Murder ballads are a staple of the mythos of Frontier Partisans. From Matty Groves to the Dreadful Wind and Rain, and on down to Cocaine Blues and Carrie Brown, love, lust, jealousy and rage — often fueled by alcohol and drugs — are a staple of the themes that form the taproot of American roots music.
HP at Hillbilly Highways has scouted up an article from the fantastic site Saving Country Music about a young woman named Stefanie Joyce who is digging the murder ballad out of the grave to which what nowadays passes for “country music” has attempted to consign it.
“I feel like there was a time in the early days of hillbilly music and the early Carter Family recordings when you could talk about really disturbing things,” says Joyce. “And I feel like the genre has become so sanitized, especially in the last 20 or 30 years. Obviously, there’s people making great music. But I think there’s something about murder ballads that people find as sinister and almost fun, along with country music that explores stuff like crime, murder, death, and drugs. For the genre to stay relevant, it needs to talk about the broad range of human experience. There was a time when people were more comfortable going to those places.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CarWS8cGPQU
Let me just say: Oh, HELL yes.
Joyce, like most folk singers, isn’t just singing the songs — she’s tracing the songlines back, usually across the Atlantic to the British Isles. This is something that — as you all know — I love.
Now, Joyce is not alone in her enthusiasm for the venerable tradition. Colter Wall wrote himself a damn fine murder ballad in the old style — and, predictably, took flack for “glorifying” violence against women. We live in a silly time. It should be self-evident, but apparently it needs explication: Singing about somebody doing a bad, bad thing does not imply the singer’s endorsement of said bad, bad thing. Or, as Joyce says:
“Just because someone is singing about the truth doesn’t mean they think the truth is good. It just means that it’s real.”
What these young guns are demonstrating is that the murder ballad is too tough to kill. Commercial “country music” has been sanitized and bro-beaten to death, but there’s a whole world of real-deal artists out there making real-deal music. You might say they’re killin’ it…
Matthew says
A lot of culture is being “sanitized” today. It usually comes from the Woke left and it is weird. Now, there are religious fundamentalist types that find things to complain about, but on average it is usually some SJW. I think that culture’s cycle in and out of these phases. The Victorian era was another one, though it certainly is easy to overgeneralize. (A lot of things went on behind closed doors in the Victorian era that would surprise us.)
The thing about it is that sanitization of art leads to dull lifeless art. So I welcome more murder ballads. I welcome more gritty art.
Melodious Thunk says
Woke is the silliest word of 2020, it’s a meaningless sneer designed to stand in the way
of thought and discussion.
Sad to see it adopted by people who are usually careful about language.
J.F. Bell says
There was a time that country music meant songs about people and their lives. Often as not this wasn’t glamorous – cheating, fighting, overdue bills, trying to tie enough of life’s disparate loose ends together just long enough to meet another day – but the results usually held better than a light powdering of truth. Blues was the same way.
At the root, both were the songs that echoed up from the bottom of the social ladder. If you weren’t within living memory of the hard times you probably didn’t care. Why would you? The peon class never amounted to much in the eyes of the landed gentry unless it was time to scourge them off the land or they were milling at the plantation gates with torches and pitchforks.
Mainstream music used to be about the business of living. Now it’s the soundtrack for Saturday night – probably in a place that hasn’t seen a horse, a holler, or a dirt road anytime in the past fifty years.
To bum one from a favorite artist, sadly retired from the field:
“Sexy tractors and pearl snap shirts
Eighth-grade level is where it all works”
Long live dirt music! In all its dark, bloody, joyous, unrefined, unrepentant glory.
Paul McNamee says
Whether it is sanitation, censorship, self-censorship, political correctness, it has indeed rounded off edges. It also means “art” isn’t open to fostering discussion and discourse.
And while I will say the “woke” stuff from the left is nonsense, the right can do it, too.
Fletcher found this the other day. I mean. WTF?
Bob Dylan’s ‘Neighborhood Bully’ Gets Memory-Holed
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/neighborhood-bully-memory-holed
This is a whole ‘nother tangent on the current push to equate any criticism or Israel’s more aggressive policies with being antisemitic–no gray areas allowed. No use of the AND word allowed. (As in, I can by PRO Israel as a state and ANTI Israel aggression AND not be antisemitic.)
More and more two-dimensional choices forced into our three-deimesional lives.
(Ironically, maybe I’m wrong, but I always considered “Neighborhood Bully” to be a PRO Israel song. Like, Israel was getting a bad name for defending itself.)
Paul McNamee says
Or, maybe I didn’t read closely enough. Maybe ‘Pro Israel’ is considered the ‘hate speech’ in this instance. (also, it’s not clear to me the guy wasn’t running into copyright violation doing what he was trying to do with his home made video)
Anyway … food for thought. (and sorry about the typos)
JimC says
A lot of Americans are so comfort-oriented that they actively seek to avoid or suppress anything that makes them uncomfortable — physically, emotionally, whatever. And you are absolutely correct that this is not the sole province of the “triggered” left. A friend of mine has gotten flack for his work on the El Mozote Massacre in El Salvador from people on the right who just can’t handle a challenge to their black hats/white hats version of Cold War history. The sins and crimes of the white hats must never be talked about.
“Memory-holed” to use that turn of phrase.
Matthew says
The question is how do we get people to be less comfort oriented?
JimC says
We can’t. We must just do what we do, and welcome those who might see our path as a better way.
Keith West says
I say “Oh, HELL, yes” along with you.
Thanks for the post.
Mike says
I was a little surprised to hear a song (No body, No crime) on Taylor Swift’s most recent album that, even if not the goriest of murder ballads, certainly marches to a similar drum. Lyrics here: https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-no-body-no-crime-lyrics
JimC says
Kinda like “Goodbye Earl” from the Dixie Chicks.
David C Wrolson says
If you haven’t read “Against The Blood” yet, on their long drive they talk about murder ballads. They also mention that Nashville had removed the “Western” from Country-Western music.
JimC says
Eagerly awaiting…
slm says
So I’m guessing Knoxville Girl might not go over in some crowds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhMiKeSffns
tom says
out in the west texas town of el paso
i fell in love with a mexican girl
then later
out thru the back door of rosa’s i ran
out to where the horses were tied
an epic murder ballad, with the pull of love as the main ingredient. and the songwriter was a pretty good singer too!
JimC says
Indeed he was…