Introduction A few weeks back I assembled a list of my ‘essential eleven’ traditional murder ballads. While we here at Murder Ballad Monday usually delve deeply into one ballad or theme, we saw some possible value in a lighter ‘list-based’ … Continue reading →
Jeffrey Foucault and Mark Erelli This is the second post this week on Norman Blake’s “Billy Gray.” Read the first here. Outlaw Rhetoric That I haven’t read Aristotle‘s Poetics yet is a gap in my education. I’ll need to get right … Continue reading →
Bob Weir [This is the fourth post this week on Marty Robbins’s “El Paso.” You can find the first one here, the second here, and the third here.]I’ve found over the course of doing my weeks at the blog that … Continue reading →
[This is the third post this week on Marty Robbins’s “El Paso.” Read the first here, and the second here.] In today’s post, let’s give a listen to some of the Western material that Robbins created both at the time … Continue reading →
Laurette Luez [This is the second post on the song “El Paso.” Read the first one here.]Crossing BordersIn his essay on “El Paso” in The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad,” music critic and … Continue reading →
Out in the west Texas town of El PasoOf all the songs I’ve explored so far in this blog, none has proven quite as elusive as “El Paso” to find the proverbial handles to grab on to it and open … Continue reading →
