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Murder Ballads

ralphj said:
What have you got?
My preference is for folk style ones, where the blackness shines through, but I'm open to all suggestions.
I'll kick it off with this one. It usually is sung in a full on drunken singalong Dubliners style, or it even has a nursery rhyme past.
This version from Lisa Hannigan ( The Hole in the Ground soundtrack) really puts the chill back into the verses.

Click to expand...

Great song. and a very dark version.

Every Irish kid was taught that as a nursery song in school when I was growing up :)
 
Nick Hart's version of Lucy Wan is superb from his new album Sings 10 English Folk Songs
Can't find it on Youtube though.
Mac
 
Fittingly, the Grateful Dead did some murder songs. Me and My Uncle and Jack Straw come immediately to mind, but am sure there are others. Dire Wolf maybe?

Stagger Lee is another good murder song. I like the Dead’s cover.
 
Colter Wall - Kate McCannon

Wonderful guitarist, singer and songwriter from Swift Current, Saskatchewan/Canada.
"Kate McCannon" is the finest track from his self-titled debut album, released on Thirty Tigers Records in 2017.
A murder balled inspired by the classic songs of this genre.

Great song starting with the narrator sitting in prison for killing a girl named Kate McCannon.
"Well, the raven is a wicked bird
His wings are black as sin
And he floats outside my prison window
Mocking those within
And he sings to me real low
It's hell to where you go
For you did murder Kate McCannon"

Then he is recalling what happened and what brought him in prison, ending with:
"So I made for the creek
Where she and I did meet
And found her with some other lover
And I put three rounds into Kate McCannon"

 
''Girlfriend in a coma'', does this qualify as murder ballad?, he does hint at murder her and strangling her. :D

 
Love and family don't always mix well, though "honour killing" murders are thankfully less common here now

Clerk Saunders - here by June Tabor, though I prefer Roy Bailey's version which I can't find on Youtube

The Dowie Dens of Yarrow by Shelagh McDonald - a classic folk-rock version

Mill o' Tifty's Annie (aka Andrew Lammie) - here by Jean Redpath, with cello to add emphasis

Bonnie Susie Cleland - June Tabor again, this time a fast version with the Oyster Band
 
Taj's unbeaten version of Frankie and Johnny, with the Pointer Sisters on backing vocals. Just peerless guitar playing and singing.


Albion Band and Shirley Collins version of I think a broadside about the Red Barn Murder, where the whereabouts of Maria Marten's buried body is revealed to her mother in a dream.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_Murder


Not a very well-known song and a beautiful arrangement. Perhaps a distant cousin to Matty Groves.


And not the obvious version


And bookended with Taj....Stagger Lee

 
Last edited:
stefane said:
Colter Wall - Kate McCannon

Wonderful guitarist, singer and songwriter from Swift Current, Saskatchewan/Canada.
"Kate McCannon" is the finest track from his self-titled debut album, released on Thirty Tigers Records in 2017.
A murder balled inspired by the classic songs of this genre.

Great song starting with the narrator sitting in prison for killing a girl named Kate McCannon.
"Well, the raven is a wicked bird
His wings are black as sin
And he floats outside my prison window
Mocking those within
And he sings to me real low
It's hell to where you go
For you did murder Kate McCannon"

Then he is recalling what happened and what brought him in prison, ending with:
"So I made for the creek
Where she and I did meet
And found her with some other lover
And I put three rounds into Kate McCannon"

Click to expand...
Superb, thanks for the discovery.
 
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