Continuing on the topic of yesterday’s discussion about murder ballads that deal with femicide or star-crossed lovers, let’s talk about murder ballads that celebrate killers as folk heroes. When I think of murder ballads, one of the first names I think of is “Stagger Lee,” which is based on a genuine crime that took place on the day after Christmas, 1895. Evidently a man named Sheldon “Stack” Lee shot to death a man named William Lyon. The two were friends, but they had a conversation about politics that led to ill-will and culminating with Bill Lyon snatching Lee’s hat from his head and when Lyon refused to give it back, Lee shot him.  The number of people who have performed variations on this song are numerous, among them Elvis, The Ventures, and, incredibly, even a disco-country hybrid by Dr. Hook. The adulation of Stagger Lee seems to be based on his general badassery and the fact that the ladies evidently loved him. I’m including Nick Cave’s take on “Stagger Lee” because I won’t have enough time to discuss his Murder Ballads album in the depth it deserves and feel conflicted about it. I really do need to revisit this topic when I’m not doing Oddtober entries and and spend more time down the murder ballads rabbit hole.

Another criminal as folk hero song I immediately thought of is all the variations on “Tom Dooley.” I include it in the folk hero category because even though the titular Tom shot a woman to death, the focus of the song was less on why it is men need to kill women and more on how Tom handled the death sentence he received. The most famous version of “Tom Dooley” is performed by the band Kingston Trio and it never explains why old Tom killed a lady but instead focuses on how it was he would have gotten away with it had a lawman named Grayson not found him and how very sad it was that the “poor boy” Tom was going to meet his end at the gallows. It straddles the line but since the more famous variations really do focus on how unfortunate it was that Tom was going to hang, it seems more folk-hero-ish to me.

Murder ballads in the United States, when not borrowed from the “boy knocks up girl and kills her” tradition from northern Europe that influenced the songs from the old South and the Appalachians, often focus on rogues associated with the western frontier. You can’t shake a stick at all the songs written about Jesse James, variations of which were performed by Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, The Kingston Trio and many others. One of the more famous versions of the folk hero murder ballad considers Jesse James a sort of dogpatch Robin Hood, lauding him for stealing from train barons and giving it to the poor (which is a very interesting way of looking at his crimes), and excoriating Robert Ford as the coward who shot him. Similarly you’d have a hard time pinning down all the versions of murder ballads praising Robin Hood, either mourning his death (generally by bloodletting to cure an illness) or celebrating Robin Hood’s aim as he killed by bow and arrow those sent to put an end to his generous ways.

And all of that is well and good, but the most interesting folk hero murder ballads I found were in the rap and hip hop genres. “97 Bonnie and Clyde” by Eminem is an autobiographical folk hero murder ballad. He is Clyde, his daughter is Bonnie, and is by his side, an innocent witness, as he disposes of his wife’s body. He’s his own hero, invoking the memory of a beloved but fairly awful couple, likening his actions to those of the duo who robbed and killed their way across Texas and Oklahoma, dying in a shoot-out in Louisiana. Bonnie and Clyde show up in a fair number of folk hero murder ballads in bluegrass and country music, as they too had the appearance of being Robin Hood-style thieves whose deaths at the hands of law enforcement was seen as heroes going down in a blaze of glory. One song in particular sung by Merle Haggard insists that some may see Bonnie as a victim of Clyde’s, forced to do what he told her to do, but that she was the real hero in that rampaging duo, rehabilitating her image in a way.

The most puzzling folk hero murder ballads I’ve come across are by a band called SKYND, a two-person effort wherein the band members have somehow remained anonymous. I suspect fourteen-year-old me would have loved this music but in my current incarnation I have questions. SKYND performs original songs named after killers or their victims and it can be hard to pin down what exactly the band wants to convey, especially when the videos are considered alongside the songs themselves. This is music made for the digital age and the videos are the vehicles that first reach listeners so they seem pretty important in sussing out what this band is trying to do.

SKYND performed two very sympathetic songs, “Bianca Devins” and “Elisa Lam,” about two doomed young women, but their songs about serial killers are not as clear to me. For example, the song about Gary Heidnik, a psychopath who kidnapped prostitutes to keep in his basement as sex slaves, is told from Heidnik’s perspective that is also mixed with a bit of third person narration. The song itself is basically a recitation of Heidnik’s terrible crimes with punchy lines like “the dog food looked good enough, good enough to eat,” making light of the kidnap of one victim on Thanksgiving, and that’s all factual – Heidnik fed the women dog food when he wasn’t forcing them into cannibalizing one of their dead basement-mates, and one victim was indeed taken on Thanksgiving. It could be considered an edgy song about a serial killer until you see the video. The video seems to be painting Heidnik as a some sort of playboy, the white, leggy models he kidnapped looking nothing like the poor drug-addicted minorities he preyed on. He dances with the victims, showing them hanging off of his arm like starlets next to male leads, arriving at a movie premiere.

