Dead Girl Ballads
David Clements
tape of what one of my sons calls "dead girl ballads" from
traditional/old-time music.
I know I have lots of them in my collection which runs to about 30,000
songs, but I am drawing a blank after about 9 titles. So far I have the
following:
Tom Dooley
Banks of the Ohio
Poor Ellen Smith
Pearl Bryan
Little Mathie Grove
Omie Wise
Down in the Willow Garden
Knoxville Girl
Thus this posting. I am asking for any titles any of you can think of of
murdered girl songs from traditional/old-time music.
.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thank you in advance,
--
Dave Clements
dmcle...@comcast.net
The true measure of a society's humanity is the manner in which it treats
its least advantaged citizens.
Various Artists
American Gothic: Bluegrass Songs of Death and Sorrow (CMH)
This excellent collection of music from the dark side of bluegrass doesn't
come with a warning label. But it probably should.
You don't want to listen to it all in one sitting, especially if you're the
least bit depressed. There's a lot of tragedy packed into this hour of
music.
In Mac Wiseman's "Little Blossom," a little girl is beaten to death by her
drunken father. Another little girl talks to her parents on her deathbed in
The Osborne Brothers' "I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling." And a lost girl dies
of a snake bite in the Heartbreak Valley Boys' "The Little Girl and the
Dreadful Snake."
Charlie Lawson's 1929 murder of his wife and children -- and eventual
suicide -- is celebrated in Wiseman's "The Ballad of the Lawson Family."
Tommy Faile sings of "Barbara Allen," who dies for Sweet William after he
dies for love of her. Grandpa Jones tells the tale of "Young Charlotte," who
freezes to death because she's too vain to wear a coat over her ball gown.
And the Bluegrass Cardinals eulogize "Darlin' Corey," a female moonshiner
gunned down by the law.
But hang on until the end. That's when Wiseman and the Osbornes remind you
to "Keep on the Sunny Side."
The song, however, includes the line "There's a dark and troubled side of
life ..."
And this is it.
Bill Dillof
victim, not a homicide. I always thought of the murder ballads as "Willy
songs".
Dillof
tony goldenberg
> Saw the review printed below and thought that as a variant I would make a
> tape of what one of my sons calls "dead girl ballads" from
> traditional/old-time music.
>
> I know I have lots of them in my collection which runs to about 30,000
> songs, but I am drawing a blank after about 9 titles. So far I have the
> following:
> Tom Dooley
> Banks of the Ohio
> Poor Ellen Smith
> Pearl Bryan
> Little Mathie Grove
> Omie Wise
> Down in the Willow Garden
> Knoxville Girl
>
> Thus this posting. I am asking for any titles any of you can think of of
> murdered girl songs from traditional/old-time music.
> .
> Any help will be appreciated.
Cleoma
But Nellie Gray wasn't murdered; she was a slave, and the singer isn't going to
see her anymore because she has been sold to another owner.
Oh my darling Nellie Gray
They have taken you away
And I'll never see my darling any more
I am sitting by the river
And I'm weeping all the day
For you're gone from that old Kentucky shore.
Oh my darling Nellie Gray
Up in heaven there they say
That they'll never take you from me any more
etc.
Suzy
To reply to this posting, remove "nojunk" from my email address.
Maxine G
dmcle...@comcast.net:
> Saw the review printed below and thought that as a variant I would make a
> tape of what one of my sons calls "dead girl ballads" from
> traditional/old-time music.
>
> I know I have lots of them in my collection which runs to about 30,000
> songs, but I am drawing a blank after about 9 titles. So far I have the
> following:
> Tom Dooley
> Banks of the Ohio
> Poor Ellen Smith
> Pearl Bryan
> Little Mathie Grove
> Omie Wise
> Down in the Willow Garden
> Knoxville Girl
>
> Thus this posting. I am asking for any titles any of you can think of of
> murdered girl songs from traditional/old-time music.
> .
> Any help will be appreciated.
>
> Thank you in advance,
Here's 2 more:
Little Sadie
The Wind and Rain
--
mg at pcg dot net
Mike Schway
Maxine G <m...@nospam.com> wrote:
And there's always:
Mary on the Wild Moor (well, she wasn't exactly murdered, but was a
victim of willful parental neglect)
Pretty Polly
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Schway | [Picture your favorite quote here]
msc...@nas.com |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Shimberg
>Mary on the Wild Moor (well, she wasn't exactly murdered, but was a
>victim of willful parental neglect)
> Mike Schway | [Picture your favorite quote here]
> msc...@nas.com |
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
Prove it, stranger! I don't think that there's anything in the song
that indiacates anything more than a father who had impaired hearing.
