Songs That Tell Stories

Here's another from Fred, more in the Woody Guthrie mode, a sad song of a farmer who died in his tractor trying to make a living. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsdWAVbroB0&feature=share

how about another poem that tells a story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0rVNQw1DQM&feature=related

It always amazes and gratifies me when a good poem can be set to music like that.

there is not that much difference between a poem and a song

You're right POM, lyric poetry was meant to be sung.

Another poem that tells a story.

By William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42CYiUtGafQ

There are apparently a fair number of Blake poems set to music.

The Shortest Story Lyrics
by Harry Chapin

One of the greatest of American songs that isn't regularly included in the American songbook performance is Si Kahn's Aragon Mill here sung by the late Hazel Dickes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN1GZpTLoWw&list=AL94UKMTqg-9BBlywA6jEtywVboEEcojwy&index=10

I really like that song as well as the artist. Great addition.

You're right, Texas. All are good.

Today is this marvelous poet's birthday, so how about a song that does a biography and her poems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjeKrzrjCuc

The visuals are good, letty. The song sounds nice, although I could not follow the lyrics.

Perhaps you can follow these, edgar. You've already admitted to liking it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q6tl8d8luM&feature=fvwp&NR=1

In 1968, a version of Dover Beach was released by a group that took their names from a Norman Mailer novel. I have had the record all these years. It is beautiful.

Another book that tells stories. First, a summary

This 1955 period piece recreates the notorious events surrounding the murder of architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw. This famous homicide, later immortalized in E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, transpired on the Winter Garden roof in full view of countless theater patrons. Joan Collins stars as Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, a single showgirl who grows enamored with the married White (Ray Milland). He takes her to his posh Manhattan loft and enjoys a dalliance with her that includes pushing her on the red velvet swing of the title. Later, Evelyn gets courted by Harry Thaw (Farley Granger, who - after whisking her off to Europe and wheedling her into marriage - suddenly turns out to be a complete nutcase, driven around the bend by violent jealousy and rage. He grows incensed at the memory of her affair with White, and decides to to take drastic action by shooting the architect; in the wake of the murder, Thaw builds a fantastic legal defense that permanently alters his fate. Few of the facts in this tawdry soaper are true to history, because, as Bosley Crowther famously pointed out in his Times review, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw was still alive at the time of this production and the filmmakers probably feared a libel suit.

Now, the movie trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARhXJas59YQ

I didn't know about that movie. It has a good cast.

I saw The Fugs in Ann Arbor with the LOML.

I saw them in NYC, in 1968.