Born of the British ballad, its American offspring was the blank canvas for all type of tale, the more calamitous or scandalous, the better. Jesse James and Billy the Kid, train wrecks and hurricanes, the Titanic and Tom Dooley, fatal lovers quarrels and foiling the devil, all and more were normal fare, served up in a song. Classic American Ballads is 25 tracks of time-worn tragedy drawn from the deep fount of the Smithsonian Folkways archives. 74 minutes, 40-page booklet with extensive notes and photos. Track List: Disc: 1 1. Banks of the Ohio - Doc Watson and Bill Monroe 2. Blue Mountain Lake - Pete Seeger 3. Claude Allen - Hobart Smith 4. Cole Younger - Dock Boggs 5. Cowboys Lament (Streets of Laredo) - Buck Ramsey 6. Boll Weevil - Sam Hinton 7. Duncan and Brady - Lead Belly 8. Floyd Collins - Paul Clayton 9. Frankie and Johnny - Rolf Cahn and Eric Von Schmidt 10. John Henry - John Jackson 11. Jesse James - Sis Cunningham, Mike Millins, and Wes Houston 12. Billy the Kid - Woody Guthrie 13. The Death of the Lawson Family - Glen Neaves 14. Naomi Wise - Doug Wallin 15. Pearl Bryan - Bruce Buckley 16. Sam Bass - Hermes Nye 17. Springfield Mountain - Bascom Lamar Lunsford 18. Tom Dooley - Glen Neaves, Roscoe Russell, Ivor Melton, Warren Brown, and Ted Lundy 19. Tying a Knot in the Devils Tail - Cisco Houston 20. Young Charlotte - Pete Seeger 21. Wasnt That a Mighty Storm? - the Tex-I-An Boys 22. Zebra Dun - Joan OBryant 23. The Titanic - Pink Anderson 24. The Louisville Burglar - the Iron Mountain String Band 25. The F.F.V. (Engine 143) - Annie Watson