I think "Johnny B. Goode" is a perfect song to consider. It is, after all, one of the most widely known and recorded songs of our time. And, contrary to SRS assertion, it has been published in many different versions, because each new recording constitutes a publication, and secondly because both the music and the text have been printed and reprinted, both formally and informally, hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Probably more important, for the purposes of this thread, it is a narrative ballad. It tells the story of "Johnny B. Goode" very much in the way "traditional" ballads tell stories. It describes him in the terms that ballads describe their heroes, it gives examples of his virtue, his humble origins, his character, and his achievements.

Even though the boilerplate for rock and roll describes it as a mixture of black and white musical traditions, it never seems to register with people that it is directly linked to the broadside ballad tradition. What was "Stagger Lee"? It was a murder ballad.