Book Review: Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired Stagolee, John Henry, and Other Traditional American Folk Songs by Richard Polenberg

May 2015, Hammersmith Apollo, London. Nick Cave finally responds to the crowd's baying requests and plays "Staggerlee" from his 1995 album with the Bad Seeds, Murder Ballads. Transfixed, I stand watching the performance, hanging onto every word and think to myself, there's a great story behind this song.

And there is. In Christmas Eve 1895, "Stack Lee" Shelton entered the Bill Curtis Saloon in St Louis and got into an argument with Billy Lyons. Stack Lee mashed Lyons's hat and Lyons responded by grabbing his white Stetson. Stack Lee drew out his Smith & Wesson .44, Billy drew out his knife and bang! Stack Lee shot Lyons in the belly and left.

This is just one tale in a fantastic new collection of stories by Richard Polenberg. Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired "Stagolee," "John Henry," and Other Traditional American Folk Songs.  Painstakingly researched and thoroughly entertaining, in this book Polenberg describes the historical events and true stories behind America's most famous folk songs.

While some of these songs have been quite colourful (I'm thinking specifically of Nick Cave's "Staggerlee") that's nothing compared to the truth behind the lore and in many cases truth really is stranger than fiction.

There is the incredible story of Omie Wise, who was drowned in the Deep River, North Carolina in 1807. The murder of this pregnant woman over 200 years ago had quite the impact on the area and now there is a Naomi Falls, a Naomi Bridge and even a large cotton mill named Naomi Falls Manufacturing Company.

What is most notable about the collection is that beneath the entertainment value there is a real indictment of an inequitable and unfair legal system in which African Americans were very often guilty until proven innocent and in many cases they were convicted with the flimsiest of evidence.

In “Duncan and Brady”, we learn about Harry Duncan who was convicted for the murder of policeman James Brady. Testimony that would have exonerated him was dismissed as hearsay and the weapon used in the murder was not considered relevant for evidence.

Of course, the sad stories that form the basis of our beloved folk songs aren’t always about wrongful convictions. There was no doubt that Frankie Silver killed her abusive husband Charles but no amount of public pressure and understanding of her predicament could prevent her from going to the gallows.

Not all of the stories behind our most famous songs are known. For example, nobody knows who first wrote ”House of the Rising Sun”, the most famous version of which was recorded by The Animals. There was once a Rising Sun Hotel in New Orleans but it burned down in 1822. Given the subject matter, it is more likely that the song stems back to the colourful period where prostitution was legalised in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century. In the chapter “House of the Rising Sun”, Polenberg tells us about this period which included racial segregation of brothels and even a white pages of sorts to prevent patrons from being swindled.

Of course, some stories are so famous that they permeates ever corner of popular culture. No bandit has had more songs written about him than the outlaw Jesse James and he was of course the subject of the famous Brad Pitt film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (Incidentally, if you’ve never heard the superb score for the film by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, you should rush out and do so immediately).

Not only does Polenberg discuss the famous story of Frank and Jesse James, he also tells the less well known story of Cole Younger who so captured the imagination of people that songs about him were released during his own lifetime.

Fascinating and well-researched, Hear My Sad Story provides a backdrop to some of the world’s most famous folk songs. Listening to the old folk tracks on YouTube as I went along, I was fascinated by how many of the songs I recognised and was certainly familiar with some of the names like Frankie and Johnny and of course, Stagolee.

I give Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired "Stagolee," "John Henry," and Other Traditional American Folk Songs by Richard Polenberg a superb five out of five stars and would highly recommend to lovers of blues, jazz and folk music and anyone whose imagination has been stimulated by a murder ballad.

Hear My Sad Story is available on Kindle and hard cover from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

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Book Review: Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go by Lucille O'Neal

Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go: From Mental Welfare to Mental Health by Lucille O'Neal is meant to be an uplifting story about how a woman came from the humblest beginnings to become mother of one of the greatest sports stars that ever set foot on earth – Shaquille O’Neal.  It is never pleasant to have to write a negative review but unfortunately, I found this book to be almost devoid of redeeming characteristics.  The problem with the book is twofold and had to do with that “humble” upbringing and Lucille’s interpretation of the events in her life.

