...Humming A Diff'rent Tune

New Song History: "I Once Loved A Lass..." - The Story Of The ”False Bride” And Her Forsaken Lover

2011-08-13T15:03:00.001+02:00

There is a new song history available on my website Just Another Tune:

"I Once Loved A Lass..." - The Story Of The ”False Bride” And Her Forsaken Lover

This is about a very old family of songs. The earliest examples - two broadsides and a tune - are from the 17th century. Today "I Loved A Lass" - first recorded by Ewan MacColl in 1965 (here at YouTube) - is quite popular among Folk singers. The song was also known under titles like "The Week Before Easter", "The False Hearted Lover", "The False Nymph", "Love Is The Cause of My Mourning" etc.

"Eileen Aroon" & "Robin Adair"

2011-03-24T10:10:00.000+01:00

Now available on my website:

"Eileen Aroon" & "Robin Adair" -
A Chronological List: 1729 - ca. 1900

100 Years Ago: "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was published

2011-03-18T07:30:00.003+01:00

Exactly a hundred years ago today one of the most successful and influential songs of the 20th century was registered for copyright (Kimball/Emmet, p. 30, see the sheet music at the Levy Collection):

"Alexander's Ragtime Band; words and music by Irving Berlin. Registered in the name of Ted Snyder Co., under E 252990 following publication March 18, 1911" (quoted from Hamm, p. 112)

[...]
Come on a-long, come on a-long,
Let me take you by the hand
Up to the man, up to the man,
Who's the leader of the band,
And if you care to hear the Swanee River played in ragtime
Come on and hear, come on and hear,
Alexander's Rag-Time Band.

The song was introduced on stage by Emma Carus a month later on April 17 in Chicago (Hamm, p. 132) and it was first recorded by Collins & Harlan on June 7 for Columbia. I found this video on YouTube:

Since then then the song has been performed and recorded by countless artists. Among my favourite versions are those by Bessie Smith (1927, available at the Internet Archive) and the Boswell Sisters (1935, also available at The Internet Archive).

Two of the more unusual recordings:

mp3: Fred van Eps Banjo Orchestra (1912 c/o The Internet Archive)
mp3: Clayton McMichen's Georgia Wildcats (a Country-version from the 30s, c/o The Internet Archive)

Literature

Charles Hamm, Irving Berlin, Songs From The Melting Pot: The Formative Years 1907 - 1914, New York & Oxford 1997 (p. 102 - 136: the best scholarly piece on this song so far)
Robert Kimball & Linda Emmet (ed.), The Complete Lyrics Of Irving Berlin, New York 2000
See also Mark Steyn's fine piece, at the moment available at SteynOnline

A while ago I have written a little bit about Irving Berlin's early songs for my website:

Irving Berlin And The "Rhythmic Ballad" (on: JustAnontherTune.com)

Old Songbooks

2011-03-01T11:41:00.002+01:00

In the last decade of the 19th century a couple of songbooks were published for nostalgic readers. Most important and influential surely was Helen Johnson's Our Familiar Songs. Five years later Henry Reddall's Songs That Never Die followed. These collections show nicely which songs had survived until the end of the century. Both books include interesting comments on these songs' history. Some of these introductory remarks should be read with considerable caution because they are based on apocryphal stories popular back then, as for example the one about "Robin Adair" . Others are still helpful.

Helen Kendrick Johnson, Our Familiar Songs And Those Who Made Them, New York 1889 (online at: The Internet Archive)
Henry F. Reddall & Dudley Buck, Songs That Never Die. Being A Collection Of The Most Famous Words And Melodies, New York, ca. 1894 (available at The Internet Archive)

Some newspapers had special sections dedicated to old songs. One was the Family Herald And Weekly Star in Montreal. In 1898 they published a collection of songs presented there in the years 1895-98, often with music and interesting introductory remarks:

Old Favourites, Reprinted From The Family Herald And Weekly Star, Montreal 1898 (The Internet Archive)

Also worth reading are S. J. Adair Fitzgerald's Stories Of Famous Songs. This had started as a series in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper (London) in 1894 but then was published as a book in 1898 and again in 1901. A second volume was added in 1910. He wrote about the history of songs like "Home, Sweet Home", "Robin Adair", "Auld Lang Syne" and many more;

