Originally published at: Murder ballads were the original true-crime media | Boing Boing
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A band called Vandaveer did a whole album of murder ballads - Vandaveer - Pretty Polly (Official Video) - YouTube is the video, read more about the album at Vandaveer: Oh Willie Please... - Paste
I’m going to say it’s good stuff, but that’s probably more like it’s well executed bad stuff.
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Will they ever take the place of night baseball sea shanties? 
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“everything old is new again” confirmed.
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Tom Dooley is based on an actual 19th century murder. A shortened version by the Kingston Trio was a No.1 hit in 1958. Doc Watson’s version gives a lot more gruesome detail.
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One of my favorite murder ballads
Marrow was thought to cause blindness. This is apparently just one of many like it https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/LQ02.html
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Yup, in North Carolina. In fact, he was tried, convicted and hanged in Iredell county, where I now live. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone walking around humming the song. (And his last name was really Dula.)
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That spotify list is weird. “I kill children” is a murder ballad but it left off “Hey Joe”?
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Here’s Frank Proffitt’s version. He was acknowledged to be the source of the version the Kingston Trio used as the basis for their version.
And here’s the earliest recorded version by G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter. Legend (maybe fact) has it that Grayson is a descendent of the sheriff who arrested Dooley/Dula.
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As did the Bad Seeds.
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Add to this the Moritaten from Germany. Everyone knows the “Moritat von Mackie Messer”, aka “Mack the Knife”. The German murder ballad singers often had canvas placards with scenes from the murder they were singing about, and would point to the appropriate one when the verse came up. It wasn’t morals or radio that killed them as much as rising literacy, though their end did coincide with the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP in the 1930s.*
*Godwin’s Law invoked in the original sense, that if any discussion goes on long enough Nazis get mentioned.
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This one is missing from the lists quoted.
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The Tompkins Square label put out a compilation of some of the earlier recordings of murder ballads called ‘People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938’. Well worth checking out though unfortunately does not appear to be on Spotify.
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Still being written, even in this era.
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This probably doesn’t count, but I’d say it’s at least adjacent. 
Reminds me of “Two Sisters” by Clannad, which has a killer twist I’ve always liked:
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My all-time favorite of this genre is Snakefinger’s “Sawney Bean/Sawney’s Death Dance”, presented here with a handy-dandy slideshow which does or doesn’t pertain to the story. https://youtu.be/ZSNwHw4SdkQ
Took a guitar class years ago with a teacher who was kind of obsessed with these. Having grown up with bluegrass I was somewhat familiar with the genre but never really paid attention to the words until I was older. That is some dark shit. The songs we learned in class basically revolved around the theme, “Baby, I love you way more than you love me so I gotta kill ya.”
