Booth Shot Lincoln

The title recalls John Wilkes Booth's shooting of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. Most players learn it from Marcus Martin of Buncombe County, North Carolina, whom Library of Congress collectors, Alan Lomax among them, recorded several times in the 1940s. Martin called it "Booth" or "John Wilkes Booth," and his version is slightly crooked.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford learned it from Martin and recorded it for the Library of Congress in 1949, first singing a ballad about the shooting and then fiddling the tune. He said he had heard his father sing parts of the song when he was a boy. Scott DeLancey hears the Irish jig "The Market Town" in the melody.