S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald, Stories Of Famous Songs, 2 Vols, London & Philadelphia 1901 & 1910 (available at The Internet Archive: Vol. 1 & Vol. 2)

A decade later two songbooks were published that are also of interest:

Charles Villiers Stanford (ed.), The National Song Book. A Complete Collection Of The Folk-Songs, Carols, And Rounds Suggested By The Board Of Education, London & New York c.1806 (The Internet Archive)
Dolores M. Bacon (ed.), Songs Every Child Should Know. A Selection Of The Best Songs Of All Nations For Young People, New York 1907 (The Internet Archive)

These were directed at teachers and children and also offer good selections of old songs.

1918: The Most Popular Songs Of The Year

2011-02-13T10:21:00.006+01:00

In 1918 the war in Europe was still raging and now American troops were now fighting there. George Cohan's "Over There" had been the last year's most popular song - recorded for example by Enrico Caruso (mp3) and Nora Bayes (mp3) - and was still selling very well. Interestingly five of the six most popular songs in 1918 were not explicitly referring to the war but nonetheless became very popular among the soldiers. But of course there were many others about war-related topics, like "If He Can Fight ike He Can Love, Good Night Germany", "Keep Your Head Down, Fritzie Boy", "My Belgian Rose", "Somewhere In France Is The Lily", "When The Yankee Doodle Learns To Parlez-Vous Francais" or the very sad "Hello Central, Give Me No Man's Land" (Lewis/Young/Schwarz; sheet music). The latter was introduced by Al Jolson in the show Sinbad. He also recorded this song (mp3) as did Henry Burr (mp3 at FirstWorldWar.Com)

When the gray shadows creep
And the world is asleep,
In the still of the night
Baby creeps down a flight.
First she looks all around
Without making a sound;
The baby toddles up to the telephone
And whispers in a baby tone:

"Hello, Central! Give me No Man's Land,
My daddy's there, my mamma told me;
She tip-toed off to bed
After my prayers were said;
Don't ring when you get the number,
Or you'll disturb mamma's slumber.

I'm afraid to stand here at the 'phone
'Cause I'm alone.
So won't you hurry;
I want to know why mamma starts to weep
When I say, 'Now I lay me down to sleep';
Hello, Central! Give me No Man's Land."

Also Irving Berlin was busy writing songs about the war. "The Devil Has Bought Up All The Coal" gave an interesting explanation for the shortage of coal:

[1st REFRAIN:]
The devil has bought up all the coal
He's going to save it I swear
Until the Kaiser gets there
He needs to make it warm for Mister William
The devil has spent his little roll For all the coal from ev'rywhere
He's piling it up by the ton
And, oh, what he'll do to that Hun
There'll be a hot time in Hades
When the Kaiser gets there

"They Are All Out Of Step But Jim" (1918) was a spoof on parents boasting about the soldier son, recorded f. ex. by Van & Schenck (mp3)

Jimmy's mother went to see her son
Marching along on parade
In his uniform and with his gun
What a lovely picture he made
She came home that ev'ning
Filled up with delight
And to all the neighbors
She would yell with all her might

In May he was drafted into the army but he was quickly back to songwriting and created "Yip Yip Yaphank", a rousing soldiers' show. "How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning" became the most popular song from this show. Arthur Field's recording (mp3) was very successful and Eddie Cantor sang it too (see his version at FirstWorldWar.Com)

[Chorus]:
"Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning,
Oh! how I'd love to remain in bed;
For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call;
You've got to get up, you've got to get up
You've got to get up this morning!
Some day I'm going to murder the bugler,
Some day they're going to find him dead;
I'll amputate his reveille, and step upon it heavily,
And spend the rest of my life in bed."

Also the era of Blues and Jazz was coming closer and some hits of that year gave a foretaste of the new style: "After You've Gone" and "Everybody Gone Crazy", both by Creamer & Layton, "Darktown Strutters Ball" (Shelton Brooks) and W. C. Handy's "Beale Streat Blues". Even the Original Dixieland Jazz Band's "Tiger Rag" sold well.

