Josh Turknett's latest banjo tune of the week is Pretty Polly and in his blog post he refers to research by the London based journalist Paul Slade into the facts (if any) behind the ballad. Paul's website is http://www.planetslade.com/index.html . If you go there, you will see that Paul has done research on several murder ballads. I just finished a fascinating reading of his work on Pretty Polly and have started with Tom Dooley.
Paul's style is light but not frivolous, so it is easy reading. His research appears to have been exhaustive - so much so that his articles are too long for a quick read. But they are really interesting.
He also has a bunch of articles on various other subjects which I intend to explore.
I suspect there are other nuts like me here who enjoy knowing the story behind some of the tunes we play, so I thought I would pass this along with my recommendation.
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