Booth Shot Lincoln

Bascom Lamar Lunsford of Buncombe County, North Carolina, learned his version from Martin and both sang the song, as “Booth Killed Lincoln,” and played the same tune on the fiddle. On a 1949 Library of Congress recording he introduced the seven-verse ballad as “Booth” or “Booth Killed Lincoln,” said he had heard his father hum it and sing a few stanzas when he was six to ten years old, and then played a fiddle version similar to Martin’s but less complex. Martin was recorded several times in the 1940s by Library of Congress field workers, including Alan Lomax in 1942, and most modern versions are based on those recordings; he gave the title as “Booth” or “John Wilkes Booth.” Scott DeLancey has argued that the melody is a breakdown setting of the Irish jig “The Market Town.”

Lunsford’s 1949 recordings, collected by Duncan Emrich, were issued on the Library of Congress album Songs and Ballads of American History and of the Assassination of Presidents (AAFS L29), later on Rounder. Bruce Greene played it on fiddle for Jim Taylor’s The Civil War Collection (PearlMae, 1996), having learned it from Martin and Lunsford.