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Ladykillers: Murder ballads and the country women who sang them


 
Country music is my favorite genre to listen to if I want to hear really dark shit. My favorite tunes should probably come with warning labels. These amazing songs sound ridiculously upbeat to the point where they are disturbing as hell. If you can’t stomach true crime podcasts, serial killer interviews or horror films, perhaps relaxing with a drink and a Porter Wagoner album isn’t for you.

Thus we come to my favorite socially unacceptable subgenre: the murder ballad. Being a badass feminist, it IS weird that I love an entire collection of music where the majority of tunes are about men killing women or visiting horrific violence upon them. I can’t help it though. I can’t get enough of these songs.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The country music world has always been male-centric. For every forgotten woman like Rose Maddox, Wilma Lee Cooper or Moonshine Kate, there are ten famous male stars like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, or Merle Haggard. So when I come across my murder ballad-singin’ women, I rejoice!  Bring that gore to the floor, ladies! Country women who sing about murder and violence are extra subversive, especially if they are making that narrative gender-flip of and sing those stories usually sung by men with murder on their minds… 
 

The Coon Creek Girls

The Coon Creek Girls formed in the 1930s and were the first all-women string-band. Their manager, an exploitative jerk named John Lair, went so far as to change the band name from their self-chosen Red River Ramblers to Coon Creek Girls because he “thought it sounded more country.” Apparently he thought the low/working class exoticism of that band name would sell these Appalachian-raised women better at shows. It didn’t. These gals sold themselves!
 

Lily May Ledford of the Coon Creek Girls and her banjo

Banjo player Lily May Ledford recalls:

“What a good time we had on stage… jumping up and down, sometimes ruining some of our songs by laughing at each other. Sis, when carried away by a fast fiddle tune, would let out a yell so high pitched that it sounded like a whistle. Sometimes, when playing at an outdoor event, fair or picnic, we would go barefooted. We were so happy back then. Daisy and Sis, being good fighters, would make short work of anybody in the more polished groups who would tease or torment us. We all made short work of the “wolves” as they were called, who tried to follow us home or get us in their cars.”

Tons of “I drowned my girlfriend/lover/wife” songs exist in the murder ballad canon but “Pretty Polly,” is easily one of the nastiest and most violent. That’s what makes the Coon Creek Girls’ version is especially good. While I quite enjoy the song as sung by The Byrds, it’s not as unique as the all-female arrangement. Great band, great tune. 
 

 
Plenty more after the jump…

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Posted by Ariel Schudson
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01.15.2018
02:58 pm
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Today’s best country music songwriter is a Twitter bot
02.29.2016
11:18 am
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In 2016 the most interesting and prolific lyricist in the genre of American roots music is a twitter bot named horse_bluegrass.

Programmer Jared Wenerd fed the lyrics of 1,796 bluegrass songs into a text prediction algorithm. The algorithm creates sentences with a certain degree of randomness, but using predictions of words likely to follow the preceeding word, based on the input of the original songs fed into the program. The end result are lyrics that are at times nonsensical, but at other times quite poignant and profound.

The code takes text, parses it into individual words, to create a model where the algorithm knows the likeliness that one word will follow another or end a phrase. For instance starting with the word “in” it knows that a likely word to follow will be “the”, “a”, or 43 other different words. The algorithm decides to go with “the” due to the statistical likeliness and randomness. It then continues and chooses the next word after “the” using the same process… and so on until the algorithm decides the phrase should end. Once it has a complete phrase, it publishes the text to Twitter

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The twitter account updates every couple of hours.

Here’s some of horse_bluegrass’ fine work. Certainly as good as, if not better than, anything coming out of Nashville in 2016. Check it out, no songs about pick-up trucks or beer:
 

 

 

 
More robotic country music lyrics after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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02.29.2016
11:18 am
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Video demonstrates how mind-numbingly formulaic and shitty Country pop music has become
01.08.2015
04:19 pm
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If you need any proof of how much Country pop music sucks nowadays, look no further than this video which dissects and mashes-up six Country songs. All of them sound alike. There ain’t nothin’ “original” added to the mix. “Original” never got anywhere close to the these songs to begin with!

In fact, the evidence so damning, YouTuber Sir Mashalot created his own Top 40 Country pop song.

I created this mashup as an experiment to see if I was crazy, or if I really was hearing the same hit country song over and over again, just sung by different artists. Turns out I wasn’t crazy…

The offending songs put under the microscope for evaluation are:

“Sure Be Cool If You Did”- Blake Shelton
“Drunk on You”- Luke Bryan
“Chillin’ It”- Cole Swindell
“Close Your Eyes”- Parmalee
“This is How We Roll”- Florida Georgia Line
“Ready, Set, Roll”- Chase Rice

With thanks to Kevin K!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Country music SUCKED in 2013 and this amusing video compilation explains why…

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.08.2015
04:19 pm
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Country music SUCKED in 2013 and this amusing video compilation explains why…
12.23.2013
12:18 pm
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I’ve never understood how people can listen to “New Country” (or “Nu Country,” if you’re an idiot) and like it. It’s utter crap, IMHO. It simply doesn’t speak to me in any way. The entire genre is unlistenable, goofy dreck. Do people spend money on this???

The video, below, beautifully sums up what’s emphatically wrong with today’s country artists: They suck.

Waylon Jennings is hatin’ on you from the afterlife, Blake Shelton and friends! You’ve got a lot to answer for.
 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.23.2013
12:18 pm
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