1. Smiles (Callahan/Roberts) [sheet music]

YouTube: Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra, vocal chorus Harry MacDonough
mp3: Jaudas Society Orchestra
mp3: Albert Campbell & Henry Burr

YouTube: Lambert Murphy

[Refrain:]
There are smiles that make us happy,
There are smiles that make us blue,
There are smiles that steal away the tear-drops,
As the sunbeams steal away the dew,
There are smiles that have a tender meaning
That the eyes of love alone may see,
And the smiles that fill my life with sunshine
Are the smiles that you give to me.

According to Thomas Hischak (p. 327) the "songwriters couldn't get any publishing house interested in the number, so they published it themselves, and it sold over 2 milion copies of sheet music within six months". For more about this song see Malcolm Lowry @ The 19th Hole.

2. K-K-K-Katy (Geoffrey O'Hara) [sheet music]

YouTube: Billy Murray

This was - according to the sheet music - "The Sensational Stammering Song Success Sung by the Soldiers and Sailors". Geoffrey O'Hara was from Canada and more about him and his song can be found on the website of Library and Archives Canada.

3. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (McCarthy/Carroll) [sheet music]

mp3: Harry Fox

mp3 & YouTube: Charles Harrison

Another great classic that was later recorded countless times (see Wikipedia). The melody was adapted from Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu (1834).

At the end of the rainbow there's happiness
and to find it how often I've tried
But my life is a race, just a wild goose chase
And my dreams have all been denied!

Why have I always been a failure?
What can the reason be?
I wonder if the world's to blame?
I wonder if it could be me?

I'm always chasing rainbows
watching clouds drifting by!
My schemes are just like all of my dreams
ending in the sky!

Some fellows look and find the sunshine
I always look and find the rain!
Some fellows make a winning sometime
I never even make a gain!

4. I'm Sorry I Made You Cry (Clesi) [Sheet music]

mp3: Henry Burr
mp3: Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band

First published in 1916 but it took two years until it became a hit. It seems it was first written for a movie because a sheet music cover from 1916 says "Posed by June Elvidge & John Bowers - Used by Permission of World Film corporation". This is another song that remained popular for a long time, later recordings were for example by Eddie Condon & His Footwarmers (1928, YouTube), Fats Waller, Frank Sinatra, Jack Teagarden and Connie Francis. I couldn't find any information about the songwriter, N. J. Clesi, but it seems this was his only hit.

5. Just A Baby's Prayer At Twilight (Lewis/Young/Jerome) [sheet music]

YouTube: Henry Burr

[...]
Just a baby's prayer at twilight
When lights are low
Poor baby's years
are filled with tears

There's a mother there at twilight
Who's proud to know
Her precious little tot
Is Dad's forget-me-not

After saying "Goodnight, Mama"
She climbs up stairs
Quite unawares
And says her prayers

"Oh! kindly tell my daddy
That he must take care"
That's a baby's prayer at twilight
For her daddy, "over there"
[...]

6. Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody (Lewis/Young/Schwarz) [sheet music]

mp3 & YouTube: Al Jolson

mp3: Vernon Dalhart

This song - another classic of the "Mammy"-genre so popular back then - was also introduced by Al Jolson in the show Sinbad who kept it in his epoertoire for the rest of his career. In 1961 it was even recorded by Aretha Franklin.

[Refrain:]
Rock-a-bye your baby to a Dixie melody,
When you croon, croon a little tune from the heart of Dixie
Just place that cradle, mammy mine,
On that Mason-Dixon Line
And swing it from Virginia to Tennessee
With all the love that's in ya.

"Weep No More, My Lady" - sing that song again, for me,
Sing "Old Black Joe" just as though you had me on your knee.
A million baby kisses, I'll deliver
If you will only sing that "Swanee River",
Rock-a-bye your rock-a-bye baby to a Dixie melody

Other Hits

- After You've Gone (Craemer/Layton) [sheet music]

mp3: Marion Harris

YouTube: Sophie Tucker with Miff Mole & His Molers (recorded in 1927)

- Beale Street Blues (W. C. Handy) [sheet music]

YouTube: Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band (recorded in 1917)
YouTube: Marion Harris (recorded in 1921)

- Everybody (Gone) Crazy 'Bout The Doggone Blues (Craemer/Layton) [sheet music]

mp3: Marion Harris

- Tiger Rag (LaRocca et al.)

mp3: Original Dixieland Jazz Band

Literature & Sources

Based again on the data found in: Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs Of The Twentieth Century. Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900 - 1949, St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000
All mp3s c/o The Internet Archive - 78 RPM & Cylinder Collection (and please note that their server sometimes seems to be a little slow) Many thanks to all the uploaders both at the Internet Archive & YouTube
Images of sheet music cover from Kirk Collection (Indiana State University), a great resource for old sheet music
Thomas S. Hischak, The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, Westport, CT & London 2002
Please check out FirstWorldWar.Com with a great collection of recordings from that era.

