A ballad refers to a folk song that tells a story, in comparison to the traditional folk song, which does not contain a narrative but rather consists of a series of floating verses. The lives of Americans living in isolation on the frontier created a great deal of fodder for ballads. Tragic and gruesome stories of ordinary people were informally transmitted by word of mouth and evolved over geography and time. Ballads convey common and epic themes, both human and supernatural, with plots containing adventure, comedy, love, and tragedy told in verse. Ballads were (and are) a literature of the people, and the narratives in ballads generally develop by means of dialogue.
Three dominant types of ballads have survived through folk culture: “Child” ballads, which consist of 305 ballads collected by academic folklorist and musicologist Francis James Child in his The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1898); broadside ballads, which were printed on one side of a piece of paper and published between approximately 1650 and 1900; and native American ballads, dating mostly from about 1850 to the present day, which chronicled adventures, scandals, and tragedies that were similar in scope to subjects found in chapbooks and dime novels.
Early ballad singers performed without instrumentation. Anglo-American ballads tell a story, but give off a distant tone to highlight the situational adventure, drama, or romance that presents an unsettled situation where something is revealed in sequence. The folklore presented in ballads tends to share some characteristics. Many of the plots begin with the middle of the story (or in medias res) so that background information is pieced together as the story progresses; ballads often “leap and linger,” meaning that certain scenes will be treated in detail, and then the narrative shifts without transition; and some ballads have a great deal of incremental repetition to advance the plot with variations in the verses. Southern ballads are very much defined by the cultural makeup of the states that made up the Confederacy during the Civil War. On the other hand, African American communities appropriated mountain “ballits” that evolved into twentieth-century blues ballads.
Although ballads might chronicle a specific incident, they often are adapted with hearsay and rumor over time, creating and reinforcing legends. Ballads are true indicators of the values of the society and times in which they were written and performed. Folk melodies, in turn, have shaped the popular verse forms of ballads. In America, the lyrics of many ballads were written to British tunes, some of which date back to the Middle Ages. Librettist Samuel Woodworth (1784–1842) wrote the famous poem, “The Old Oaken Bucket,” which was published in the New York Republican Chronicle on June 3, 1818, and was set to music by George F. Kiallmark in 1826.
Sometimes broadside ballads refer to historic events. Woodworth later wrote “Hunters of Kentucky” in 1821 to commemorate Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British during the Battle of New Orleans, and Jackson used the song in a political campaign in 1828. Woodworth, who often published poetry under the pseudonym “Selim,” also wrote the first American hit musical, The Forest Rose, or, American Farmers in 1825.
Sheet music cover image of Old Oaken Bucket Variations by J. Albert Snow, Boston, Massachusetts, 1881. The eponymous poem by Samuel Woodworth (1784–1842) was published in the New York Republican Chronicle in 1818 and was set to music by George F. Kiallmark in 1826. Ballads are folk songs which tell stories in allusive and episodic ways. (Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Images)
Broadside ballads are derived from the English tradition dating back to the sixteenth century of publishing songs on single sheets of paper; they are typically sentimental, declamatory, or scandalous in content and were sold on the streets in large urban areas with other broadsides, almanacs, chapbooks, and satirical prints. The ballad known as “James Bird” told the story of Marine soldier James Bird who demonstrated great bravery during the Battle for Lake Erie in 1813, only to be convicted and executed for desertion. This ballad was written by Charles Miner and published in the November 9, 1814, issue of The Gleaner within a month of Bird’s death, with variant stories to follow that exaggerated why Bird appeared to desert for the love of a woman. Incidentally, Miner is credited with coining the idiomatic phrase “an axe to grind,” which is a metaphor for having a personal ulterior motive.
Religious ballads came out of the public displays of emotion that emerged during the Second Great Awakening, which lasted between the 1790s and the 1840s, and spotlighted the vocals of an individual rather than a group. Many religious ballads (white and black spirituals), often sung in the first person, told stories of the wandering stranger crossing the Jordan, a dying child, or a God-fearing prospector seeking a quick fortune during hard economic times who, while on his way to California, died before reaching the gold fields. Labor-printed ballads—which aided workers in disputes—as well as broadside ballads became the means of disseminating lyrics for protest songs to raise money or support. Andrews of New York, Thayer of Boston, and Thomas M. Scroggy of Philadelphia were the most prominent purveyors of broadside ballads in the United States.
During the California gold rush, which took place from 1848 to 1855, ballads embellishing popular minstrel tunes were used by hardworking miners in a demanding, hazardous work environment that offered true prosperity to few. Mart Taylor (1824–1894) traveled with his “Original Company,” whistling familiar minstrel tunes and embellishing them with his own words. A former tavern owner who came out West as a strolling player in 1853 or 1854, Taylor announced his company’s arrival by beating a drum, and the miners gathered to hear new songs and see a local red-haired girl dance jigs. Taylor’s lyrics were culled from the daily news and written upon long sheets of paper known as “twenty-foot” songs that interpreted the miners’ situation within the realities of dog-eat-dog commerce and politics.
