‘Murder Ballads’ Will Make You Hurt

An often-visited subgenre of traditional folk music, the “murder ballad” – specifically, songs about murder or untimely death – is a hallowed European construct dating back to the early 1600s. Shared verbally from one musician to another throughout the decades, the murder ballad has proven to be a real chart-topper in Scandinavia and the British Isles. The (at the time) fledgling United States imported it, with Appalachian musicians particularly taking to the style with reckless aplomb. As artist, writer, and musician Steven L. Jones explains in Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record, this “unhappy music” is much more prevalent than music historians may believe, breaking out from the comfortable familiarity of folk music to inspire a myriad of blues, country, punk, and alt-country artists.

Jones’ Murder Ballads Old & New isn’t just a dusty, musty attic full of sordid tales by antiquated songwriters singing of human nature at its worst. No, the writer brings the esteemed murder ballad kicking and screaming into the 21st century with (relatively) contemporary examples of songs by artists like Hüsker Dü, Johnny Cash, The Mekons, The Handsome Family, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, The Drive-By Truckers, and many others. Jones expands the definition of “murder ballads” to include all sorts of songs about the “tougher side of life” – lyrical tales of murder, tragedy, outlaws and folk heroes, songs of labor and hard times, fantasies of death, and those of love and loss – all of which are kindred spirits with his original concept and each provided their own individual chapter.

Some of Jones’ essays previously appeared (in different form) in Murder Ballad Monday blog and in Sing Out!, the legendary folk music journal, but he revisited, revised, and expanded them for the book. People have often dismissed the music that Jones explores with Murder Ballads Old & New as gruesome, tawdry, and exploitative or, at a minimum, as rustic reminders of a less sophisticated age. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as murder ballads and their kinfolk are not only an important and ever-evolving form of traditional folk music (vintage tragedies shape even recent songs in the genre), but they also provide an invaluable window into the human condition.

It’s only been within the last 100 years or so that recorded medium has documented and preserved these songs; previously, they appeared in books or as broadsides for popular consumption. Prior to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, such story-songs passed along from one musician to another, often embellished in their telling. Sometimes musicians rewrote them to contemporize the tales.

Most importantly, murder ballads provide a certain psychological and spiritual catharsis for both the singer and the audience. Jones includes a perfect example of such in the book’s first chapter, addressing “The Triplett Tragedy,” a “ripped from the headlines,” Law & Order-styled ballad about a 1909 familial murder recorded in 1963 by the victim’s widow, Sophronie Miller Greer. Related by marriage to bluegrass legend Doc Watson, Greer was the purest of folk artists, performing for family and friends from the comfort of her front porch; the song that Jones describes is her only known recording.

Subsequently, Jones delves into the tragic tale of Memphis blues guitarist Auburn “Pat” Hare, an enormous talent who played with legends like Muddy Waters, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. As a solo performer, Hare recorded the eerie, prescient solo single “I’m Gonna Kill My Baby” in 1954, nearly a decade before the musician’s debilitating alcoholism actually drove him to murder. Death is no stranger to blues artists, from Robert Johnson’s hellhounds to sides recorded by Son House, Skip James, and many others. Hare’s song was actually based on a previous recording released in 1941 by Peter Joe “Doctor” Clayton and was bookended by a version recorded by guitarist Robert Nighthawk in 1963 (the blues are a form of folk music and, as such, artists often follow in the hallowed tradition of building on or adapting an earlier artist’s material).

A more contemporary example, The Smiths’ “Suffer Little Children,” from their self-titled 1984 debut album, is a classic murder ballad dressed up in New-Wave garb. Written by band frontman Morrissey, the song was inspired by a string of gruesome, early ‘60s serial killings that obviously affected the young Manchester native. Morrissey’s song is anything but exploitative, however, and is instead quite reverential. Jones writes of the killers’ (a boyfriend and girlfriend) impact on British society and their unlikely subsequent status as pop culture icons (not unlike America’s fascination with the Manson Family – don’t worry, Charlie gets his due later with Sonic Youth’s “Death Valley ‘69”).

