5 Great Narrative Songs

[Des]

Hurricane: Bob Dylan
Ode to Billy Joe: Bobbie Gentry
Harper Valley PTA: Jeannie C Riley
Patches: Clarence Carter
A Boy Named Sue: Johnnie Cash

This is a strange genre - any other nominations?

Does Deck of Cards count I wonder?

[Charlie]

El Paso, by Marty Robbins - great story, fantastic acoustic Spanish guitar by Grady Martin. I played it over and over again on a jukebox in Whitby years ago, and it never got to the end even once. At four minutes long, it didn't fit inside the trigger for ending the record, set for the more typical three minute wonders of the day.

Unusual in that it is sung by a dead man, a category all of its own?

[Ian A.]

Unusual in that it is sung by a dead man, a category all of its own?

To which you can add Long Black Veil, written by the recently deceased Marijohn Wilkin.

On narrative songs,

This is a strange genre - any other nominations?

I assume you'll want to leave out of it the huge number of unknown-authored traditional story ballads and reworked versions thereof (Martin Carthy's epic Famous Flower Of Serving Men to name one recent notable reworking) - but coming out of that school of influence Bob Dylan did lots more, from The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Caroll through to Lily, Rosemary & The Jack Of Hearts.

The latter of which opens up another category - songs which ought to be made into a film . . . any more nominations for those?

[judith]

5 narrative songs

Leader of the Pack - Shangri Las
Coat of Many Colors - Dolly Parton
Grandma's Hands - Bill Withers
Strange Fruit - Billie Holliday (it's an awful story, but it is a story)

and my 2nd all-time favorite because Charlie already nailed the first one:
Little Egypt - the Coasters

[uiwangmike]

Some more:

Hoyt Axton - Della and the Dealer
Guy Clark - The Last Gunfighter Ballad

. . . and an old favourite of mine, Norman Blake's Billy Gray (which is on The Woman I Loved So Well by Planxty. Norman was quite chuffed about it becoming an Irish folk song).

Billy Gray rode into Gantry way back in '83
There he first met with young Sarah MacLane
The wild rose of morning, the pale flower of dawning
Hurled a springtime into Billy's life that day

Sarah she could not see the daylight of reality
In her young eyes Billy bore not a flaw
Knowing not her chosen one, he was a hired gun
Wanted in Kansas City by the law

Then one day a tall man came riding from the Badlands
That lie to the north of New Mexico
He was overheard to say, he was looking for a Billy Gray
A wanted man and a danger said law

Well the news it came creeping to Billy fast sleeping
There in the Clarendon Bar and Hotel
He ran to the old church that lies on the outskirts
Thinking he'd hide in the old steeple bell

But a rifleball came flying, face down he lay dying
There in the dust of the road where he lay
Sarah ran to him, she was cursing the lawman
The poor girl knew no reason, except that he'd been killed

Sarah still lives in that old white frame house
Where she first met Billy some forty years ago
But the wild rose of morning has faded with the dawning
Of each day of sorrow the long years have grown

And written on the stone where the dusty winds have long blown
Eighteen words to a passing world say
"True love knows no season, no rhyme or no reason
Justice is cold as the Granger County clay."

"True love knows no season, no rhyme or no reason
Justice is cold as the Granger County clay."

[Con Murphy]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to invoke the dreaded Nick Cave and his magnificent Saint Huck.

Or any number of Tom Waits songs - Small Change (Got Rained on With His Own .38), Diamonds On My Windshield, virtually all of the Blue Valentine album.

Then there's Frankie and Johnny by Jimmie Rodgers:-

Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts,
Oh, Lord, how they could love,
Swore to be true to each other,
True as the stars above,
He was her man
he wouldn't do her wrong.

Frankie went down to the corner,
Just for a bucket of beer,
She said, "Oh, Mister Bartender,
Has my loving Johnny been here,
He is my man,
He wouldn't do me wrong."

I don't want to cause you no trouble,
Ain't gonna tell you no lies,
I saw your lover an hour ago,
With a girl namd Nellie Bly,
He was your man,
But he's doing you wrong.