The video itself is unsettling to the point of parody, and I wondered if the singer was mocking Heidnik by showing what might be considered his point of view – a handsome lothario with women clamoring to worship at his feet – but that was not Heidnik’s goal. He wanted sex slaves who could bear his children, and though he felt that he could create a perfect race of mixed-race children (his victims were all women of color), there did not seem to be a religious element to it that justifies showing the women clamoring for their captor. There is something to the idea that Heidnik saw himself as a messianic figure, as he founded a cult that was so loyal that they continued to meet after his arrest (it was a very small cult, around 50 members). The song has lines like “God, He would be amused to see you at my feet,” and “God has a sense of humor,” which leans toward assigning Heidnik a messianic goal, but given all the bizarre choices in the video, I have no idea why the band decided to show his victims as fawning over him.

Heidik’s crimes were actually so horrible that I wonder if that is one of the reasons I have had such a kneejerk reaction to this campy video. He inflicted some of the worst torture imaginable on the women he kidnapped. Heidnik himself was a cretin. Even if SKYND is approaching the song as a parody of the mind of a demented killer, they miss the mark.

Their other videos are similarly head-scratching. I’m all the more uneasy because the people in the comments for these videos seem to understand what SKYND is trying to accomplish yet do not evince any positive emotions for the killers, though the stranger elements of the videos, like Gary Heidnik trying to run human limbs through a blender, cause commenters to praise the loony gore.

Perhaps part of my puzzlement is that I know way too much about some of the people SKYND discusses in their songs, and have known about them in some cases for decades, and immediately can smell bullshit or shallow research into these killers. The lyrics demonstrate a shallow dive, indicating either the worst was tamped down to accommodate a weird hero narrative or were the result of a jaded songwriter who is in on a joke many of us don’t get. But whatever the intention, SKYND’s catalog is mostly looks at socially relevant killers or those who still have online cache, like Jim Jones, the Columbine mass shooting, the suicide whisperer Michelle Carter, Richard Ramirez and more, and are beyond a doubt murder ballads. Some may belong more in the “boy kills girl” category, like the song “Bianca Devins,” but most of the band’s catalogue presents such uneven or odd looks at some foul human beings that I feel comfortable placing the band’s songs in the folk hero murder ballad classification.

Narcocorridos are murder ballads that make more sense to me, and like most gringos, I was unaware of them until Breaking Bad let us know about these songs.

Narcocorridos are songs about Mexican criminals, often cartel members, whose acts of violence and lavish lifestyles fuel folk hero murder ballads about them. The stories of absolutely frightening (mostly) men who distribute drugs, torture and kill their enemies, control the police and live lavish lives are presented in a folk hero manner. Songs praising Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and El Chapo present them as badasses whose lives are enviable, but these songs have also led to the murders of band members who perform these songs. You piss off one cartel boss by praising his enemy, you could very well end up killed yourself. Valentín Elizalde Valencia found this out the hard way. He had written a song that antagonized the Los Zetas cartel and actually received a note during his last performance asking him not to perform the song as a Zetas member was in the audience. Not willing to be controlled, as well as knowing that the note was also a tacit death notice, Valencia played the song twice and met his fate after the show. In fact, the actions Valencia took to play his music and the price he paid are themselves excellent fodder for a murder ballad.

Even more upsetting was the death of Chalino Sanchez. Not as famous as Valentín Elizalde, his story is no less epic and deserving of its own murder ballad. He was killed in 1992 and is considered one of the most influential narcocorrido singers. He too received a note, while on stage, and what it said no one knows, but it’s clear from his body language that it was not a letter wishing him well. Despite this, Sanchez performed his set as usual, and after was shot to death by killers unknown. It was the second time he had been shot that year – his songs clearly rattled some cages – and it is largely believed that narcos killed him.

Frankly I hope a murder ballad has been written to make Sanchez a folk hero. It takes some huevos to read a death threat, choke down the fear, and perform as usual.

There are so many narcocorridos that I have no hope of discussing even a small sampling beyond what I have already presented here, but it is a rabbit hole in and of itself, a reawakening of a story-telling form that began to wane elsewhere in North America in the 1980s because, as a whole, I think society began to find it hard to praise men who killed women because they had sex with them or to avoid marriage, or find much value in such messages. But the hero worship element lends itself better to the modern ear when the murderers are local boys who made good through crime and stayed in power via violence against enemies and law enforcement. They may have been terrible killers but the perception of their roles as badass heroes comes from people who see their narco heroes as people who are self-made and willing to kill corrupt government stooges to remain strong. The notion of the narcos discussed in such songs as heroes is also bolstered by the fact the narco gangs have begun to police themselves, eliminating members who do not abide by certain codes. But like Robin Hood, if you have men in an economically depressed country fighting back against ruthless powers that prefer for the poor to remain poor, the worst and violent narco’s actions can be seen as a blow for the common man. Plus young men really just like to listen to songs about men who do what they want and win at it (until they don’t).

One day I will definitely revisit this topic. I was just looking for some interesting Oddtober topics online and did not expect that a Norah Jones song would lead me down this cavernous rabbit hole that stretches back over 400 years and has spread into numerous musical genres. If you have a favorite murder ballad, share it with me. Your suggestions may well be my next rabbit hole.