I’ve been looking for this for a good while now, but every CD that I buy turns out not what I wanted, though they have often been good in their own way.
What I would love is some proper dark and traditional American ballads. A bit like “Caleb Meyer” on Gillian Welch’s album Hell Among the Yearlings. She wrote it but it is obviously inspired by traditional music. These should seemingly be available, but so far I haven’t managed find them.
So, which bands/artists do traditional sounding dark ballads/instrumentals in the American old timey tradition? Claw hammer banjo/ fiddle type of instrumentation or a fuller band. Not too smoothly produced. Not alt-country. Not singer songerwriters, though I wouldn’t mind the odd orginal composition. I’m sure this has got to be obvious to someone. Thanks in advance.
My first thought when I saw the title was (tho not TOO old-timey) “Some Velvet Morning” by Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra (a friend sent me the Lydia Lunch cover) and Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow” (which that friend put on the same tape).
No not quite it. Even I have found out about Johnny Cash by now.
Have heard the “Where the Wild Roses Grow” as well, which is good, but not what I mean.
Maybe I’m not explaining myself very well. What I mean is actually traditional music. I think the sort of stuff I’m after might be Appalachian. But I don’t know very much about it all and I’m hoping someone might get it from the description.
Check out anything by the Louvin Brothers (the albums Tragic Songs of Life and Satan Is Real). Can’t get much darker (though their singing is beautiful). The Crumb soundtrack has lots of old blues with quite an edge, too, IIRC.
Do you mean bluegrass? Lots of bluegrass songs tell sad stories, with oodles of despair and wailing. And trains. Though as a genre it does tend to be up-tempo more often than slow.
Er, apologies if I’m telling you stuff you already know.
It sounds like it’s along the lines you want. I found it by searching for recordings of “Pretty Polly”, BTw. Even if you don’t like the performances on this collection, searching on some of the titles from it should turn up more.
[slight hijack]
Have you ever read any of Manly Wade Wellman’s “Silver John” stories? They’re sort of ghost/horror stories with an Appalachian folk singer as the protagonist. I’ve never heard recordings of the original songs in them, though.
[/hijack]
I can’t recommend The Be Good Tanyas enough. They are a modern band of women who sing in an older hillbillyish style. They are quite fabulous. Their first album, Blue Horse, is a tiny bit lighter than their second album, Chinatown.They are a throwback band to old folk and bluegrass music.
You can listen to some samples off the amazon links I supplied. I would suggest “Waiting around to die” and the “Junkie Song” from Chinatown and “Lakes of Pontchartrain” and “Rain and Snow” from Blue Horse.
Thanks for all the suggestion so far. Some seem to be nearer what I was looking for than others, but I’m pretty sure I would actually enjoy all of these. Sadly this computer doesn’t have sound, so I can’t give any definite feedback right now, but will bankrupt myself as soon as possible.
Labdad: Will check this guy out, hadn’t previously heard of him at all.
ArchiveGuy: I’ve heard of the Louvin Brothers because The Jayhawks used to mention them as inspiration, but I have never actually heard them. Will try to make amends.
Jsgoddess: I’ve been assured by a friend that “Bluegrass” and “Old Timey” are two different but related genres. I’m not sure I’m getting this right, so anyone feel free to correct me but I think Bluegrass is meant to be the more modern version with bands with guitars, drums, new songs etc, and Old Timey the more acoustic, strummin’ my banjo on the porch traditional kind of stuff.
Dorkusmalorkusmafia:The Be Good Tanyas get bonus marks on featuring a Townes van Zandt song. I LOVE him!
Balance: Those books sound interesting too. I presume you mentioning them entails you liking them? Are balads like Pretty Polly, House Carpenter etc. Appalachian then or I am I jumping to conclusions?
I can think of a number of songs that I think you’d like (Merle Travis’ “Dark as Dungeon” for one), but not entire albums, other than maybe Marty Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads, which I don’t think is exactly what you’re looking for.
But if you’re interested in dark and traditional British ballads, look no further than June Tabor’s Echo of Hooves.
Using this definition, The Be Good Tanyas are more of an Old Timey band. They perform new songs in an Old Timey style as well as traditional songs. Their rendition of Rain and Snow is perhaps the best one I have heard so far. Pentangle (a folk band from the 60’s I think) also has a good one. They are more pop sounding and often put in weird instrumentation into their songs like adding in Sitars and such.
