Free Folk Music Downloads - Ballad of America

Free Folk Music

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traditional American folk song MP3s!

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3 free MP3s of beloved American folk songs as recorded by Matthew Sabatella and the Rambling String Band, one song from each of the Ballad of America albums
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About the Free Songs

The Lovely Ohio
	from Ballad of America Volume 1: Over a Wide and Fruitful Land
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Revolution ended and Great Britain legally recognized the independent existence of the United States of America. Britain ceded claims not only on the thirteen colonies, but also on the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Settlers poured into the Ohio River valley. A ballad is a particular type of secular song that was beloved in the British Isles long before the first settlers set sail for the New World. Generally, ballads tell a story or recount events that might include romance, tragedy, violence, or acts of heroism. In the eighteenth century, ballads that concerned themselves with the lives of common people and began with the words "come all ye…" had become very popular in Great Britain. In America, this type of ballad became the basis for many new songs, including The Lovely Ohio. The song optimistically celebrates life on the river at the end of the eighteenth century.

Wabash Cannonball
	from Ballad of America Volume 2: America Singing
The Lake Erie, Wabash, and St. Louis Railroad Company was formed in 1852. There was, however, no train named the “Cannonball” when this song was first sung late in the 19th century. The anonymous hobos who made the song up may have been paying homage to a specific train, or to a “mythical train that runs everywhere,” as suggested by George Milburn in The Hobo’s Hornbook.

Lincoln and Liberty
	from Ballad of America Volume 3: Songs in the Life of Abraham Lincoln
At the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln won his party's nomination for president of the United States. In 19 th century America, hardly a presidential candidate won an election without having his name linked to liberty in a song. Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., of New Hampshire's famous Hutchinson Family Singers, wrote the lyrics to Lincoln and Liberty and set them to the tune of Rosin the Bow , an Irish melody that is one of the most parodied in folk music. The Hutchinson Family Singers traveled the country singing anti-slavery and pro-Union songs, frequently at Lincoln's campaign appearances, and later, in the White House. Lincoln and Liberty became Lincoln's official campaign song in 1860 and was published in the book The Hutchinson's Republican Songster , which was used at rallies everywhere. On November, 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States. He bid farewell to friends and supporters in Springfield on February 11, 1861 and boarded a train bound for Washington. By the time he took office on March 4, 1861, his publicly stated belief that slavery was "a moral, a social, and a political wrong" prompted the lower South to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America in an effort to protect their "peculiar institution." When Confederate forces attacked a United States military installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, the Civil War had begun.