Betty Garland - American Folk Ballads - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Born of the British ballad, it's American offspring was the blank canvas for all type of tale, the more calamitous or scandalous, the better. Jesse James and Billy the Kid, train wrecks and hurricanes, the Titanic and Tom Dooley, fatal lovers' quarrels and foiling the devil, all and more were normal fare, served up in a song. Classic American Ballads is 25 tracks of time-worn tragedy drawn from the deep fount of the Smithsonian Folkways archives. 74 minutes, 40-page booklet with extensive notes and photos. Album Tracks 1. Banks of the Ohio - Doc Watson and Bill Monroe 2. Blue Mountain Lake - Pete Seeger 3. Claude Allen - Hobart Smith 4. Cole Younger - Dock Boggs 5. Cowboy's Lament (Streets of Laredo) - Buck Ramsey 6. Boll Weevil - Sam Hinton 7. Duncan and Brady - Lead Belly 8. Floyd Collins - Paul Clayton 9. Frankie and Johnny - Rolf Cahn and Eric Von Schmidt 10. John Henry - John Jackson 11. Jesse James - Sis Cunningham, Mike Millins, and Wes Houston 12. Billy the Kid - Woody Guthrie 13. The Death of the Lawson Family - Glen Neaves 14. Naomi Wise - Doug Wallin 15. Pearl Bryan - Bruce Buckley 16. Sam Bass - Hermes Nye 17. Springfield Mountain - Bascom Lamar Lunsford 18. Tom Dooley - Glen Neaves, Roscoe Russell, Ivor Melton, Warren Brown, and Ted Lundy 19. Tying a Knot in the Devil's Tail - Cisco Houston 20. Young Charlotte - Pete Seeger 21. Wasn't That a Mighty Storm? - the Tex-I-An Boys 22. Zebra Dun - Joan O'Bryant 23. The Titanic - Pink Anderson 24. The Louisville Burglar - the Iron Mountain String Band 25. The F.F.V. (Engine 143) - Annie Watson

Jean Ritchie is a national treasure, one of America's finest and best known traditional singers. The ballads on this recordings are outstanding Appalachian version of the InchChild balladsInch English and Scottish narrative songs collected and published by scholar Francis James Child in the late 19th century. This reissue of her landmark Folkways recordings of British Traditional Ballads in Appalachia brings her clear, pure voice and timeless songs to new generations of listeners. Album Tracks 1. Gypsy Laddie 2. False Sir John 3. Hangman 4. Lord Bateman 5. The House Carpenter 6. Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender 7. The Merry Golden Tree 8. Old Bangum 9. Barbary Allen 10. The Unquiet Grave 11. Sweet William and Lady Margaret 12. There Lived and Old Lord 13. Cherry Tree Carol 14. Edward 15. Lord Randall 16. Little Musgrave

This collection reminds US that the ballad's purpose, first and foremost, is to tell a story. These songs narrate tales of ordinary people-hoboes and lovers and sailors-and their extraordinary deeds. From InchJohn HenryInch to InchLady Margaret,Inch Pete Seeger's expressive style is ideally communicative. Album Tracks 1. Pretty Polly 2. The Three Butchers 3. John Henry 4. Jay Gould's Daughter 5. The Titanic Disaster 6. Fair Margaret and Sweet William 7. John Hardy 8. The Golden Vanity 9. Gypsy Davy 10. Farmer's Curst Wife 11. Down in Carlisle (In Castyle There Lived a Lady) 12. St. James Hospital 13. Jesse James 14. Barbara Allen