We thought it might be fun this week to share with you some of why we do what we do in this blog.  Each of the writers here has their own story about hearing their first murder ballad. Each of those moments planted a unique seed that now grows in this weird little garden we call Murder Ballad Monday.  We know you have those stories too so, if you feel inclined to tell yours, please comment below or come on over to our Facebook page and leave us a message in the thread we’ve started there!

Ken Bigger

“John Henry,” was my first murder ballad. Wanderin’ Folk Songs by The Easy Riders taught me sing, and to love ballads. While I’m sure I inherited my singing from my parents, quality time with this LP from Dad’s collection drew me in to folk music. I still know every word and note on this album.

The Easy Riders: “John Henry”Wanderin’s peppy, two-minutes-and-change arrangements clean things up for mixed company. For my six year old self, though, the album painted rich pictures – of dangerous places and people, of gamblers and railroad men, of women with hair dark and curly. A few of the early tracks on the album allude to death. In “East Virginia,” they sing “take me to that marble orchard, and carve my name upon a stone.” “Gambler’s Blues” takes seven girls to the graveyard, but only six of them come back.

John Henry dies, though. No doubt. John Henry dies — killed by his work, his winning but losing contest with the steam drill. I probably wouldn’t have thought about it as a murder ballad then. I didn’t know the category. It’s close enough to my definition now for the purposes of this post.

Who kills John Henry? Doesn’t he really just work too hard? Perhaps that’s it.

On the other hand, John Henry’s “a man ain’t nothin’ but a man” defiance strikes a chord in me. With an adult lens, I can see systems of racism and economic oppression that effectively killed him and what he symbolizes. I doubt I saw that then, at least clearly.

What I did see then, and still see, is that defiant spirit, and his common man’s heroic effort in a lost cause. He wins the battle and loses the war in the same moment. It’s tragedy, pure and not entirely simple, but it was a good place to start. I knew that John Henry’s death had meaning for me. I’ve spent a lot of time since trying to figure out that meaning. I’m not done.

Shaleane Gee

I have always had an interest in “true crime songs,” but came late to the murder ballad proper. The introduction was like stumbling onto apocrypha.

I was living in Chicago and it was March, my birthday month. By that time in the season the snow was tired, filthy and old and I was feeling the same. I was desperate to get out of the city and back to the West, where I am from. I was a graduate student, so had little money. I spent 99.99% of what I did have booking a flight to Albuquerque and the remaining .01% renting an hermitage at a Catholic sanctuary just outside the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I couldn’t afford to rent a car; a priest picked me up at the airport. He was driving a baby blue Volkswagen Beetle. I’m an atheist, wanted to be alone, and the drive was an hour and a half. The priest was used to my type. He asked no questions. For the entire drive he talked about the pink-hued trees that lined the river we were following. They were tamarisks, also known as salt cedars, the archenemy of native flora – invasive, noxious, endlessly thirsty – but also saviors, having become the favorite nesting site for the endangered Southwestern Willow flycatcher. A local dilemma.

That was the last conversation I had with a human being for awhile. At the hermitage, I also had nothing to read. No people, no books. It’s what I wanted. I did have two Nick Cave albums I had not listened to before: Murder Ballads and Boatman’s Call, a pairing not unlike the tamarisk and the flycatcher. Neither album tries to hide its sermons and exhortations, in that sense also not unlike the priest who chauffeured me to my isolation. Alone, each album would have converted. Together, they combusted. For me, two songs – one from each album – are yoked and lead: “Henry Lee” (the first song I wrote about on this blog) and “There is a Kingdom.”

Nick Cave & PJ Harvey: “Henry Lee” 

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: “There Is A Kingdom”

Pat Blackman

The first time the classic murder ballad tradition laid me flat was with a double-edged bluegrass dagger from David Grisman on his 1988 Home Is Where the Heart Is.  “Down in the Willow Garden” on Disc 1 drove the steel into my chest, and “Pretty Polly” on Disc 2 twisted it until my life’s blood spilled on the ground.  I was twenty and it was only my second bluegrass album, but I remember clearly the night I brought it home and spread out on the floor in my room to listen.  “Willow Garden” was the second track to pour from my speakers, and I was just slain.

