Classic American Ballads from Smithsonian Folkways

The newest instalment of Smithsonian Folkways’ splendid vault-raiding Classic series compiles 25 songs written between 1836 and 1947 about topical events, from the cowboy crimes of Jesse James and Billy the Kid to the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg disaster, train crashes, infamous murders, hurricanes, mining tragedies and other notable calamities. As Smithsonian archivist Jeff Place notes in the typically thorough and informative liner notes, they’re the sort of subjects that in the era of social media go viral; but way back then, it was songs that were the main vehicle for spreading word of such spectacular events. Most of these versions were recorded between the 1940s and 60s and what's striking is how once-topical ballads transcended the specific time and circumstances of their composition to become ‘classic’ folk standards still being sung decades (or even centuries) later. There is Woody Guthrie's ‘Billy the Kid’ and Doc Watson and Bill Monroe's version of the 19th-century murder ballad ‘Banks of the Ohio’. There's also Lead Belly's ‘Duncan and Brady’, the 1890 tale of a policeman shot dead by a bartender, and Pete Seeger's ‘Young Charlotte’, about a young woman who froze to death on New Year's Eve in 1840. This is nothing less than a people's history of the US in popular song.