The 1993 murder of musician Mia Zapata of the Gits had a profound effect on the red-hot Seattle “grunge” scene of the early ‘90s, and among the elegies recorded in her memory was 7 Year Bitch’s provocative “M.I.A.” which aggressively and necessarily addresses male-on-female violence. Hüsker Dü’s powerful but touching “Diane” is in a similar vein, the Grant Hart-penned song a tribute to another young life taken far too soon.

Two particular tales in Murder Ballads Old & New stand out, however–the death of President John F. Kennedy and that of country music legend Johnny Cash. Singer/songwriter Lou Reed poignantly addressed the former on his 1982 album The Blue Mask. With his song “The Day John Kennedy Died,” the acerbic Reed confesses the impact that the martyred President’s death had on him, personally, and on a nation. Jones writes “just as there’s both a historical and a mythic Jesus, the convergence of which is likely irreconcilable, separating JFK the man from JFK the icon is a formidable task.” Jones presents similarly-inspired Kennedy songs by The Fall, Bob Dylan, and Pearl Jam but while Roger McGuinn’s (later of The Byrds) 1963 reworking of the traditional folk tune “He Was A Friend of Mine” to honor Kennedy may have been the earliest example, Reed’s personal elegy provides the definitive tribute:

“I dreamed I was the president of these United States,

I dreamed I replaced ignorance, stupidity, and hate;

I dreamed the perfect union and a perfect law, undenied,

And most of all I dreamed I forgot the day John Kennedy died.”

As for the iconic Mr. Cash, Jones offers a coda to Murder Ballads with the larger-than-life artist’s majestic swansong, the Rick Ruben-produced cover of Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails’ song “Hurt.” Recorded for Cash’s 2002 American IV: The Man Comes Around album, the singer’s final record before his death in 2003, “Hurt” offers a brilliantly vulnerable and frail performance by the notably powerful vocalist. Sick, mourning the death of his beloved wife June, and unflinchingly facing his own mortality, Cash’s “Hurt” steals the song away from its creator and remakes it into a timeless ballad with the singer imbuing the emotional performance with his own experience, religious faith, and personal regrets.

Frequent Reznor collaborator Mark Romanek’s filmed the music video for “Hurt” just months before Cash’s death and perfectly captures the artist’s humanity in the face of impending winter. The video so perfectly matches with the song that, writes Jones, it “developed a life of its own (as of September 2022 there were 168 million views on YouTube) –as an intro to Cash, to country music, or simply a rare popular work about death that neither wallows in sentiment nor pretends emotion and spirit don’t matter.”

Many people have written about Cash and “Hurt” in the two decades since his death, but few have brought the level of insight to his passing that Jones does in Murder Ballads. “Cash’s ‘Hurt’ is a kind of farewell song,” writes Jones. “While not conceived as such, the singer knew the end was nearing and that awareness imbues both recording and video with a sense of reckoning, bravely shared not just with friends and family, but with a vast network of fans.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulmYEwPsju4

Jones’ interest in murder ballads comes from suffering his own personal tragedy and, I suspect, writing about this material provided a sort of cathartic joy for him as well as for the reader. Inspired by the eccentric artist, filmmaker, and record collector Harry Smith’s groundbreaking Anthology of American Folk Music collection (originally released on three LPs in 1952 and reissued on CD in 1997), Jones dug into the grooves of antique shellac and vintage vinyl to provide the reader with a fascinating deep-dive into the history of the genre. Murder Ballads Old & New is academic in ambition, well-researched, including lyrics to dozens of songs and provided with effusive footnotes. But Jones’ prose is colloquial in nature, presenting the material with insight and wit, each chapter adorned with photos, illustrations, and classic artwork, some of it painted by Jones himself in an engaging outsider/folk art style.

My only complaint with Murder Ballads is that Feral House didn’t spring for full-color printing, as Jones’ paintings, as well as those by Francisco Goya, Gino Severini, Albert Sterner, Grant Wood, and Archibald Motley, Jr. cry out for more colorful reproduction. That minor cavil aside, Jones’ Murder Ballads Old & New is an illuminating study of a sorely overlooked, enduring, and influential sub-genre of folk music that has not only withstood the test of time, but depends on it for the tradition’s longevity.

(Feral House, November 14, 2023)