MO' MUSIC: MURDER BALLAD AND GHOST STORIES WITH BANJO

Traditional murder ballad from late 19th C played by Will Rowan-"Rain and Snow":

Oh, I married me a wife,
Gave me trouble all my life,
Ran me out in the cold rain and snow.

Rain and snow, rain and snow, rain and snow, oh, Lord,
Ran me out in the cold rain and snow.

Well, she came down the stairs,
Combing back her long yellow hair,
And her cheeks just as red as a rose.

As a rose, as a rose, as a rose, oh, Lord,
With her cheeks just as red as a rose.


Oh, I did all I could do,
For to get along with you,
And I ain't goin' be treated this-a-way.

This-a-way, this-a-way, this-a-way, oh, Lord,
And I ain't goin' be treated this away.

Some researchers suggest that this was based on a murder in North Carolina. No one knows who wrote the song. 

꩜

One of my favorite Joel Mabus songs-from 2013 "Panhandle Prairie":

I was drinking one night in a panhandle barroom
Stepping outside for a change in the air
I spied a tall figure all wrapped in white linen
With cold gray eyes and raven black hair

He shot me a glance and a shiver run through me
With a chill to the bone that hangs on me yet
He labored one breath and then drew another
And the words that he spoke I will never forget

He said I traded my home way back in the mountains
For the smell of cheap whiskey and a harlot’s perfume
And I gambled my life on the panhandle prairie
Got shot in the breast, now death is my doom

Go write me a letter, to my gray headed mother
She’ll tell the news to my sister so dear
But there is another, more dear than my mother
Don’t tell her I died a drunkard out here

Take a pearl handled pistol to nail up my coffin
Read God’s holy word, and sing a sad song
Then bury me deep in the panhandle prairie
Where the buffalo grass can feed on my bones

I asked for his name, but he gave me no answer
I pressed him once more and he made this reply
The wind tells my name when it blows on the prairie
It moans and it whispers, it screams and it cries

Just then a west wind blew hard on the prairie
And a devil of dust spun up in the air
I wiped out my eyes, but I never could find him
That pale dead man with the raven black hair

Mabus writes that the song is about the Texas/Oklahoma panhandle area. The Oklahoma section from 1850-1890 was known as "No Man's Land", an area of public domain and subject to "squatter's rights" outside of the Indian Territories. After the Civil War, cattlemen moved into the area. Gradually they organized themselves into ranches and established their own rules for arranging their land and adjudicating their disputes. It was a wild place.

꩜

A favorite of mine from Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings-from 1997 "One Morning":

One mornin', one mornin' as work I begun
What did I see ridin' out of the sun
On the road from Lexington

 

One rider, one rider beatin' the breeze
Down on his saddle, low to his knees
Comin' through my willow trees

 

Now closer, the terrible work of the gun
Was stiffened and black where his blood all had run
But I knew my wayward son

 

One mornin', one mornin' the boy of my breast
Came to my door unable to rest
Even in the arms of death