Folk Song Noir

You Are My Sunshine was composed in the 1930s, but its style and theme are kin to the long line of traditional folk songs about false love, treacherous women, often violent crimes of passion, sadism, and ultimately death. I call the entire genre folk song noir.

Think of the corrosive, fatalistic lyrics and stories of some of our most beloved folk songs. In Plaisir d'Amour, the hapless narrator cries:

Your love for me seemed oh so perfect and true,
Yet here I am in my sadness, rememb'ring you.
A fool was I to think your love would remain,
Oh yes, your love had its pleasure, but more of pain.

The rich, broad melody of Shenandoah tells of a settler's undying love for an Indian chief's daughter:

Oh Shenandoah, she's bound to leave you,
Away, you rolling river,
Oh Shenandoah, I'll not deceive you,
Away, I'm bound away,
'Cross the wide Missouri.

Other popular folk songs tell of crimes of the heart for actual or perceived wrongs. In Banks of the Ohio, the narrator loves his woman with such an intensity that he murders her:

I held a knife against her breast,
And gently in my arms she pressed,
She cried: Oh please don't murder me,
I'm unprepared for eternity.

I took her by her lily white hand,
And placed her gently on the sand,
And when the tide was wide and deep,
I pitched her in to rest in sleep.

Had she but said she will be mine,
All would be well, all would be fine,
And now she's there, 'way down below,
Down by the banks of the Ohio.

Finally, consider the poisonous view of love in the hugely popular Kentucky mountain song On Top of Old Smoky:

A-courtin's a pleasure,
A-flirtin's a grief,
A false-hearted lover
Is worse than a thief.

For a thief, he will rob you,
And take what you have,
But a false-hearted lover
Sends you to your grave!