All parts of this series:

A New Song History: "Brennan On The Moor"

2011-02-10T14:51:00.000+01:00

I have just posted a new song history on my website:

Some Notes About The History Of “Brennan On The Moor”

The Clancy Brothers used to sing this song, some versions from the early 60s are available at YouTube (1962 & 1963, both from TV shows) but the first one to record it was Burl Ives in 1949 on his LP Wayfaring Stranger (Stinson SLP-1).

Brennan was an outlaw in Ireland in the early years of the 19th century. It’s often claimed that he was executed in 1804 but it’s more likely that this happened in 1812. Otherwise not much is known about him but I was surprised to find some magazine articles about a highwayman named Brennan from 1809 and 1812. Here is one from the The Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809 (Vol. 2/2, 1811, p. 44):

The modern versions of “Brennan On The Moor” are all derived from a long ballad that was printed regularly in Ireland and England since the 1840s and in North America since the 1860s. I found this undated broadside in An Album Of Street Literature, available at The Internet Archive (p. 294):

Bob Dylan was a great admirer of the Clancy Brothers. His “Ramblin’ Gamblin Willie” (1962) is based on their version of “Brennan On The Moor”. Here is a live performance of Dylan’s song by the Clancys themselves with Robby O’Connell in 1996 as well as one by Liam Clancy in 2005 at a Dylan Tribute show.

New Song Histories: "Lady Franklin's Lament" & "The Parting Glass"

2010-11-23T17:10:00.004+01:00

Two new song histories are now available on my website:

"The Water Is Wide" - The History Of A "Folk Song"

2010-11-01T12:20:00.000+01:00

The "Water is Wide" is among of the best and the most popular songs of the Folk Revival era. It has been recorded by countless artists and is usually regarded as an "old Folk song" But in fact it has a complicated, very interesting and surprising history. I have now tried to reconstruct the story behind this song. The text is a little bit too long for this blog and I've posted it on my website:

"The Water Is Wide" - The History Of A "Folk Song"

The Adventurous Story Of Poor "Mary Of The Wild Moor"

2010-11-01T11:58:00.004+01:00

More than three years ago I made some extensive research into the history of "Mary Of The Wild Moor". I heard this song first from Bob Dylan who performed it at some of his shows in 1980/81. It's one the many 19th century popular songs that are today regarded as "Folk songs". I have revised the text and added some more information. It's now available on my new website:

The Adventurous Story of Poor "Mary Of The Wild Moor"

The very first released recording of this song was by the Blue Sky Boys (Atlanta 1940) from North Carolina, a very popular and influential duo (at the moment available at YouTube):

'Twas on one cold wint'ry night,
And the wind blew across the wild moor,
When poor Mary came wandering home with her child.
'Till she came to her own father's door.
"Oh Father, dear father" she cried,
"Come down and open the door,
Or the child in my arms it will perish and die,
By the winds that blows across the wild moor.

Oh why did I leave this fair spot,
Where once I was happy and free,
I'm now doomed to roam without friends or a home,
And no one to take pity on me."
But her father was deaf to her cries,
Not a sound of her voice did he hear,
So the watch dog did howl and the village bell tolled,
And the wind blew across the wild moor.

Oh how the old man must have felt,
When he came to the door in the morn,
And found Mary dead but the child still alive,
Closely pressed in its dead mother's arms;
In anguish he tore his gray hair,
While the tears down his cheeks they did pour;
When he saw how that night, she had perished and died
From the winds that blew across the wild moor.

The old man with grief pined away,
And the child to its mother went soon,
And no one, they say, has been there since this day,
And the cottage to ruin has gone;
But the villagers point out the spot,
Where the willow droops over the door,
Saying there Mary died, once a gay village bride,
From the winds that blew across the wild moor.

