost the same shot, but has the girl walking in on the two dudes cuddling on the couch.
hey Dan! long time no see man. I'm doing a night now that might not be too late for you and you could meet another vinyl obsessive. i succeeded in robbing the east of my buddy haim, who runs longtallsimon.com. i'm sure some of these cats know him, i know marco does. anyhow from 8pm-12am friday and saturday nights at the 820 lounge. 820 n russell between mint and the white eagle. i'll buy you a drink. when's the next night owl? i got hit up by so many people i owed money at the last one i couldn't cop anything!
AYYYY YOOOOOO! [/b]
Man o man but he is talented with the hardcore...if y'all ever see
an album or CD that looks like this:
...pick it up...
It's got one of my all-time favorites called
"Tonight I'm Going To The Gallos" [/b]
yep.
...so bartender tie the vine around my red-neck one more time,
cause tonight, I'm going to the Gallos
yes tonight I'll lay my heart to rest
till her memory lets me go---
oh, tonight I'm going to the Gallos...
with Ernest and Julio.
oh for sure. gram rules! i just found out that he was like 19 in the ISB days. damn
and the version of him singing "The Christian Life" on The Byrds' outake lp Sanctuary IV is