Lucille O’Neal came from a relatively privileged middle-class background.  Her parents split up when she was young and her grandparents were extremely cold but that does not amount to an impoverished or deprived childhood.  Having encountered impoverished children and families in urban and rural settings, in both so-called first and third world countries, I found Lucille’s self-indulgent and exaggerated focus on her unhappy childhood to be beyond grating.  Many children across many cultures experienced a coldness and lack of moral support while growing up in the 50s and 60s and many of them grew up to provide healthy and loving environments for their children nevertheless. 

Part of the purpose of an autobiography is for the author to revisit the events in her life and the decisions she made and to pass a mature analysis and judgement on her past.  It is not enough to simply report the events in her life; she needs to explain the significance of those events and her decisions and how these helped her to grow and become a better person.  The problem is that Lucille has not done this.  She may be a fantastic and inspiring public speaker (and she is) but I did not feel that she transferred those qualities into this book. 

She describes falling pregnant as a teenager; holding endless dinner parties at her home; slipping into alcoholism as an adult and eventually leaving her husband as linear events.  She portrays them alternatively as the products of cold and dissatisfying close relationships or situations engineered for her by God but she never once takes ownership of her actions nor does she accept responsibility for her decisions.  It is a real pity actually because I think there is a story to tell here but I don’t think Lucille has sufficiently moved past the events in her life to be able to pass wisdom through the written medium in the way that her charisma and personality do when she speaks.

I give Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go: From Mental Welfare to Mental Health one out of five stars and unfortunately would not recommend this book.

I obtained a copy of this book to review through the BookSneeze programme.  All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Article first published as Book Review: Walk Like You Have Somewhere to Go: From Mental Welfare to Mental Health by Lucille O'Neal on Blogcritics.

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Book review: A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns – Denis Lipman

Part travelogue, part memoir, A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns is a wonderful new book written by Denis Lipman.  Former magician and playwright Denis grew up in Dagenham which is a little town in Essex, England but he moved to the USA over twenty years ago to find his fortune.  A Yank Back to England chronicles Denis’s annual visits back to England to see his aging, Cockney parents.  While England is old news to him, his new wife Frances insists on seeing the countryside and convinces Denis to become a tourist in his old homeland. 

The book is divided into six years but actually covers eight different visits.  In all of the chapters, Denis and Frances hire out a cottage in the English countryside and are joined by Denis’s parents Lew and Jessie and often by Denis’s aunt and cousin too.  Denis and Frances’s gorgeous little girl Kate makes her appearance in Year Two.

Year One: A Tiny Home on a Large Estate - Year One sees the Lipmans visiting the homes of Charles Darwin and Winston Churchill. They take a trip to Aldeburgh which is in Suffolk and visit the eastern most part of England.

Year Two: A Tudor Cottage in East Anglia – In Year Two, the family travel over to the lovely Elizabethan town of Rattlesden in Suffolk; they visit Melford Hall, the home of Beatrice Potter and they travel through the university town of Cambridge on the way back to London.

Year Three: Hard by The Masters House – It is probably safe to say that the landlords of the cottage they stayed in this year were not their favourites but Year Three was one of my favourites with trips to Winchester (home of King Arthur’s Round Table), Chichester and Arundel Castle in West Sussex.

Year Four: A Carriage House on the Saxon Shore – While staying at the haunted Carriage House in Year Four, the Lipmans visited the wonderful Broadstairs for the first time, where Bleak House, the home of Charles Dickens, is located.  Before departing back to the US, they also visited Blenheim Palace and Woodstock near Oxford.

Year Five: A Coastguard's House on a Pebble Beach – In Year Five the Lipmans stayed in their most dodgy cottage so far but they visited the seaside towns of Sandwich and Deal, saw Walmer Castle and took a trip back to Broadstairs.

Year Six: A Regency Cottage on a Bridal Path – In the final year, the Lipmans stay in the glorious Madrigal Cottage which was Denis’s favourite (and mine).  They also visit the AA Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood which is pretty exciting even if there was nothing to see!