Some years ago JSP Records in Britain released a 5-Cd set of their early recordings 1936 - 1950 (JSP 7782). I'm usually not much into Country but the music on this collection is very enjoyable.

Credits:

Cover of sheet music for J. W. Turner, “Mary Of The Wild Moor”, New York 1882, Library of Congress, Music Division. Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music

On The Trail Of The "Buffalo Skinners"

2010-09-19T13:45:00.008+02:00

"The Buffalo Skinners" is one of the most popular American "Folk songs". It can be found in many song collections and it has been recorded and performed by quite a lot of Folk singers. I've heard it first from Bob Dylan when he played it at a show in Den Haag in the Netherlands in 1989.

This song is from the era of the so-called "great slaughter", the extermination of the buffaloes on the Southern plains in the 1870s:

When the frontier of the United States extended to the Great Plains, among the obstacles to be overcome were the Indians and the buffalo—the former for well-known reasons and the latter because they existed in such tremendous numbers as to make farming and ranching impossible and also because they represented the commissary of the warlike Indians (Handbook of Texas Online: Buffalo Hunting).

Selling buffalo hides was for a short time a very lucrative business and countless hunters set out to get a slice of that cake. "Buffalo Skinners" tells the adventurous story of a hunting party and their troubles. In the end the boss wants to deny his men their pay,so they kill him and leave his "bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo".

This song has a fascinating and very interesting history. Some of the most important Folklorists and popularizers of "Folk songs" were involved, for example John and Alan Lomax and Carl Sandburg. A lot has been written about this song but I tried to go back to the original sources. The story of the so-called "Folk songs" is also the story of their collectors and of those people from whom they have received the songs. Without them we wouldn't know anything.

"Buffalo Skinners" was first published by "Jack" Thorp in his Songs of the Cowboys (1908, as "Buffalo Range", p. 31-33). He only included a text but no melody:

Come all you buffalo hunters and listen to my song
You needn’t go uneasy, for it isn’t very long
It’s concerning some buffalo hunters who all agreed to go
And spent a summer working, among the buffalo

‘Twas in the spring of seventy three, that I came to Jacksborough
There I met Bailey Griego, who asked how I’d like to go
And spend a summer west of Pease River hunting
On the range of the buffalo

Now being out of employment to Griego I named the day
When I could join this outfit if suited with the pay
I agreed if he’d pay good wages nd transportation to [sic!],
To go and spend the summer among the buffalo.

Of course I’ll pay good wages and transportation to [sic!]
But if you should grow homesick and return to Jacksborough
Before the hunting is over I want you now to know
That I’ll not pay you back wages from the range of the Buffalo.

Through promises and flattery he enlisted quite a train
Some ten or twelve in number all able bodied men
Our journey it was pleasant on the road we had to go
Until we crossed Pease River among the buffalo.

‘Twas here our pleasures ended, our troubles had begun
The very first beast I tried to skin Oh how I cut my thumb
When skinning off those buffalo hides for our lives we’s little show
As the Indians tried to pick us off on the range of the buffalo.

Salt meat and buffalo hump to eat and hard old dour dough bread
Strong coffee and alkali water to drink add a raw-hide for bed
The way the mosquitos chewed on us you bet it wasn’t slow
Lord grant there’s no place on earth like the range of the buffalo.

When the summer at last ended old Griego began to say
My boys you’ve been extravagant, so I’m in debt to day
But among the buffalo hunters bankrupt law didn’t go
So we left old Griegos bones to bleach among the buffalo.

Now we’re back across Peace River and homeward we are bound
In that forsaken country may I never more be found
If you see anyone bound out there pray warn them not to go
To that forsaken country, the land of the buffalo.

N. Howard "Jack" Thorp (1867-1940) was originally from New York City but as a boy he used to spend the summers on a ranch in Nebraska. Later he moved to New Mexico to become a cowboy and he began learning their songs. In fact he soon was "a singing cowboy who carried his banjo-mandolin with him as he rode from cow camp to cow camp" (Logsdon 1995, p. 296). He started collecting songs in 1889. "His fifteen-hundred-mile horseback journey through New Mexico and Texas in 1889-90 was the first ballad-hunting adventure in the cowboy domain" (Austin & Alta Fife in Thorp 1966, p. 6). The first edition with 23 texts was privately published and only 1000 copies were printed. There was a second edition in 1921 with 100 songs but here for some reason "Buffalo Skinners" was missing.

