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Your Favorite Traditional Ballad

I could only find a thread with "Power Ballads". I find myself drawn to more traditional ballads lately. Here are a few of my favorites:

1952 Vincent Black Lightening, Richard Thompson
The Ballad of the Runaway Horse, Emmylou Harris
Pretty much any of the traditionals as sung by Kate Rusby
Ballad of Copper Junction (a Journeyman's Lament), Jeffrey Foucault
Folklore (the entire album is outstanding...my favorite would have to be "The Outlaw Song"), 16 Horsepower

I respect how, with such an economy of words, a songwriter can engrave such deep and powerful stories that resonate and linger.

What are some of your favorites in traditional ballads?
jax2
newbee
4,767 posts
 
'Traditional' ballads - i.e. ballads out of history or ballads which meet some contemporary definition?

If the former, and if you can admit to liking a bit of 'country' music once in a while (I love 'folk' music which has its origins in the British Isles) Eddy Arnold singing Barbara Allen and Wayfarin Stranger is a must hear. They came out in the 50's and I think they were remastered onto a CD 'Wanderin' a few years ago. Eddy Arnold was one of our great county singers and these ballads are IMHO representative of why. These are, I believe, 18th century songs.
dcstep
1,518 posts
 
Jax2, I love your ballad list, but don't think of them as "traditional". Maybe you're much younger than me, but I remember when they were new. (Richard Thomas and Leonard Kohn are contemporaries of mine).

My "traditional" favorites are:
Shenandoah
Irish Tune from County Derry (Danny Boy)
Amazing Grace
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shadorne
7,476 posts
 
I really like Tom Dooley, and it is technically a real ballad to boot.
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
Tom Dooley is a good one. Also "Long Black Veil" qualifies as a traditional ballad for sure. Joan Baez' recording from mid 60s used to make shivers go up and down my spine.

Marco- what I meant was that the total "performance" strikes an emotional chord w/in me. It can be the words, the melody, the playing, the singer's interpretation, or as in Jackson Browne's Before the Deluge, its all of the above, plus the ability of the lyric to evoke a period of my life that was transforming. Sure its not a traditional ballad, maybe more like an anthem of the times, but its one song that I cannot sing along w w/o getting very emotional.
don_s
271 posts
 
Setting aside the argument of traditional vs modern, one of my favorites is:

Joni Mitchell "Urge for Going"

Tom Rush does an excellent cover of Urge for Going on the CD
No Regrets: The Very Best of Tom Rush

That CD also includes two other great "story songs"

"Joshua Gone Barbados"

"Galveston Flood"
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