Among the white gold miners, a group of extremely poor men from Pike County, Missouri, in the Ozarks formed a transient marginalized community. Any song referring to Pike County miners referred to a subset of Americans targeted for ridicule because they were thought to be primitive and uneducated. Pikes were characterized as being gaunt, narrow-chested men with long, straight hair, thin, sallow faces, and sunken eyes. They were typically the most dirty and sickly men in the diggings. In Taylor’s “The Pike County Miner,” set to a winsome English air called “Landlord’s Pet,” this group is portrayed with sympathy. This is the only published song in Taylor’s repertoire set in a minor key; the use of an “old-fashioned” tune perhaps indicated that this group was too insular to embrace contemporary minstrel music trends popular with the other miners. However, it also demonstrates an important characteristic of regions with extreme poverty where eighteenth-century traditions were protected and evolved into American folk music. Although popular California gold rush music was derived from minstrel shows, many today categorize music of the California gold rush as folk music—a cousin to hillbilly music from the Ozarks.
“American Pie”
Arguably no popular song of the past half century has claimed the iconic status of “American Pie,” Don McLean’s elegiac if enigmatic 1971 ode to the lost youth and compromised ideals of the Baby Boomer generation. Love it or hate it, most Americans know it. Although it is generally agreed that “the day the music died” was in 1959 when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper—pop icons and cultural touchstones of their own generation—died in a plane crash, the lyrics are famously opaque, seeming to invite interpretation. Indeed, generations of critics and devotees alike have wrestled with the song’s “hidden meanings.” McLean has long refused to reveal such meanings; recently, for example, conservative pundit Glenn Beck tried his hand at a line-by-line exegesis. Moreover, the abiding appeal of “American Pie” is such that the original lyrics were recently auctioned for more than a million dollars.
C. Fee
Oh once I was a “right smart” lad,
When I lived out in Pike,
I’d a “heap” of good things—I was never sad,
And I did whatever I’d like.
Chorus: “But now I’ve nothing but rags to my back,
And my boots scarce hide my shoes.”
While my pants are patched with an old flour sack,
To jibe with the rest of my clothes.
Native American ballads (those originating in the United States), “John Henry” and “The Titanic,” also came out of the broadside ballad tradition; they include the “leap and linger” way of telling a story and evolved into hillbilly music. Cowboy ballads described the lives of folks in the West, specifically those in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Many cowboy ballads evolved into printed poems that were set to familiar tunes composed from the 1880s to 1930s. “Home on the Range” was first published in the December 1873 issue of The Smith County Pioneer as a poem called “Oh, Give Me a Home, Where the Buffalo Roam” written by an ear, nose, and throat doctor named Brewster M. Higley and set to a melody by Daniel E. Kelley. Cowboy songs were among the first to be recorded in the 1920s, and singing cowboys including Carl T. Sprague, Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Jimmy Wakely, and Rex Allen carried this type of ballad into movie theaters and homes via radio and television.
African American ballads offer highly emotional pictures with powerful verse, but unlike Anglo-American ballads, they downplay narrative structure. They are often centonical in nature, borrowing elements from a variety of sources to create something new. An early narrative ballad chronicling the life of an African American, “The Ballad of John Henry,” derived from when the Swannanoa Tunnel was built in West Virginia during the 1880s; it went on to become symbolic in labor and civil rights movements. It describes a contest between a railroad worker and a steam-powered drill, which became symbolic of human strength and endurance exploited in the Industrial Age. The ballad includes four parts: Henry’s childhood premonition of his own death caused by steel-driving, his race against the steam hammer, his death and burial, and his wife Polly Anne’s response. Southern ballads were disbursed northward and westward during the first two decades of the twentieth century as black migrants fled from segregated oppression in search of opportunities. The Great Depression and the effects of drought during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s created another migration westward.
Two songs about Jesse James (1847–1882) have remained popular in folk circles. The first song focused on the death of James at the hands of a “dirty little coward” named Robert Ford (1861–1891), which was published in 1887. The sheet music for the folk ballad known as “Jesse James,” attributed to Frank Henri Klickmann with humorous lyrics by Roger Lewis, was published by Will Rossiter in 1911. Klickmann also wrote a popular antiwar song called “Uncle Sam” while working for McKinley Music Company the same year. The Klickmann-Lewis version of the Jesse James song has remained in the traditional folk repertoire because of its unique antimarriage quip in the last verse. Many ballads today evolved or were recorded as composites of the most popular stanzas of variant songs pieced together like a patchwork quilt.
Meredith Eliassen
See also Barbara Allen; Crockett, Davy; James, Jesse; John Henry; Lomax, Alan; Minstrel Shows; Spirituals; Uncle Sam
Further Reading
Lomax, John A., and Alan Lomax. 1934. American Ballads and Folk Songs. New York: Macmillan.
Lornell, Kip. 2012. Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
McNeil, W. K. 1988. Southern Folk Ballads. Little Rock: August House.
Taylor, Mart. 1858. Local Lyrics and Miscellaneous Poems. San Francisco: Hutchings & Rosenfield.