People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938 [BOX SET]

Various Artists (Artist)

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 25, 2007)
• Original Release Date: September 25, 2007
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Tompkins Square
• ASIN: B000ULQV20
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #48,822 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. This collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds."
- Tom Waits, from the Introduction

Songs of death, destruction and disaster, recorded by black and white performers from the dawn of American roots recording are here, assembled together for the first time. Whether they document world-shattering events like the sinking of the Titanic or memorialize long forgotten local murders or catastrophes, these 70 recordings - over 30 never before reissued - are audio messages in a bottle reflecting a lost world where age old ballads rubbed up against songs inspired by the day's headlines.

Produced and annotated by the Grammy winning team of Christopher King and Henry "Hank" Sapoznik with an introduction by Tom Waits, the accompanying 48-page three-CD anthology designed by Grammy award winning Susan Archie brims with many eye-popping historic images never before reproduced.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grandpa's Death Metal, November 26, 2007

By	B. Bruton "brutonb" (The Great Beyond) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Close your eyes and hear the suffering through the ages, as disasters both great and small are relived in song by roving musicians with only a fiddle or a guitar to stake their claim on history.

Close your eyes and see the carnage reenacted. In Frank Hutchison's "Last Scene of the Titanic," see all the pretty ladies in their evening gowns and all of the tuxedoed gentlemen plummet over the deck of the great juggernaut as it collides with a massive iceberg, sending them wailing and flailing and thrashing in a demonic ballet into the icy Atlantic waters.

Open your ears and hear the plaintive cry of a child in the night, who wakes from a portentous dream in which his daddy is trapped in the interminable blackness of the coal mine (Blind Alfred Reed's "Explosion in the Fairmount Mine"), only to discover that dear daddy was indeed trapped in a mine explosion and is one of 200 unrecovered miners never to see the light of day again.

True-life scenes such as these are the subject of this massive 3-cd set, in which seemingly congenial-sounding folk and blues songs from the early twentieth century document disasters and real-life tragedies with a quiet intensity that disturbs the casual listener far more than any contemporary death metal band could. This is not Sturm und Drang, this is real pain and suffering devoid of fantasy or romanticism. These are songs for the legions of anonymous dead, musical coffin markers for the ones who were lost along the way.

Highlights range from the grim to the funny. In "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues," Robert "Barbecue Bob" Hicks complains that the murky brown flood waters have washed all the wimmenfolk away. The original version of "When the Levee Breaks" by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie remains a haunting testament to the 1927 Mississippi Flood. Charlie Poole's "Baltimore Fire" is spectral in its account of hundreds consumed by the flames of a raging inferno. Then there's my personal favorite, Bob Miller's "Ohio Prison Fire", in which a distraught mother is asked to identify the charred remains of her late lamented son:

"I'll take my boy back now. The state's finished with him. The state's finished with all of these bodies. These poor, charred bodies!"

Disc Three switches the focus to murder ballads, showcasing songs of cold-blooded homicide that have influenced the work of such hardboiled musical greats as Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits, the latter providing the eloquent introduction to this set. Early versions of such blood-soaked ballads as "Billy Lyons and Stack O'Lee" (the legend of Stack O'Lee or "Stagger Lee" exists in many forms) and "Darling Cora" (also known as "Darling Corey") stand alongside lesser-known death row oddities like "The Trial of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, Pts. I & II," an ode to the murderer of the Lindbergh baby. True crime buffs may favor this disc as much as musicologists.

Special mention should be made to the impeccable sonic reproduction by Christopher King, who understands the mystical power inherent in the snap, crackle, and pop of old 78 records and faithfully reproduces the elusive sound of the victrola, cranked up and wailing away like a banshee in a tin can. The static of these old grooves perfectly encases the sadness of bygone eras like ancient beetles trapped in amber. Timeless and lifeless.

In today's post-9/11 world, the fear of arbitrary annihilation is almost taken for granted, yet this collection serves as a moving reminder that tragedies of every kind have always lived on in the music of American folk musicians, perhaps to serve as a talisman for future generations.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As hip and as dark as old time music gets!, October 1, 2007

By	A Rothchild "Alvin" (nova) - See all my reviews

This is one really stunning project but for many reasons! I got it initially because I love pre-war blues and Tom Waits but I didn't realize how beautifully put together the whole thing was until I opened it up. When the whole book is opened up, the inside spreads almost 22 inches and there are several fully reproduced panorama photographs of disasters: one of the aftermath of the Baltimore Fire looks like an atom bomb went off and another of a train wreck really captures the devastation of these early disasters. The introduction by Tom Waits is beyond cool. It has the archaic cadence of these songs and yet perfectly describes how these pieces were written and spread throughout communities. Besides the beautiful writings, photographs, and annotations, I am most impressed with both the wide variety of songs (there were many I had never heard before) and the actual sonic clarity of the collection. What is truly a revelation is how great certain songs sound compared to other cd issues. If you like cool eye and ear candy, then this is for you.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Slice of History, November 10, 2007

By	Daniel J. Peck "Dan Peck" (Ruckersville, VA.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The ballad, a song that tells a story, in the modern world is something of a fading form. But in the age before cable news and internet immediacy, much of the world got their news of important events from song. In this brilliant work, Chris King and Hank Sapoznik have created a remarkable collection of songs that told of disasters, man-made and natural. The stories range from the sinking of the Titanic and famous train wrecks, floods and fires to murders and mine disasters.

The collection, presented in a beautifully packaged 3 CD boxed set, is expertly produced with the sound of the original 78 RPM recordings preserved with a minimum of noise and all of the original musical content. This is typical of King's Grammy Award winning work. Sapoznik's (a noted historian of both old-time American and Yiddish music) excellent notes offer both historical context and a deep musical insight. The introductory essay from Tom Waits is one of the most insightful takes on the ballad I have ever read.

I can't recommend this highly enough. For anyone who wishes to understand American musical history (or just loves the music), this is a serious must-have.