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“Raw Collops Slashed from the Rump of Nature”

In Lomax’s “Collector’s Note,” introducing his 1910 ballad anthology, he mentions “a Homeric quality about the cowboy’s profanity and vulgarity that pleases rather than repulses.” Something similar may be at work on us when we listen to Kennerley’s album. Our entertainment is often at some remove from our sensibilities. Of the ballads he collected, Lomax also wrote, “To paraphrase slightly what Sidney Lanier said of Walt Whitman’s poetry, they are raw collops slashed from the rump of Nature, and never mind the gristle.”

Roosevelt’s handwritten introduction to John A. Lomax’s anthology

Lomax dedicated his anthology to Teddy Roosevelt, who added a handwritten note to Lomax that serves as a preface. In that note, Roosevelt observes that balladry turns Jesse James into an American Robin Hood. The comparison pops up repeatedly, and Jesse James likely made it himself. Roosevelt praises the anthology, asserting it is “a work of real importance to preserve permanently this unwritten ballad literature of the back country and the frontier.” He’s more cautious in his assessment of the Robin Hood connection, calling it a curiosity without in fact praising the conflation. He wrote, “There is something very curious in the reproduction here on this new continent of essentially the conditions of ballad-growth which obtained in medieval England; including, by the way, sympathy for the outlaw, Jesse James taking the place of Robin Hood.” A careful man, that Roosevelt.

Lomax tied the cowboy to a chivalric tradition, called him a knight of the twentieth century, and included ballads about not only Jesse James but also Coleman Younger in his 1910 anthology. He hoped the works collected there would reveal some gentleness in American cowboys and create some sympathy for them. His “Collector’s Note” seems to prefer the cowboy over the Indian, and in this way it lacks some nuance and complexity we might expect or hope for today. Still, his interest in finding something soft in what is thought to be hard is a fine compulsion. It might be part of what Kennerley was after in his album, and, if I am generous with myself, it might be part of what I was looking for in the picture of the outlaw on the album cover in my stereo cabinet.

More Jesse James

Kennerley’s The Legend of Jesse James is now packaged in a two-album set with White Mansions, another Kennerley-composed album conceived as a portrayal of fictional Confederate characters during the Civil War. Most of those characters are white, though members of Rodena Preston’s gospel group, The Voices of Deliverance, sing as slaves. Other musicians featured on this album include Jessi Colter, Waylon Jennings, John Dillon, Steve Cash, Bernie Leadon, and Eric Clapton.

You can listen to The Legend of Jesse James in its entirety here. You can listen to the full White Mansions album here.

Johnny Cash
Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, and Charlie Daniels have received most of the attention in this discussion, but Johnny Cash deserves some too. Cash, as Frank James, has a supporting role in Kennerley’s album and in the 1986 made-for-TV movie, The Ballad of Jesse James, in which he also plays Frank James. Here’s Cash singing that title song from the movie. The video shows Kennerley’s album cover, which is confusing.

Nick Cave
Nick Cave’s album for the soundtrack of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a lovely, haunting listening experience, and it provides a fascinating and stark contrast to Kennerley’s album. Cave’s soundtrack is brooding, atmospheric, and wordless. You can listen to the whole thing here.

The Pogues
The Pogues covered this song on their album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, which I listened to over and over when I studied in Scotland for a semester in college. I was sometimes a little homesick, and in this song I heard America singing – or at least one troubled, familiar part of it. Listen here.

Pete Seeger
Here’s Pete Seeger’s take on the classic ballad.

Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen covered the familiar ballad as well on his album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Listen here.

Warren Zevon
Warren Zevon provides his own distinctive take on the legends of Frank and Jesse James here.