Songs That Tell Stories

I am guilty of that too. Never cared for his vibrato.

I heard a terrific medley today by a young jazz singer named Rene Marie. She put together Dixie and Strange Fruit. Unfortunately, her arrangement is not available on youtube. I suggest listening to these two to get the idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIbI7DJztU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ky_w8NS_Q

I chose the fiddler because his version of Dixie was so much less military and India Arie because the arrangement she uses in rather jazzy as is Rene Marie's and her pitch is closer to Rene's.

I think I get the idea. She is very good.

Love that one by Johnny Horton, edgar.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnS9M03F-fA

Joan's hit record of The Night They Drove Old Dixie down created some controversy. She was accused of politicising the song by changing The Band's words from "mud below my feet" to "blood below my feet." Personally, I think it works well both versions.

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

This is the dying Johnny Cash covering Ian Tyson's brilliant composition (Dave Palmatier of WUMB calls it one of the greatest contemporary folk songs and he's right), "Four Strong Winds."

It could have been posted on covers that are better than the originals thread. Tyson's original recording is great but I always preferred the Chad Mitchell Trio version. When I heard Johnny Cash this morning, I was awed. This is from a very late recording and he is clearly dying. He talk-sings which gives the song greater weight.

I am not a fan of love songs. Most of them want to make tell the writer to get a life but this and Dylan's "Lay, Lady, Lay" are my favorites because the narrator of each knows who he is and recognizes the reality of his situation.

agreed

I enjoy Four Strong Winds by several artists. I first heard it from Harry Belafonte on the album Love is a Gentle Thing, somewhere around 1960. I could name others, but I do agree that Johnny Cash does it justice.

I'll bet you're partial to this guy, edgar

Bobby Bare is the next guy I thought of after Belafonte. I love his records, including that one.

man, he could sing.

Do you recall his first hit, All American Boy? How they put the wrong name on the record label? But I liked him more when he did Detroit City, Four Strong Winds and the like.

Ah, dear Hank. Loved that song, edgar.

Another one.


THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

by: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

HIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main, --
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed, --
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: --

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzr3zJol4&feature=related

Looks as if the little dude would sink to the bottom.

The story this song tells is not pretty but it is true. I wouldn't have added this to the thread if I hadn't watched The Magdalene Sisters, another telling of the stories of these horrible warehouses where young women, pregnant out of wedlock or simply so attractive that men could not stop looking at them, were exiled by their families.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubJ011RYy-I