This sure does take me back -- in 1951 I was twenty years old, sitting in University of Chicago's Mandel Hall, spellbound by John Jacob Niles holding forth before a worshipful audience, and interejecting over and over again "A ballad is a song that tells a story."

The ballad was the perfect vehicle for John Jacob Niles's performance art.. Ballads are, simply, stories told in song -- and Niles ws a consummate story teller. The dramatic content of the narrative was perfectly matched to Niles's dramatic stage delivery honed by years of operatic training. As Niles once commented, "To be a folk singer, a man must first be an actor, then maybe he might get to be a singer." ... In later years, Niles even began acting out the ballads with the aid of props. While singing "Hangman" he caressed his cello-shaped dulcimer like a lover and swung the dulcimer to and fro as though she were trapped in the hangman's noose. The murder ballad "Pretty Polly" was frequently told in the first person as though Niles was the lover who stabbed Polly. At the climactic moment, Niles would take a case knife out of his pocket and plunge it repeatedly into Polly's imaginary breast until the listener could practically see "her heart's blood flow."

-- Ron Pen, from the introduction to The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles

Here's a YouTube clip of Niles singing "Go 'Way From My Window" taken from the documentary No Direction Home.