Murder Ballad MondayYoung Hunting (Henry Lee, Love Henry)
mbm-header

Comments

Young Hunting (Henry Lee, Love Henry) — 8 Comments

  1. Wow.

    I want to say again that there’s something potentially important here about Henske’s time — the way artists were mixing up violence, art, and criticism of the American middle class. And playing around with standards of obscenity, truth, and “decency” at the same time too. All I can say at the moment though is that “jarring” is something they were going for. Fascinating to think about how and why the traditional murder ballad might have gotten wrapped up in it.

    I’d love to see what you and others might make of this.

    • Eh, accidentally deleted my comment… I do agree with this. And I think it’s telling that the audiences in these recordings really seem to respond to the humor. It’s easy to forget that they had their own fear of imminent death in the form of Russian missiles. In hindsight it might look more abstract than the reality we face after 9/11, but it certainly didn’t feel that distant or abstract. I imagine the need to laugh in death’s face was deep.

  2. With Pat, I think I was inclined to give Henske’s introduction the benefit of the doubt. It’s hard to tell the context she was offering these comments in or what audience she was performing for. Pat may be right that it could be a way to reacquaint an audience with a side of music that had been hidden from the mainstream for a bit. A few of her jokes seem to poke fun at the conventions of middle class family life, and so part of me was thinking that those conventions were more of the butt of the jokes than the story itself.

    Then I heard her cover of “Omie Wise.” This time, I was astonished. You can find it on Spotify as the “Ballad of Little Romy:”

    http://open.spotify.com/track/2wghbl5c9WPlJJMs17wmhJ

    Or on Youtube as part of the “Beatnixploitation” film “Hootenanny Hoot:”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC5FCKErkMo

    I’ll probably post about these performances later (with live links), but there’s something both about Henske’s spoken intro as well as her musical treatments that I found rather jarring–particularly for a song that’s based on a true story. Something to get back to later, after a bit more thought…perhaps in conversation with Tom Lehrer.

  3. It was the bird that first got my attention, that made me go back and actually listen to the story deeply. I discovered it through Dylan’s _World Gone Wrong_ before I’d realized that ‘murder ballads’ existed as a long, weird tradition outside of bluegrass music. I remember thinking something like “Wait, what was that line? ‘A girl who would murder her own true love would kill a little bird like me.’ Why is a bird singing lyrics? Why is the bird so afraid?”

    So, yes, you’re right on the money for me. That little bird flew away and keeps telling the story to anyone who will hear. I don’t know if it’s simply a clever literary device, or it has some deeper context from the days when a murder was almost impossible to prove without an eyewitness or a confession. It doesn’t matter; it works *really well*.

    That said, of all presented here, the version I find superior is Cave/Harvey. The lack of the dialogue with the bird does not detract for me. The little guy is still there, keeping his mouth shut. Ok, a silent witness, but one with wings.

    No doubt the video affected the way I heard that version. They act it out so beautifully that I’ll not hear that version again without seeing their movement. It strikes me that hearing a song with a video like that is one step *closer* to the ‘old way’ people used to hear them; sitting closely with a singer, watching her/his facial expressions, the tense wrinkling around closed eyes while s/he let it spill out. A torch song now? Yes. It reminds me that the mountain people called all of these old tragic ballads, simply, “love songs.”

    Henske’s version is interesting, and her voice is strong and steady. She gives it a proper tone, but something about it just doesn’t ‘plug me’. (The comedy thing was incomprehensible to me; but it seems it was just her unique and off-color way of introducing some songs at live shows, maybe for an audience that had lost touch with the weird side of music thus needing to ease in slowly.)

    Justice’s version likewise doesn’t hit the mark for me. As Ken points out, the melody is too familiar as a completely different kind of love song.

    Now, I find the lyrics and the narrative interesting in both. But Cave and Harvey take that narrative and elevate it in numerous ways. The music, the throaty singing, the simple refrain (where the bird lives); it all coheres fully for me. Love and death reign supreme.

    Anyway, more later on a different theme… I keep thinking of the saying “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and wondering if that’s really the message here. Maybe, but it feels too easy. I want it to be more anyway.

    • “No doubt the video affected the way I heard that version. They act it out so beautifully that I’ll not hear that version again without seeing their movement. It strikes me that hearing a song with a video like that is one step *closer* to the ‘old way’ people used to hear them; sitting closely with a singer, watching her/his facial expressions, the tense wrinkling around closed eyes while s/he let it spill out. A torch song now? Yes. It reminds me that the mountain people called all of these old tragic ballads, simply, “love songs.””

