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Better story teller than Edmund Fitzgerald?

There was a thread on A'gon about the most perfect song.  We had reasons for picking various, but for me it was Gordong Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Perhaps it featured an aspect of song writing that no one else much cared for:  A deep and detailed story in the song.

So I ask you, A'goners, what songs are as good or better at telling a story of a historical event? 

erik_squires
chetatkins
81 posts
 

Bullfrog Blues (Live) - YouTube

bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,788 posts
 

Rodney Crowell wrote a great song that recounts his hearing of "Ring Of Fire" on the radio while driving in the car with his pa one night. It’s entitled "I Walk The Line Revisited", revisited because Johnny Cash appears on the recording of the song, which can be found on Rodney’s astoundingly great album The Houston Kid.

mahler123
3,313 posts
 

What about Lightfoots Canadian Railroad Trilogy?

jperry
2,448 posts
 

The Ballad of Claude Dallas by Ian Tyson is one of the best of this type

 

 

erik_squires OP
16,050 posts
 

Strange Fruit, while a very important song, is not a great story teller.

It is taken from a poem which sets up an allegorical scene and is about a general subject (horrible as it was).

To be a truly great story-telling song it has to have details, be about a specific person or event, and tell us things we might not otherwise know.

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