Frankie looked over the transom,
She saw to her suprise,
There on a cot sat Johnny
Making love to Nellie Bly,
He is my man, and he's doing me wrong.

Frankie drew back her kimona,
She took out a little forty-four,
Root-to-toot three time she shoot
Right through that hardwood door,
She shot her man,
He was doing her wrong.

Bring out your rubber-tired hearses,
Bring out your rubber-tired hacks,
I'm taking my man to the graveyard
But I ain't gonna bring him back,
Lord, he was my man, And he done me wrong.

Bring out a thousand policemen,
Bring 'em around today,
To lock me down in the dungeon cell
And throw that key away,
I shot my man, He was doing me wrong.

Frankie said to the warden,
"What are they going to do?"
The warden, he said to Frankie,
"It's electric chair for you,
'Cause you shot your man, he was doing you wrong."

This story has no moral,
This story has no end,
This story just goes to show
That there ain't no good in men,
He was her man, And he done her wrong.

[Dayna]

Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot

[Charlie]

Big Bad John, by Jimmy Dean

This and the aforementioned El Paso by Marty Robbins are both on the wonderful Ace compilation, The Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll: Special Country Edition, which also includes Wolverton Mountain by Claude King, The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton and Detroit City by Bobby Bare, all eligible in this category.

Thanks to Con for providing the lyric of Jimmie Rodgers' Frankie & Johnny. From memory, this is very close to the Lonnie Donegan version, recorded twenty five years later. At the time, I didn't know Lonnie's sources. In his early days of recording, Lonnie specialised in songs that met the brief of this thread, songs about trains (Rock Island Line, Cumberland Gap, Wabash Cannonball), water dams (Grand Coullie Dam), tough guys (John Henry) and gamblers (Jack O'Diamonds, Frankie & Johnny).

Leadbelly, who did the first recorded version of Rock Island Line, must have a number of contenders.

House of the Rising Sun, by the Animals (still my favourite of all the hundreds of versions)

[Gordon Moore]

Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West) - Benny Hill
Two Little Boys - Rolf Harris

oooh I feel a little queasy, I'm going to lie down.


Benny The Bouncer - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

[Des]

Roy Orbison springs to mind....

There once was an indian brave by the name of yellow hand
He fell in love with a maiden know as white sands
They vowed their love would last forever more
Then came the day that they had waited for.

Yellow hand brought her a golden feather
White sands said a prayer for good weather
The ceremonial dance grew loud and strong
Then yellow hand began their wedding song.

Oooooh oooooh oooh ooooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh
Tonight, tonight, we will be one
Well walk in the land of the midnight sun
Oh white sands, come hold my lonely hand.

Then they left the warmth of the raging fire
And rode into the hills climbing higher
And suddenly the snow came swirling down
They were lost the trail could not be found.

Oooooh oooooh oooh ooooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh
Tonight, tonight we will be one
Well walk in the land of the midnight sun
Oh white sands, come hold my lonely hand.

They never returned from paradise
They went to their places in the sky
And the old ones still say when the snowflakes fly
If youll listen close youll hear him cry:

Oooooh oooooh oooh ooooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh
Tonight, tonight we will be one
Well walk in the land of the midnight sun
Oh white sands, come hold my lonely hand.

[judith]

Benny The Bouncer - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Minnie the Moocher - Cab Calloway
Willie the Weeper - Frankie 'half-pint' Jaxon

but that leads to songs with veiled narrative

http://www.heptune.com/willieth.html

[That Was Jonathan E. Then]

Terry — who rode off into the night — sung by who I can't remember, probably one of those greatest British female singers from another thread. Orobably also a bit of rip from Leader Of The pack.

[That Was Jonathan E. Then]

Willie The Pimp by Beefheart/Zappa.

Do I have to think of another 3 now?

[Gordon Moore]

Willie the Weeper - Frankie 'half-pint' Jaxon

A cutie [?] dancing in his BVDs.

I assume cutie is a pretty gal, but BVD?

[Des]

Terry — who rode off into the night — sung by who I can't remember, probably one of those greatest British female singers from another thread. Orobably also a bit of rip from Leader Of The pack.

The singer was the legendary Twinkle.