Murder Ballads by Various

100 track collection of vintage Murder Ballads. songs that have evolved from British & European Folklore, murders & tragedies to American outlaws & gangsters... featuring Folk, Blues & County icons such as...

Big Bill Broonzy
Blind Willie McTell
Bob Dylan
Brownie McGhee
Burl Ives
Champion Jack Dupree
Charley Patton
Charley Pride
Earl Johnson
Ethel Waters
Johnny Cash
Josh White
Kid Bailey
Lead Belly
Lefty Frizzell
Long "Cleve" Reed & Little Harvey Hull
Lonnie Donegan & His Skiffle Group
Marty Robbins
Mike Seeger
Mississippi John Hurt
Peggy Seeger
Pete Seeger
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Red River Dave McEnery
Roscoe Holcomb
Sippie Wallace
The Louvin Brothers
Woody Guthrie

- a sub-genre of the traditional ballads, make up a notable portion of traditional ballads, many of which originated in Scandinavia, England, and lowland Scotland in the premodern era. In those, while the murder is committed, the murderer usually suffers justice at the hands of the victim's family, even if the victim and murderer are related. In these ballads murderous women usually burn while males hang—see "Lamkin" and some Scottish versions of "The Two Sisters". Within the context of the British isles, murder ballads are only found in English and Scots-speaking regions (broadly, England, lowland Scotland, and northeastern Ireland), and are not a feature of Gaelic or Welsh-language music...

Perspectives are numerous. Some murder ballads tell the story from the point of view of the murderer, or attempt to portray the murderer in a somewhat sympathetic light, such as "Tom Dooley". A recording of that song sold nearly four million copies for The Kingston Trio in 1958. Other murder ballads tell the tale of the crime from the point of view of the victim, such as "Lord Randall", in which the narrator becomes ill and discovers that he has been poisoned. Others tell the story with greater distance, such as "Lamkin", which records the details of the crime and the punishment without any attempt to arouse sympathy for the criminal. Supernatural revenge wrought by the victim upon the murderer sometimes figures in murder ballads such as "The Twa Sisters" (also known as "Binnorie" or "Minnorie" Child Ballad #10).

The details and locales for a particular murder ballad did change over time. For example, "Knoxville Girl" is essentially the same ballad as "The Wexford Girl" with the setting transposed from Ireland to Tennessee—the two of them are based on "The Oxford Girl", a murder ballad set in England. Many American murder ballads are modified versions of Old World ballads with any elements of supernatural retribution removed and the focus transferred to the slaughter of the innocent. For example, the English ballad "The Gosport Tragedy" of the 1750s had both murder and vengeance on the murderer by the ghosts of the murdered woman and her unborn baby, who call up a great storm to prevent his ship sailing before tearing him apart. In contrast, the Kentucky version, "Pretty Polly", is a stark and blood-soaked murder ballad with the victim being betrayed by the man she loves, stabbed in the heart, and buried in a shallow grave. The epilogue describes her killer being hanged by the community and his soul burning in hell and a "debt to the Devil" in a few versions.

African music traditions brought by slaves blended with the conventions. Olive Burt noted that the murder ballad tradition of the American Old West is distinct to some extent from that of ballads rooted in the old broadside tradition, noting that:

Western settlers found murder and bloodshed fascinating, and composed local ballads. But with printing facilities scarce, many of these items were not published at all while others saw fame only briefly in the columns of the local newspapers. As a result, true western ballads of murder—except those about such famous outlaws as Jesse James, Cole Younger, Sam Bass, and their ilk—have been entirely lost, or are known only to the children of those who knew and sang them. These children are now, of course, old men and women. Some of the best examples of western murder ballads will be lost forever when these people die.
Several historical murder ballads became hit pop songs in the 1950s and 1960s, including the Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" (as mentioned above), which was a #1 Billboard hit in 1958, Lloyd Price's version of "Stagger Lee" also reached the top of the chart in 1959, while Lefty Frizzell's "Long Black Veil" was a hit for a number of artists over the years...

there are various versions of the same songs here and quality of the tracks vary, due to some of the tracks being pretty old ..!

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