Murder Ballads

What a fascinating book! I can't believe the research you put into it. I'm very impressed and I learned a lot of stuff, too!

I've just added a second title to Authonomy, this one comprising my first book-length essay about a single ballad. As usual, I'm telling the true story of the original crime that inspired the song, interweaved with a history of the song itself.

The ballad in question in "Pearl Bryan" and, while that song may mot be quite as famous as some of the others I've covered, I guarantee you'll never forget the killing that inspired it.

It is as if the very melancholy and act of murder is itself a metronome, a temper and a melody they can be played over and over by all of us. Perhaps anywhere truly conveying death and murder and it's sinister repercussions is through the reproduction of the infection It is as if the very melancholy and act of murder is itself a metronome, a temper and a melody they can be played over and over by all of us. Perhaps anywhere truly conveying death and murder and it's sinister repercussions is through the reproduction of the infection office melody. The infection of madness!office melody. The infection of madness!

Is this a true radical musicology? Serial killers ie the Hannibal Lecter's operatic converging in silence of the lambs the opera? Tim Burton's recent interpretation of Sweeny Todd Todd; decent music and TV shows like Dexter, and the cult of celebrity surrounding a serial killer perhaps really work simplified by natural born killers. It is is a song and death or rather murder were perfectly and in harmony. The song is like a mean it is an idea that repeated over and over, and the brutal out of the murder is itself perpetrated time and time again. I find interesting about this pitch for a book is that does the repetition in the analysis of the song also make us spectators participants in the murder itself in a metaphorical reproduction/recursive effect that echoes long after the original act? Holy regional act in deed this book is an original spin and I've never come across anything quite like it.

I've just added another new chapter, this one describing my efforts to write a modern murder ballad.

The two songs I've produced grow from the same tradition as the old ballads, but take a real 2004 murder in my part of London as their subject. One lesson which emerges is that today's street-level prostitutes face exactly the same dangers their predecessors did a century ago.

In 1958, The Kingston Trio scored a massive global hit with an 1860s folk song about Tom Dula’s killing of Laura Foster. I’ve just posted three new chapters (10, 11 & 12) describing Tom’s return from the Civil War to his North Carolina home, the many women he slept with there and his role in spreading the syphilis that ultimately led to Laura’s murder. Tom hanged for it in the end, but many still insist he was not the true killer.

I also examine the song’s continuing development by artists like Doc Watson, Steve Earle and Greg Brown, and recount my own visit to the story’s key sites in September this year.

What an immensely clever and original idea for a book.

Very amazing.

Backed for sure
the mind setter

I've just added details of four more Victorian Gallows Ballads to the manuscript. These are:

Murder at Westmill (1848) 

Nine-year-old boy brutally murders his infant sister. Mother driven mad by the crime.

Streams of Crimson Blood (1829)

Burglar breaks into rich old couple's house and kills them both. 


The Murdered Maid (1832?)

Poverty-stricken yokels kill lodger for her savings. But it's really their own daughter. 


Cruel Lizzie Vickers (1853)

Alcoholic housekeeper bullies her way into elderly employer's will then beats him to death for the £1,000 involved. That's the ballad's version, but the Old Bailey jury found her not guilty. 


I've also got some new information on Mary Arnold The Female Monster, which doesn't really lend itself to this format. Copy and paste this address - http://www.planetslade.com/contact2.html - to learn more!

Got to run, so only had time to read your pitch and first chapter. I like your voice (you're doing a great jot in giving the facts), so I’m backing it.
If you want me to, I could return a give you a more in-depth comment.
Please take a look at mine…comment and backing will be appreciated.

Hi Paul,

this is amazing! I love the blues and anything that came off the Chess, Stax and Atlantic records - you have a compelling underground piece here. All I can say is try not to mix the fonts too much & I'm not sure the bold font start at the start of each chapter works.

really well done & a book I'll be dipping in & out of.

Rob

Thanks to everyone for those kind words, and please look out for the new Murder Ballads chapters I'll be posting here soon.

If you're enjoying this material, please also visit my website (www.planetslade.com), where you'll find much more of the same. There's a section there full of bizarre tales from London's secret history, an introduction to America's first all-black record label, the full story behind Kit Williams' Masquerade puzzle book and an account to my trip to a particularly odd small-town festival in Texas.

Id love this as a coffee table book - this is an excellent idea for a book and it is obvious a tremendous amount of work went into writing this. backed 100%

Liz
The Cheech Room

Gruesomely precise dissection of old murders with clinically distanced analysis, yet just a hint of the psychopathic understanding and enjoyment of the subject that can surely only come from....... EXPERIENCE! [scream]

Or is that just me? We need more of this.

