People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938

If you think times are tough now, consider the Great Depression, with unemployment at 25 percent and armies of homeless wandering the country. Bracketed roughly by the sinking of the Titanic and the start of WW II, the years documented on these three CDs were hard ones, but they produced amazing songs. There’s a wonderful cross section of styles here, chronicling train wrecks, plane crashes, cyclones, mine disasters and gory violent crimes. Familiar names like Clarence Ashley and Charley Patton appear, as well as songs like “Tom Dooley,” but most of the material and performers will be unknown to anyone who isn’t an old-time-music aficionado. The music is culled from 78 RPM recordings and remains vital and lively—a dispatch from the time when folk songs were the only tabloids America knew.