      Yes! This, exactly.

      It’s funny you should mention that saying about the woman scorned. I think that does apply, definitely, and Cave has said as much about his cover. But, as Ken pointed out in a previous comment, so much in this song is about the aftermath of the act of violence. This and other versions of the song compress everything that happens before the violence, and then focus on the moment of passion (the crime of passion) and what happens afterwards. Scorn is not the end, so to speak.

      “Henry Lee” appears on Nick Cave’s 1996 album entitled “Murder Ballads.” It is one of his greatest commercial and critical successes to date. As the final track of the album, Cave chose to include a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Death is Not the End” (which appeared on Dylan’s widely panned 1988 album “Down in the Groove.”) He also recorded it as group song with the likes of PJ Harvey, Kylie Minogue, Shane McGowan, and Mick Harvey (among others). I’ve always thought of that as an important editorial comment and act of resurrection on Cave’s part.

      Bob Dylan’s “Death is Not the End” (on YouTube):

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXz5bY7A-7A

      Nick Cave’s “Death is Not the End (on Spotify):

      http://open.spotify.com/track/0YTgCmW8ieWOFv1yHFgP9n

    • Ah yes, I bought Down in the Groove soon after it came out. I always liked it frankly, and I still sing Silvio every once in awhile.

      And I bought Cave’s album a couple of weeks ago, and am digesting it slowly and well. I appreciate your steering me in that direction! Thanks.

  4. This is so interesting, and takes us into some new territory. I have a few initial and perhaps somewhat disconnected thoughts. I was only familiar with Bob Dylan’s version of this song. Although I have the Anthology, I didn’t remember Justice’s version.

    I noticed that in all the versions you present here, the action before the murder is pretty compressed. In all of these, what happens before is less interesting than what happens after.

    Justice’s recording (made in Chicago, btw) uses the same tune that the Carter Family and, later, Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson use for “The Storms are on the Ocean.” That’s more of a (one-sided) folk song dialogue (a pledge, really, I guess) about love and fidelity, but brings up some interesting parallels about the role of birds and nature more generally.

    The role of the natural world is the element that popped out here for me, through your comments. Even though Cave and Harvey’s version removes the dialogue with the bird, their chorus still uses the wind and the birds as a framing mechanism for the human actions. In this way, and with the dialogue with the bird, nature is witness to what, in the minds of singers and listeners, may seem unnatural acts. I think this will come back to us with a number of other songs (Child 14, for example).

    Having said that, this ballad takes us into the realm of the supernatural as well. Child mentioned that “Fair Ellender” or “Lord Thomas and Fair Annie” seem to contain remnants of fairy ballads, but this is the first one we have with a talking animal.

    Great post. I’m going to have to mull this one over a bit more, but I look forward to spending the week with this one, and to our conversation.

    • Thanks for bringing up a few issues that I was hoping would be raised but didn’t have the stamina to even begin thinking about. Your prompts give me some breathing room in which to start thinking more carefully.

      I agree — the natural elements are critical here. I hadn’t connected them to the idea of witnessing as you have, and that’s definitely worth exploring. Hints of the same connection between the crime and the natural surroundings appear for me in “Omie Wise,” too, and many other murder ballads. There are several ballads in which natural elements — often water but sometimes things like the rolling hills or tall grasses, or the earth itself — are portrayed as bearing witness or at least “accepting” the suffering victim and providing some respite to the suffering.

      And in some cases, like this one, nature will then provide others with clues about what has occurred after the fact. Here we have the tell-tale bird as witness. In other cases nature actively reveals the body of a murder victim to other human witnesses. And so on.

      Nick Cave is an important artist in this regard. In most of his covers of traditional ballads as well as in his original compositions, he makes a direct link between the crime and the natural world that surrounds it. That he’s also fascinated with American music traditions and the American landscape is no coincidence — he’s remarked on numerous occasions that he is inspired jointly by the violence of American culture and the violent beauty of the American landscape. (His other recent obsession besides the murder ballad is the American western film.)

      Clearly, I’m a huge Cave fan, and feel his contributions to the genre are very important. That said, I’m also frankly fascinated by Henske’s take on this and other ballads too. There’s something “off” and even vulgar about what she’s doing. I think that’s important to her time, the American 60s, and how that generation viewed violence and art…(why did she cover murder ballads at all?) but I haven’t fully sussed that out yet.