Cool, massive research, perfectly laid out. Backed by Brammers.

I thought The Knoxville Girl ballad was gruesome if tragic until I read The Bloody Miller. Horrible. We've always been fascinated by murder, obviously, but if these are anything to go by, I'd say we've improved slightly as time's gone on or pretend we have which probably amounts to the same thing.
Your research was worth the effort. This covers more than just the crimes themselves but swathes of social history. There's definitely a market for this. backed. lynn

Dear Paul, I love that you have gone into the history of songs - I remember when "I was standing on the corner, when I heard my bulldoge bark" came out & I learned every word so many long years ago & they are still indelibized on my brain. Who would have known it really happened? Thank you for your research. :) Your pitch is excellent, so set the hook for me to read your book. :) When you use short paragraphs & lots of dialogue, it makes me want to keep reading to find out what's going to happen next. I'm backing your book. :)
Could you please take a moment to back my TWO memoir books? Thanks, Susie :)

This is information from authonomy (so beware of any other untrue information you may receive that is spam & not quotes of authonomy):
"When you back a book, it only improves the ranking of that book, not yours. However, the author whose book you are backing may decide to back your book also, in which case yes, your ranking would be improved"...authonomy quote.
"Every time you place a book on your bookshelf, your recommendation pushes the book up the rankings. And while that book sits on your bookshelf, your reputation as a talent spotter increases depending on how well that book performs.

Amazing is all I can say, a great idea backed up. Good luck with it. E.Loraine Royal Blood Chronicles book one

I've just added four more vintage gallows songs to the Broadside Ballads section:

The Life & Trial of Palmer (1856)
Boozy, gambling doctor poisons family and friends to clear his debts. Hanged at Stafford Gaol, but survives as footnote in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The Silent Grove (1838)
Young man gets his girlfriend pregnant, then kills both her and the baby to avoid responsibility. One of many Bloody Miller/ Berkshire Tragedy variants – a combination of which eventually became Knoxville Girl.

The Liverpool Lodger (1849)
Evil lodger slaughters family and robs them. Victims include pregnant mother and two very young boys.

The Unnatural Murder (1618)
Disguised sailor returns home to his parents, hoping to surprise them with his new-found wealth. They mistake him for a stranger, kill him, and steal his gold.

You can see the original broadsheets that produced all these songs at www.PlanetSlade.com

Now I don't know the songs that lie behind this work. But you can as hell know I am going to track them down. This is such a wonderful idea for a novel and so beautifully expressed through lyrical writing that I am finding it very hard to critique. So I shall just say - backed and well done. carl. The Time hUnters

What a clever idea for a book! I had a milion things to do this morning so intended to only skim this but I ended up reading the whole thing. Your writing style is smooth and interesting. I learned a lot and enjoyed this. I'm adding it to my shelf. Burgio (Grain of Salt).

Nice pitch and clever theme.

WHat a great idea this is. The true stories behind some of the world's greatest folk and blues songs, including a lot of my own personal favorites including Hattie Carroll, Frankie an Johnny and the brooding Stagger Lee.

I had been planning to wait until we reached 20 comments before replying again, but it looks like that may never happen, so let me respond to the last few posters now.

I thought I had been fairly sparing with phrases like "my own view", the idea being to use them only when I wanted to remind people there was some speculation involved in what I was about to say. The fact the phrases leapt out at Andrew, however, suggests I may not have been quite sparing enough, so I will take another look at it.

Niobrara makes a good point concerning the lyrics too. Most of the songs I've discussed so far are credited only to "trad", which means their lyrics would present no copyright problems. The only exception (so far) is Hattie Carroll, where the lyrics belong to Bob Dylan, and would require his permission to reproduce in full. His publishing company might well levy a charge for granting that permission too. I submitted Murder Ballads as a pitch to another publisher a few years ago and - despite the fact that I'd stressed the point about public domain lyrics - he gave the potential cost of obtaining permissions like this as one of his reasons for rejecting the idea.

Having peaked at 910, I guess my little ride on Authonomy may be over, but it has been an interesting exercise. I've found it particularly encouraging that both people who were familiar with the songs and those who'd never even heard of them found something to enjoy here. Even if I never manage to sell the idea as a book, I'll continue to add new essays like these to PlanetSlade.com, and I hope I'll see some of you over there.

Many thanks to all those who took time to back my stuff in one way or another. It's much appreciated.