Dave Grisman: “Down In The Willow Garden”It starts tenderly, then wham! Good God – poison and a saber!  Check out the lyrics for yourself.  I didn’t get to the third track on the album right away.  I thought something like “This is one of the weirdest songs I’ve ever heard – it must be an oddity.”  Eventually came “Pretty Polly” and I realized I had stumbled in to something big – something both terrible and wonderful.  Somehow I knew immediately that these were true stories put to music long ago for reasons having nothing to do with entertainment.  I figured there must be more.

I couldn’t put two questions out of my mind.  How could those men do that to those women?  Why would someone sing about it?  I listened again and again.  I imagined the sight of Rose Connoley floating and bleeding in the river, and a lifeless Polly in her shallow forest grave – but not as in some slasher movie or crime drama. There was no thrill, just the awful truth.  At times, I wept.  The stakes in those two songs were the highest I’d ever known in music.  To this day, it is those murder ballads which reveal such shocking truths that most command my attention.  And the two questions that gripped my mind that night years ago are still the ones that drive me to write about this all today.

Tom Britton

The first song that I became aware of concerning a murder was “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by The Beatles. I grew up in a house where The Beatles’ music played all the time. The song, written by Paul McCartney, tells the story of Maxwell Edison who in due course turns into a serial killer. He kills first his girlfriend, then his teacher, and then the judge at his murder trial. The song is not based on a true story, but it was the way the song dealt with murder, with killing, and with death that opened my eyes and my ears for the first time to this subject.

The Beatles: “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”The songwriting duo of Lennon and McCartney were untouchable in our house. My Dad used to mention them in the same breath as Beethoven and Mozart: they were carved from nature, as real as the moon and the sun. The first thing that I can remember loving about Beatles’ songs was their melody. Often the tune would filter into me way before I got to know the lyrics. Such was the case with “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

The song is musically jolly and light-hearted. After playing it quite a few times, my Dad overheard me humming the tune. He asked me if I knew what the song was about. I told him I didn’t. He then invited me to listen to it again. As the needle on our record player crackled, the song began. For the first few lines, nothing registered. It was only when the chorus kicked in with…

“Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
came down upon her head!
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
made sure that she was dead!”

…that I realized, finally, what the song was about. I actually stood up and shouted out “He’s killed her!” The whole experience opened my eyes to the importance of lyrics, and has never left me.

Becky Poole

My first murder ballad is hard to pinpoint. There were songs at varying times that spoke to me in similar “aha” murder ballad moments. A couple I’ve already mentioned on the blog; Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun” & “Omie Wise.”

Of course, there was my Nick Cave period. Back further still I remember listening to the entirety of my friend’s Richard Marx “Rush Street” CD during a sleepover. My mood changed from giggling pillow fight warrior to brooding bra freezer after hearing “Hazard.” (Check it out!)  This may be the first song that sits in the “down by the river” genre for me. One of the first in a slew that says if a man asks you to walk “down by the river” just assume he’s talking to you as if you were a litter of unwanted cats.

Each had an element that was newly catching, newly sad, or infuriating. I remember being fascinated by this macabre genre early on – by the beauty in the sad and the cheeky in the creepy.

I tried to go back even further, without hitting the traditional lullabies, and I found what truly may be my first murder ballad. Sung to me by my dad playing an acoustic guitar, was Harry Belafonte’s “The Fox. ”.

Harry Belafonte: “The Fox”

Here are the lyrics. They don’t print that wonderful last line though – “Never had such a supper in their life, and the little ones chewed on the bones-o!” My parents and I will still sing this last line with each other when the situation calls for it.

I was on the Fox’s side of course, because he’s the protagonist and Fox’s gotta eat. But, because he was anthropomorphized I couldn’t help doing the same for the grey goose and the duck. What about their babies?! Wow, actually this was the beginning of so much. Where is the goose’s story? Where is the duck’s?  I need to go – just got a new idea for a murder ballad.

Coda

So there you have it – most of our stories.  We may add a few more in the future.  And you might see another, different sort collaborative post here sooner or later as well.  In the meantime, let us know if you want: What’s your story?