Music & Friends The pleasure of thinking and talking about music goes way back for me. Maybe it began when I was eight or nine, when my sister and I listened to 45 rpm singles: Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago … Continue reading →
Murder ballads in sepia We heard from the folks at American Murder Song last month. Their touring production of original murder ballads, set in an mostly imagined early 19th century America, intrigued me enough to want to explore it here. … Continue reading →
Richard Polenberg HEAR MY SAD STORY: The True Tales That Inspired Stagolee, John Henry, and Other Traditional American Folksongs Cornell University Press 978-0-5017-0002-6 www.cornellpress.cornell.edu In 1966 Phil Ochs remarked, “Before … Continue reading →
Murder ballads made for dancing The Corries’ performance of “The Massacre of Glencoe” on our Facebook page several days ago prompted one reader to comment that older songs like it differed with more recent “hardcore” music in that the tenderness of … Continue reading →
On the lam … again. As our long-time readers know, we typically take off the month of December. Life is busy, and we want time to recharge for the next year. Many readers have joined us just recently, so may … Continue reading →
The Early Years I played Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska over and over when I was in high school. It’s a dark, meditative album full of rage and sadness, which soothed me. I was sixteen, and had just moved to a … Continue reading →
From the time we started Murder Ballad Monday in 2012, one of our neighbors in the curious portion of the web focused on murder balladry has been Paul Slade, journalist and owner of PlanetSlade.com. While not exactly a blog, Slade’s web site … Continue reading →
