“Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down.” Cocaine Blues - Johnny Cash
“Strange Fruit” - Billie Holiday
In addition to “Tom Dooley,” the Kingston Trio performed any number of murder songs over the years: “Getaway John,” “Everglades,” “Poor Ellen Smith,” “Bad Man’s Blunder,” “Jesse James,” “With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm,” “The Long Black Rifle,” “Hard, Ain’t It Hard,” “Parchment Farm Blues…” Hell, there’s probably a couple albums’ worth of Trio tunes just about murder. In addition, many of these songs go out of their way to describe the murder in a sympathetic or comic manner, sometimes from the murderer’s own point of view.
One can only conclude that the increase of American inner-city violence since the 1950’s is directly attributable to the malign influence of the Kingston Trio. That’s not even including their other songs glorifying such antisocial themes as infidelity, alcoholism, vagrancy, socialism, bestiality, and necrophilia.
Any way you look at it, the Kingston Trio were some hard core punks.
c/o Professor Lehrer:
About a maid I sing a song,
Rickety-tickety-tin
About a maid I sing a song;
She didn’t have her family long.
Not only did she do them wrong,
She did every one of them in.
My sister used to sing that to me when I was little. The only part I remember (as she sang it) is:
She cut her baby brother in two
A-rickety-tickety-tin
She cut her baby brother in two
And served him up in an Irish stew
She served him up in an Irish stew
With occasional pieces of skin
Of skin
With occasional pieces of skin
“Delia’s Gone” by Johnny Cash
“Excitable Boy” by Warren Zevon
“Good Old Days” by Weird Al Yankovic
Just as an aside, if you ever hear a Celtic song and any mention is made of a wee penknife, someone’s about to die, usually at the hands of some wee lass who done been wronged.
Oh, another one; “I’m Bad (Like Jesse James)” by the incomperable John Lee Hooker, who takes in a buddy only to have him talk s**t about how the guy “got” his wife:They gon’ take you right down/By the riverside
Now four is goin’ down/Ain’t but three comin’ back
You read between the line/We’re gonna have a deal
'Cause I’m mad, I’m bad, like Jesse James.
And Chris Thomas King’s “Red Mud”:Her first husband/was a friend of mine.
Her second husband/treated her so kind.
Now she wants me/to join the club.
But they were both found/face down in the red mud.
Stranger
Johnny Cash’s ‘Long Black Veil’ is about a murder that the singer is executed for, although for a change he ain’t the guy who did it:
"Ten years ago, on a cold dark night
Someone was killed, 'neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed
That the slayer who ran, looked a lot like me
The judge said son, what is your alibi
If you were somewhere else, then you won’t have to die
I spoke not a word, thou it meant my life
For I’d been in the arms of my best friend’s wife."
Randy Newman had a mother who was of German ancestry and told him about being scared as a young teen in the 30s by tales of the Dusseldorf child killer whose crimes were portrayed in the movie “M”. His song ‘In Germany Before the War’ contains not a single violent word but is one of the creepiest things you’ll ever hear.
“A little girl has lost her way
With hair of gold and eyes of gray
Reflected in his glasses
As he watches her…
We lie beneath the autumn sky
My little golden girl and I
And she lies very still…”
Even the chords are scary as hell.
Heather Alexander’s March of the Clambreadth
“Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!”
Warren Zevon’s Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
“Roland was a warrior from the land of the midnight sun
With his Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done”
This brought to mind the song The Clancey Brothers used to sing, called “Welia Wallia” (probably the wrong spelling). Based on a children’s song from Dublin, one verse goes: “She had a babbie three months old (welia welia wallia) She had a penknife three foot long (welia welia wallia); she stabbed the knife in the babbie’s head; the more she stabbed it, the more it bled.” Lovely little ditty.
Also, how about “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Bobby Dylan; a dark tune if ever there was one.
*Your grass it is turning black
There’s no water in your well
Your grass is turning black
There’s no water in your well
You spent your last lone dollar
On seven shotgun shells
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That’s hangin’ on the wall
Your brain is a-bleedin’
And your legs can’t seem to stand
Your brain is a-bleedin’
And your legs can’t seem to stand
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That you’re holdin’ in your hand
There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean’s pounding roar
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There’s seven new people born*
I Don’t Like Monday’s by The Boomtown Rats is about a murderess.
Possum Kingdom by the Toadies pretty strongly implies murder.
Don’t be afraid
I didn’t mean to scare you
So help me, Jesus
I can promise you
You’ll stay as beautiful
With dark hair
And soft skin…forever
Forever
Johnny’s Ghost by Captain Tractor includes a murder (Johnny is killed by the brother of a young woman after she gets pregnant).
I’m sure there’s many others, I just can’t think of them at the moment.
Helter Stupid by Negativland is about some real murders, in a meta-self referential sense.
Basically a publicity stunt gone wrong, or a lesson in how not to try to exploit the media.
That’s:
And invited the neighbors in.
It’s the older brother who had the other line:
She weighted her brother down with stones . . .
. . . and sent him off to Davy Jones.
All that ever came up were the bones,
And occasional pieces of skin.
And I think that’s about all the fair use I feel comfortable with.
Second Date by OCS:
*Saw you go home, late last night.
Checked the front door, it was locked up tight.
So I went around… to have myself a little look.
Snuck in through the kitchen door,
Grabbed a knife from the top left drawer,
You’re at my feet again,
But baby, you are no more…*
"At break of day when that guy drove away I was waiting;
"I crossed the street to her house, and she opened the door.
"She stood there laughing -
“I felt the knife in my hand, and she laughed no more”.
“Down By the River” by Neil Young
Down by the river
I shot my baby
Down by the river,
Dead, oh, shot her dead.
On your own admission you raised up the knife
And you brought it down ending another man´s life
When it was done you just threw down the blade
While the red blood spread wider like the anger you made
–“Murder” by David Gilmour.
*Why, *Why, WHY, ** Delilah?
And of course, there’s “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.”
D’OH! :smack: Never mind!
always read the O.P thoroughly always read the O.P thoroughly always read the O.P thoroughly*