American Anthology of Folk Music

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Listening to this collection again today. Jesus! It's so bleak.
For anyone keeping score at home - Pregnant girlfriend + prettier, non-pregnant girlfriend + knife/gun/shovel + shallow grave/river/water of any kind = murder ballad. Also, all those oldy-timey folk songs you sing to your kid - You Are My Sunshine, On Top of Old Smokey, etc are crushing depressing once you get past the uplifting chorus.

This is one of the prettiest and most bleak of the bunch -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xrj-roOZ8

[ubertar]

I would imagine this would be chilling to women of the time/place where this was popular... would make you afraid to turn down a marriage proposal, especially one in a remote, secluded area.

I like bluegrass, and proto-bluegrass or whatever you'd call this, but the lyrics are too misogynistic (not to mention psychopathic) for my taste. I get that it's fiction, but still.
Did "Hey, Joe" come out of this same stream? Seems like it would fit. I don't know how old it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's that old.
Neil Young's "Down by the River" is apparently inspired by this tradition.

Do you know of any examples where the sexes are reversed? Where the woman kills the man? That would be interesting.

[Gregg Juke]

Just Earl's In The Trunk, which obviously isn't in that tradition or old at all...

Wait a minute-- Frankie and Johnny, right? "Frankie" was actually the woman, and she killed Johnny because he "done her wrong."

GJ