THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK

What a great thread. When I was a tot, folk music was the choice on our radio and record player.

Been listening to a lot of Civil War songs lately.
This is such a sad tune sung with total despair by a great great singer.

Chris Stapleton

One wore blue, and one wore grey
As they marched along the way
A fife and drum began to play
All on a beautiful morning


One was gentle, and one was kind
One came home, one stayed behind
A cannonball, don't pay no mind
All on a beautiful morning


Cannonball, don't pay no mind
Though you're gentle, or you're kind
It don't think of the folks behind
All on a beautiful morning


Two girls waiting by the railroad track
For their darlings to come back
One wore blue, and one wore black
All on a beautiful morning

Been busy gardening all day today, in the glorious sunshine.

I therefore had no time to browse, but will catch up tomorrow.

In the meantime, I shall leave a youtube link for people to naybe watch when they have the time to do so.
Two or three BBC4 (TV) Documentaries on the history of American Folk and Country.

I only hope that the vids work on the other side of the pond...,,

Youtube page in question....

Folk...
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF35FEE30AD2A6944


Country....
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3H6z037pboHWRpmB5SSRvOyE4qHdG2nC

The first one works over here, your Lordyship (in Canadia, at least). The second one does not, it is blocked in this country. I will check out the first documentary as time permits. Thank you.

Glad to see you here, Pan. My sister was a "folkie," in the early 60s, but i was still into Cuban and Latin music, and was getting into R & B and Rockabilly then. I've picked up the folk music since then.

In honor of his Lordyship, i include this tune. Written by an Englishman in 1892, it was popular on this side of the pond, too. I learned it from my grandmother when i was a small boy. It is of interest also because it appears in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey--as Dave is disabling the Hal9000 computer, the computer regresses through it's programming "childhood," and sings a verse of the song. First, the happy version:



Now, the cold, hard light of day:

Joseph Hagglund, also known as Joe Hillstrom, or Joe Hill, was a Swedish immigrant, itinerant laborer, song writer and labor activist at the beginning of the 20th century. His song "The Preacher and the Slave" is the origin of the expression "pie in the sky." In 1914, he was indicted for murder, tried and convicted, and executed in 1915. Inferential evidence has come to light since that time to the effect that his story of how he had suffered a gunshot wound was true, and that he kept silent so as not to implicate the man who shot him.

He was a member of the "Wobblies," the International Workers of the World, treated with all the rage and contempt later heaped on communists, before communists existed. Hill became a martyr to them, even though his involvement in the "grocery store" murders had nothing to do with labor organizing. A man named Alfred Hayes wrote a poem about him in 1930, and at a summer camp for labor organizers in 1936, another man named Robinson wrote a tune and set it to music in under and hour. Passion often has little to do with truth.

Here, the great folk singer Joan Baez sings Hayes's song at Woodstock in 1969:

"John Henry" is a negro "hammer song," a work song to set the tempo for manual laborers. It's the story of a "steel drivin' man," a large physically powerful man who would drive a steel drill into a rock face, so that "blasters" could set a charge and take down the rock face. In the song, John Henry races a steam drill and wins, but then dies of the strain to his heart. So many artists have recorded it--here, Harry Belafonte sings it for us.

"Sixteen Tons" is a song about coal miners, inspired by the miners of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Miners were often lodged in ramshackle shanty towns owned by the coal companies, and were only able to buy clothing and provender from the company-owned stores. Merle Travis wrote and recorded it in 1946, but it became a signature tune for Tennessee Ernie Ford.

John Prine wrote "Paradise" for his father in 1971. It's about the devastation of coal mining by strip mining in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. (Augustus Muhlenberg was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives.)

Oops . . . Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives.

and the thumb band has been happy again

I hope you're singing as you thumb

I'm moving onto another classic American folk music style

zydeco!

wikipedia offers

feels like it could slid into becoming one of my Canajun favs





you can feel a bit of a similarity in the origins

which makes sense

The Acadians .... Cajuns ...

From 1961, here's one of my Zydeco favorites:

This early Simon and Garfunkel song is reminiscent of the various "Joe Hill" ballads, both in the musical form, as well as the dream narrative form.

Here's the Phil Ochs version of "Joe Hill." It runs rather long, almost ten minutes. Note that once again, it entails an assumption that Joe Hill was murdered by a capitalist conspiracy. The right are not the only ones fond of conspiracy theories.

Doug Kershaw. Great Cajun fiddler...guaranteeeeeeeee.