I borrowed Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer on the strength of Chad’s comments in his book log. They are, indeed, just nice stories, in the best sense of the phrase. Chad does a good job of giving the flavor of the collection, so I’ll just add a couple of comments here:
First, when John says, “What’s long time ago left off happening outside still goes on here,” he’s not kidding. The stories are set around the 1950s, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re really set anywhere from frontier days to O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Every time there’s a reference to the Korean War, for instance, it’s incredibly jarring. Second, the songs really need music to go with them—though this can be dangerous, because at least one of the songs scans, to my inexpert eye, to “Clementine,” which is a dreadful, ear-wormy song. Third, when I finished reading the collection, I had the feeling that there was a disproportionate number of evil vamp women; there actually wasn’t, it was just that they were clustered toward the end (along with a really stupid slasher-flick stunt).
Anyway, I quite enjoyed this; the narrative voice alone made it worth reading, though I do foresee myself saying “Shoo” a lot for the next few days . . .