Music and lyrics for over 200 songs. John Henry, Goin' Home, Little Brown Jug, Alabama-Bound, Black Betty, The Hammer Song, Jesse James, Down in the Valley, The Ballad of Davy Crockett, and many more.

Sixty-six songs, with added chord symbols and historical notes.

The Gory Stories Behind The Murder Ballads Cheerfully vulgar, revelling in gore, and always with an eye on the main chance, murder ballads are tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying word of the latest ‘orrible murders to an insatiable public. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers often hanged, but the songs themselves never die. Instead, they mutate – morphing to suit local place names as they criss cross the Atlantic and continue to fascinate each generation’s biggest musical stars. Paul Slade traces this fascinating genre’s history through eight of its greatest songs. Stagger Lee’s “biographers” alone include Duke Ellington, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Dr John, The Clash and Nick Cave. No two tell his story in quite the same way. Covering eight classic murder ballads, including “Knoxville Girl”, “Tom Dooley” and “Frankie & Johnny”, Slade investigates the real-life murder which inspired each song and traces its musical development down the decades. Billy Bragg, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey, Laura Cantrell, Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family and a host of other leading musicians add their own insights.

A stunning tale of suburbia's darker underbelly by the critically acclaimed author of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, Stephanie Keuhnert. Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the clichéd ones where a diva hits her dramatic high note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which contained newspaper articles about bizarre, tragic events from suburbs all over America, and personal vignettes that Kara dubbed "ballads" written by her friends in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago. But Kara never wrote her own ballad. Before she could figure out what her song was about, she left town suddenly at the end of her junior year. Now, four years later, Kara returns to her hometown to face the music, needing to revisit the disastrous events that led to her leaving, in order to move on with her life. Intensely powerful and utterly engaging, Ballads of Suburbia explores the heartbreaking moments when life changes unexpectedly, and reveals the consequences of being forced to grow up too soon.