If you like that old timey folk sound, you will also probably like Doc Watson (more folk/bluegrass) or Leadbelly (folk/blues).
Did you know that a recording of the excellent Sacred Harp music that was in the movie Cold Mountain will be released this spring? Music was done by T-Bone Burnett. Remember the scene in the church with with people sitting in an open square and singing? It was great music. Movie sucked.
Let me know if you’d like more links & references.
Are you looking for Appalachian murder ballads? Maybe you already have “Murder, Misery and then Goodnight” by Kristin Hersh. She covers some on it, incl. “Down in the Willow Grove,” which was used as the lullabye in “Raising Arizona.”
Definitely in the Bluegrass category, but an essential collection of early American music with lots of ballads and a good all round sampler would be “Will the Circle be Unbroken”.
Didn’t Tanya Donelly (the other Throwing Muse) also put out an album like this? ISTR her saying that when her kid was born, she recorded a lot of–ahem–lullabies that were actually old songs about murder and such.
Also, you should check out the Alan Lomax Collection if you haven’t done so already.
And you might want to give a listen to KEXP on Wednesday and Thursday evenings between 6 and 9 pm Pacific time–Wednesday is roots music, and Thursday is country.
Yes! Yes! The Kristin Hersh is a wonderful contempo take on these kinds of songs…“contempo” as in “recorded during the last few years,” not as in “uses a drum machine.”
A better definition of “bluegrass” would be “smokin,’ speeded-up, virtuoso Old Timey.” It was developed as a new style in the 1940s by Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and others, much like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were re-working older jazz styles into bebop up in New York. The instrumentation remained the same as the “old timey” bands…fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass. There shouldn’t be no gol-durned drums in bluegrass; the string instruments provide all the rhythm and propulsive power necessary.
For original takes on dark spooky back-country music, check out some collections of The Carter Family, Dock Boggs, Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers. Or you could just go to the Main Source since 1953: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.
One of my favorite bands, Freakwater, has covered a lot of bluegrass, old timey and modern songs in the old timey style, especially on the earlier albums Dancing Under Water, Old Paint, & Feels Like the Third Time. Songs they’ve covered on those albums include:
Rank Strangers
Selfishness in Man
Wild And Blue
Annabelle Lee
Dark As A Dungeon
Put My Little Shoes Away
Pale Horse
Amelia Earhart
Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake
Little Black Train
My One Desire
Out Of This World
CBCD’s advice to look through No Depression is sound advice, as is davesink’s suggestion of picking up Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, as many old timey and bluegrass greats play on this wonderful double album. Good luck.
For some nice, mostly a cappella versions of traditional Appalachian ballads (really old English ballads handed down), try Ballads From Her Appalachian Family Tradition by Jean Ritchie.
Appalachian murder ballads are the direct decendants of the English and Scottish songs known as the Child Ballads, named after the 19th century musicologist who wrote them down. These ballads traveled to America with the early British settlers of The Appalachians, and morphed into Appalachian versions. Some of the more famous Child Ballads are Geordie, Barbara Allen, and Lord Randall.
The Child Ballads feature events such as **abandoned lasses drowning their babes in the river by moonlight, furious husbands stabbing their wives, and beloved sons returning home to die in their mother’s arms. ** I love these songs!
Here the lyrics to The Cruel Mother. This would not make a nice cradle song.
She sat down below a thorn
Fine flowers in the valley
And there she has her sweet babe borne
And the green leaves they grow rarely.
Smile nae sae sweet, my bonnie babe
Fine flowers in the valley
An’ ye smile sae sweet, ye’ll smile me dead
And the green leaves they grow rarely.
She’s ta’en out her little penknife
Fine flowers in the valley
And twinned the sweet babe o’ its life
And the green leaves they grow rarely.
She howket a grave by the light o’ the moon
Fine flowers in the valley
And there she’s buried her sweet babe in
And the green leaves they grow rarely.
As she was going to the Church
Fine flowers in the valley
She saw a sweet babe in the porch
And the green leaves they grow rarely
.
O sweet babe, an’ thou wert mine
Fine flowers in the valley
I wad cleed thee in silk so fine
And the green leaves they grow rarely.
O mother dear, when I was thine
Fine flowers in the valley
You did na prove to me sae kind
And the green leaves they grow rarely.
