The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad

I bought this for the Handsome Family's Rennie Sparks chapter, and was not disappointed. I can read and re-read this tome and be entertained each and every time. Check it out.

There are some really amazing essays here, notably, Greil Marcus's envoi. Dave Marsh on "Barbara Allen" lifts a lot of ancient stuff out of the shadows and sets it in a clean, well lighted place. Sarah Vowell on "John Brown's Body" tells us a lot more about the ballad than we might have imagined. Cecil Brown on "Frankie and Albert" is a delight. Frankie's life is worthy of several ballads. R. Crumb's graphics make this a classic. His letter to the editor slaps a few of the other essayists out of the fetid air like horse flies. The graphics are fine, so I don't know what a previous reviewer was complaining about. Maybe he got a bad a copy. There are some real clunkers here, however. Wendy Lesser's piece is lost at sea. This is such a dissappointment when there is so much to say about Dylan, and she is such a fine writer, and Greil Marcus has written such great stuff on Dylan. Stanley Crouch's essay is fine, but it has nothing to do with ballads. David Thomas is a high-fallootin intellectualizer. "An imperative that derives from a gestalt of geography, sound, and culture fixes and vitalizes and drives certain musics." Wouldn't you love to see this guy have a conversation with Bob Dylan? Would he know a ballad if he stepped on one barefoot?

This is a wonderful book. The explorations of various folk songs (and what comprises a "folk" song) range from intriguing academic insights to fictional interpretations of the histories and even biographies of various songs: wonderful and inventive and satisfying. It was given to me by a friend and I am buying it for at least three more. Incredible

Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus have been listening to some great old songs, and some new ones too - songs about doomed lovers, highway shooters, and a nation lost and found. The essays they have put together are stunning -- my favorites are Dave Marsh on "Barbara Allen," which people have been singing for 500 years; Wendy Lesser on dancing to Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" with her baby boy in her arms; and Sean Wilentz on the curse behind "One more round, Delia's gone." Greil's last word on the "embarrassment" of "folk music" is also terrific. And the companion CD is a must.

So, I'm reading this amazing book, The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad and it's smart and it's emotional and it makes *me* feel smart and also, emotional. It takes all these well-known ballads and makes you really think about how these songs have stood the test of time. What makes them resonate after all these years? I'm awed and utterly fascinated.