Paul

Paul,
Murder Ballads makes a fascinating read. You have researched the incidents extensively and present them in a proficient prose style that can be read by the scholar and layman alike. My one suggestion for the post on this site is to present the complete lyrics to each ballad upfront. This book is obviously good enough to reach the editor's desk, but from reading past HC reviews, I fear the result will be something like: "This is a book worthy of publication but doesn't fit our market. Why don't you try the folklore journals?" Anyway, I enjoyed it and admire both the concept and your research skills. Obviously backed.
Niobrara Kardnova (The Trouble with wives)

This reads like published work. A huge amount of detail, expertly researched. Very readable and enjoyable.
Shelved,
Frank

Once again, thanks to everyone for the kind words. If you find anything you like here, please do visit my website too (PlanetSlade.com). There's a selection of articles there on London's forgotten history which you might also enjoy.

To tackle a couple of the specific points raised:

I think the long chapters would be less of an issue on paper than they seem on-screen. The Stagger Lee piece, for example, is 8,648 words. If you assume 250 words per page, that translates to about 35 pages of a standard paperback book, which doesn't seem excessive as a single chapter. The Hattie Carroll stuff totals 63 pages on that basis, and I admit there may be more of a case for cutting that. I finished that chapter quite recently, though, and I need to get a bit more distance on it before I can look at it objectively.

I like Stagger Lee as an opening chapter from what I've got so far, because I think it has some of the best material. As I add new chapters, an even stronger contender may emerge, and if that chapter's also shorter than Stagger Lee, then so much the better. It's the strength of the material that comes first.

On Mairi's point, I am aware that there's a definite bias towards American songs at the moment, but that's something I'm hoping to address as I add fresh chapters. In the meantime, there's quite a bit of information about The Bloody Miller and The Berkshire Tragedy - both old English ballads - in the Knoxville Girl chapter. I've also gotten hold of a load of British broadsides, sold as verses at the foot of the gallows in 19th Century London, which I'll be writing about soon.

The mystery lies in why one story rather than another catches the imagination of the songwriter. Of course that's as true for fiction as for ballads but these seem more of an immediate response. A fascinating study. My personal favourites are the old Scottish and English ballads but I doubt anyone's going to come along and elucidate them in this wonderful way for me. A neat slant on cultural history.

Wow, the level of research you put forth for these stories merits a shelving on its own. But so too does the writing. Scholarly yet not pedantic, entertaining in its own right. These are fascinating stories that are worthy of publication.

Murder Ballads

Hi Paul,

Boy you write well, like a journalist, the story first, always the story. And what an interesting piece of modern social history, you hook us from that brilliant first line and insist that this subject is interesting and engaging and it is. I love the encyclopaedic and almost reverential tone to the exploration of the lyrics in actual events and you are an accomplished self-editing because this read very smoothly. Rarely have I read a book on authonomy that screams so loudly to be published, perhaps by a small specialist press initially, but I can see this work, like the ballads in details, developing a cult following.

Thank you for introducing to a world I knew nothing about and explaining it to me so clearly and compellingly. Brilliant work and I am happy to support your book.

Best wishes and good luck
Andrew W
(Sanctuary’s Loss)

Given that all I know of Stacker/Stagger Lee is what I can decipher from Bob Dylan's mumbling his way through the song, it's fascinating to read a clear and thorough account - and an added bonus to read about the way the myth spread and mutated in song. Well written and fascinating.

This is like opening a door on a world you never knew existed. The songs are unfamiliar but that is my loss. So hope book comes with a CD. Jim D Serpent's Blood

What a compelling read. Well written, well researched. I found the length of the first chapter a bit long but was engaged by the story so kept reading. I will be reading more when you add it :)

Paul - it's a good idea for a book and an informative read. It's well written but I would expect little else from a journalist. I found the first chapter rather long. Would you consider putting the shorter second chapter in its place to draw the reader in more quickly, especially as that is a better known song through its film history at least. I've backed it for its potential as a well-researched and publishable book. Good luck with this project. Tacitus (Where Truth Lies)

Thanks for that, everyone. If you'd like more of the same, please visit my Planet Slade website (www.planetslade.com). You'll find an even longer chapter there, Jason!

PS: It's a hobby site only, and raises no income for me or anyone else, so I hope I might be allowed to mention it here. Thanks.

too long first chapter, type is weird on my computer, I like some of this, backed.

This is interesting and clearly well researched. I confess to never having heard of any of the songs, but I found the story behind the Stagger Lee song fascinating. Backed.

Fascinating, entertaining and instructive, I'm loving this. I want this on my bookshelf at home. Until then, it's on my virtual shelf.
Jared.