Mary was "happy and free" at home, she tells us. The legitimacy of the
babe in her arms may be questionable, but there's no text to help us
decide -- it's all pure guesswork.
Let me point out, while we're talking about paying attention to what
is actually said in a text <giggle>, that no specific request was made
for songs about female murder victims, although there are many
examples of that. We were asked for songs about dead girls.
Joel Shimberg
Louis Claeson
In the sleepy little town of Marietta......
Bill Dillof
> Didn't Earl Johnson sing something like The Grave of Mary Phaegan (sp)?
> In the sleepy little town of Marietta......
>
That would be Little Grave In Georgia
Mike Schway
Fiddl...@cs.com (Joel Shimberg) wrote:
> Prove it, stranger! I don't think that there's anything in the song
> that indiacates anything more than a father who had impaired hearing.
> Mary was "happy and free" at home, she tells us. The legitimacy of the
> babe in her arms may be questionable, but there's no text to help us
> decide -- it's all pure guesswork.
Well, on second thought it is ambiguous, but my feeling about the
subtext was that Mary's dad was "deaf to her cries" by choice and not
from just plain ol' bad hearing. After all, she got knocked up and
ended up carring around this bastard child in all sorts of bad weather
(oh yeah, it didn't really say the kid was a bastard either.)
I guess we hear what we *want* to hear. :-)
Joel Shimberg
> In the sleepy little town of Marietta......
There was a song about the murder of Mary Phagan, pencil factory
worker. Leo Frank was convicted of her murder, but there seems to be
doubt about whether his crime was murder or being a Jew in Georgia at
that time. It was recorded by Vernon Dalhart (of course) and by John
Carson, 6/24/25.
Joel Shimberg
Jerry Dallal
drawback to tin as a newsreader. I can't look at the rest of the thread
if I'm composing my reply in tin.
So, I owe you one
Barbara Allen?
House Carpenter?
Two Sisters?
Suzie Cleland?
Reynardine?
Delia?
Jerry Dallal
: David Clements <dmcle...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:<BAAA8D30.6D8B%dmcle...@comcast.net>...
:> Little Mathie Grove
This strikes me as a bit different from the others because the focus of
the song isn't the death of Lord Arnold's wife, at least until the end.
If the woman's death doesn't have to be the focus of the song, the range
of possibilities broadens. Does "The Shanty Boy on the Big Eau Clair"
qualify? Or things like "Dick Darby, the Cobbler"? I'd guess "Sheath and
Knife" and "Poor Ellen Smith" do, regardless.
d.d.t
There was a great deal more than doubt about about Frank's guilt. He
did not commit the murder, and there is proof that another man did.
Frank was posthumously pardoned by the state of Georgia in the '80s
sometime. A very good web page on the subject seems to have
disappeared.
Carson recorded 2 songs about this case--unfortunately he was part of
the anti-semitic mob mentality of the time.
Gillespie Gail
Right, and sometime in the last 10 or 12 years a very old man, supposedly
the person who really killed her, made a death bed confession. It was in the
Atlanta paper黍ne of my aunts clipped & saved it for me since she remembered
hearing the song when she was a child. Will dig through my stuff to see if I
can find it.
There's also a detailed account of the song and its social circumstances in
_Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy_, a book about Fiddlin' John Carson by Gene Wiggins.
G
in article 17a6910f.03040...@posting.google.com, d.d.t at
gar...@dandante.com wrote on 4/1/03 12:06 PM:
Joseph Scott
> the person who really killed her, made a death bed confession.
More complicated than that. The trial mostly came down to the word of
one suspect, Northerner Leo Frank, against the word of another
suspect, Southerner Jim Conley, whom the prosecution chose as their
star witness against Frank. There were notes on the scene supposedly
written by Phagan, but found to be in Conley's handwriting, and in
Southern dialect. Conley was also discovered washing bloody clothing.
Conley's story in court was that Frank had killed Phagan, and had
forced Conley to help him move the body and forced him to write the
notes. Frank testified that Conley was lying. Conley got one year for
(allegedly) helping Frank, Frank got the death penalty. The governor
changed that to life, costing that governor his career, but Frank was
kidnapped from prison and lynched anyway.
The prosecuting attorney, of course, became governor. In the 1980s,
aged Alonzo Mann, another employee in the factory, signed affidavits
and passed lie detector tests stating that he saw Jim Conley carrying
Phagan over his shoulder alone at the scene (with Frank not present,
as Conley's testimony had had it). He said he didn't come forward back
at the time because Conley threatened his life.
Joseph Scott
Kerry Blech
special on this subject, as well. Earl Johnson's melody
seems to have been that of Uncle Dave's "Over the Mountains,"
pretty incongruous.
-Kerry