Gulf Watchers Block Party: Ballads

Well, let's see ... it's Friday evening, so, it's time for the Block Party.
Gulf Watchers have an AUV under the surface  -- it's this one -- and an AUV afloat today, which is here.

My orders are to provide us with something lighthearted -- an excuse to take a break. Since March Madness and politics don't seem to fit the bill, let's talk about ballads.

Some ballads are musical. One of my favorite singers is Marty Robbins. His most famous song is a ballad -- El Paso.

But that's really just the opening chapter in the story -- there's a prequel, called Feleena. There's a sequel, too, called El Paso City. He sang some other ballads -- The Hanging Tree, and Ballad of the Alamo, and Twentieth Century Drifter among them. Other singers are famous for ballads, too, from Woody Guthrie to Waylon Jennings, just to mention a couple.

Others arrive in the form of films. One such is kind of obscure, a 1965 family comedy with Patty Duke called "Billie." Another, which is not so much entertaining as instructive, is "Matewan." There are other films which serve as memorial ballads -- and they range from "Johnny Got His Gun" to the eponymous "Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez." A film need not be a documentary to be a ballad; but many documentary films take the form of ballads.

Still others come as poetry alone. The most memorable of these, for me, is The Ballad of William Sycamore. But the argument can be made that The Red Badge of Courage is a ballad, and its author might be one of the United States' best balladeers.

Whose ballads -- and which balladeers, from Don Williams to Don Henley -- do you like best?