While reading this wonderful travelogue, I was overcome by a desire to spend a summer holiday in a cottage in the English countryside and this feeling hasn’t gone away.  In fact, this is the kind of book that makes you want to follow in the Lipman’s footsteps and the see all the things they saw, no matter how quirky or frustrating they were at times.

And they were quirky and frustrating.  A Yank Back to England details shockingly bad service, classic English mediocrity and unpredictable English weather.  Poor American Frances was quite bemused at times while I’m sure Denis was thinking “I told you so”!  The massive appeal of this book though is that it takes you away from all of the traditional sights and sounds in England to ancient towns, stately homes, magnificent castles and a country so breathtakingly gorgeous when the sun is shining.  The sense of heritage is amazing as the Lipmans encounter attractions from many different eras including Viking, Roman and several millennia of English history.

The most touching aspect of this story though is the relationship that Denis shared with his parents Lew and Jessie and how he came to respect and understand them over time.  At times hilarious and at times incredibly touching, this is an lovely book that will certainly appeal to anglophiles.  As I chuckled to myself while travelling on the London Underground each day, I realised that this is a book that will appeal to just about everyone but certainly lovers of travelogues, memoirs and humour.

Watch Denis Lipman read an excerpt from his book: “Tony the Cat”

For being absolutely delightful and enjoyable, I give the book 5 stars.  I don’t think I will read it only once and I definitely think I’ll be consulting this marvellous book when planning my next adventures for Emm in London.

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Book review: First They Killed My Father (A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers)

On Monday I finished reading First They Killed My Father which is the autobiographical story of a young girl's experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.  I've read a lot of books like this and I usually find them uplifting but this book just made me sad.  In Rwanda, you see people's incredible resilience and determination to overcome the prejudices of the past.  When I read the story of the boy solider, A Long Way Gone, I was heartened by the knowledge that he had escaped that life and become a strong and motivational person.

The problem is that I cannot derive anything positive at all from what happened in Cambodia. For four years the Khmer Rouge government systematically worked, starved and tortured to death 20% of the population. The reason that I picked up this book in the first place is that they have started genocide trials in Cambodia now and I wanted to understand why. I have collected a couple of links over at my other blog to make a start at understanding what happened.

This excellent and tender book details the experiences of a 5-year-old girl as she experiences starvation and the loss of her family members. She acknowledges at the start of the book that her brothers and sister helped her with the book and this accounts for the strong recall of conversations and events. This is a book rich in details about both the cosmopolitan life in Phnom Penh in the early 70s and the desperate futility of the Khmer Rouge regime.

I would unequivocally recommend this book to everyone that I know. I think everyone should read it to understand both what happened and the necessity behind bringing the Khmer Rouge members to trial. It is a really easy book to read and you will find it quite difficult to put down.  But yes... in the end it is a very sad story.  I have the most uneasy feeling that in 30 years time, we will be reading similar stories about Darfur and we'll be left wondering why we didn't do anything about it.

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Book Review: A Long Way Gone (Memoirs of a Boy Soldier)

It's taken me a long time to write a review on this book. It is not an easy book to write a review on. I'll start from the end result then and move backwards.

I think this is a very important book and I honestly believe everyone should read it. I finished it a couple of months ago and I imagine that barely a day has gone by without my thinking about it. Ishmael Beah and his horrific story are never far from my mind, but at at the same time I know that he escaped and now tours the world giving hope and guidance to others.

This book has been torn apart by reporters claiming the book to be inaccurate in terms of time frame and events. Other reviewers have criticised Beah's style of writing and emotional involvement in the story. I am not going to defend the author, I'm not going to say that it is okay if only most of the facts are correct and I'm not going to dwell on the fact that he is a human being and not a professional writer.

What I do take away from this book was that this young man was drafted into the war in Sierra Leone as a child soldier. I don't care if he was 13 or 15 when it happened and I don't care if he was a child soldier for two years or six months. The point is that he was pumped full of drugs by adults and he both witnessed the violent deaths of many young friends and personally killed several children and men.

The book left me with a desire to learn much more about Sierra Leone and I now know much more about the war in the region than I did initially. To me that means that the book fulfilled it's purpose. Read it

Please visit Ismael Beah's website alongwaygone.com.

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