People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938

 

We have been exploring the early Americana/Folk/what-have-you sounds of the early 20th century for a while now and there are always more discoveries, as this 3-CD set shows! Of course, there are some songs that overlap with some of our other comps, but there are also lots of tunes that are new to us.

Splits up into three sections - "Man v Machine" (often songs about the Titanic), "Man v Nature" and, of course, "Man v Man (and Woman Too!)" - the songs mostly consist of early acoustic folk/storytelling tales, usually with minimal backing and lots of death'n'tears! The sounds are simple melodies, with an emphasis on the narrative, similar to what Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger would later do - obviously, these were their influences and they would perform some of these numbers and some became part of our pop culture, such as "Casey Jones".

There are tunes that are more hillbilly, some are more blues-based, some are pure folk, some are sung in their original, old country language, some are almost Tin Pan Alley-ish, some are gospel-influenced, there's a few true bluegrass, harmony-driven tunes, and various permutations. 

The booklet included includes an introduction by Tom Waits as well as some excellent information about the events depicted in each song, the players, and often, how quickly the song was recorded and released after the disaster.

I gotta say, this is not one of my favorite collections of this kind of material, but it does gather a wide variety of material and gives a good idea of the different styles that were presented at the time. Certainly worthwhile.