Thorp's book was the very first collection of cowboy songs and he was a pioneer in that field. But his efforts were quickly overshadowed by John A. Lomax from Texas whose Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads was published in 1910 and became much more influential, in fact it turned out to be the first stepping-stone towards that massive empire of Folk song he and later his son Alan were to erect in the following decades.

Lomax - a professor for English at Texas A & M - had been interested in "frontier songs" for quite a long time. A couple of years ago he had even written a short essay called "Minstrelsy of the Mexican Border", the title of course a little tribute to Sir Walter Scott (Porterfield, p. 60). In 1906 he spent a year of graduate work at Harvard University. At this time Harvard was the center of folk ballad research. Francis J. Child (1825 - 1896) had been professor there and his successor George Lyman Kittredge as well as Barrett Wendell kept his legacy alive. Both Kittredge and Barrett encouraged and supported Lomax who regarded the cowboy songs as indigenous American Folklore, as worthy of research and publication as the British ballads canonized by Child in his massive English And Scottish Popular Ballads:

"Kittredge expressed immediate interest in what Lomax told him about cowboy songs and suggested ways that Harvard - or at least Wendell and Kittredge - might suport his efforts to increase his stock of material, which at that time apparently consisted of little more than the few verses he had published in 'Minstrelsy of the Mexican Border' eight years before, coupled with vague memories of songs he had heard growing up" (Porterfield, p. 115).

Lomax sent a circular to local newspapers and teachers and asked for songs. Most of what was included in Cowboy Songs was received from these kind of sources and there was not much real fieldwork. Some texts were even cribbed from Thorp's book (see Logsdon 1995, p. 300-302). Nonetheless he managed to publish 112 songs, among them many that would become classics of that genre, for example "Home On The Range", "Whopee-Ti-Yi-Yo, Git Along Little Dogies", "The Old Chisholm Trail", "Sweet Betsy From The Pike", "Jesse James", "The Days Of Forty-Nine". "In canonizing cowboy songs instead of ancient ballads, Lomax changed the face of the folk, replacing the sturdy British peasant with the mythical western cowboy" (Filene 2000, p. 32).

The "romanticization of the West" (Stanfield, p. 48) was a recent development, the "mythical cowboy" a new cultural icon. Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, popular dime novels, Theodore Roosevelt Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1896), Frederic Remington's paintings, Owen Wister's novel The Virginian (1902) and the very first Western movie The Great Train Robbery (1903) all had their share in the creation of this "mythic West" that is now such an important part of American popular culture. Lomax' collection provided the soundtrack and Teddy Roosevelt - to whom this book is dedicated - even wrote a sympathetic endorsement that was reprinted in every successive edition.

"The Buffalo Skinners" from Lomax' Cowboy Songs (p. 158-161, melody on p. 162/3) is slightly different from the version published by Thorp:

Come all you jolly fellows and listen to my song,
There are not many verses, it will not detain you long;
It's concerning some young fellows who did agree to go
And spent one summer pleasantly on the range of the buffalo.

'Twas in the town of Jacksboro, in the spring of seventy-three
A man by the name of Crego came stepping up to me,
Saying "How do you do, young fellow, and how would you like to go
And spend one summer pleasantly on the range of the buffalo?"

"It's me being out of employment", this to Crego I did say,
"This going out on the buffalo range depends upon the pay.
But if you will pay good wages, and transportation to and fro
I think, Sir, I will go with you to the range of the buffalo."

"Yes I will pay good wages, give transportation too
Provided you will go with me and stay the summer through;
But if you should grow homesick, come back to Jacksboro,
I won't pay transportation from the range of the buffalo."

It's now our outfit was complete, seven able-bodied men,
With navy six and needle gun, our troubles did begin;
Our way it was a pleasant one, the route we had to go
Until we crossed Pease River, on the range of the buffalo.

It's now we've crossed Pease River, our troubles have begun,
The first damned tail I went to rip, Christ! how I cut my thumb!
While skinning the damned old stinkers, our lives they had no show
For the Indians watched to pick us off while skinning the buffalo.

He fed us on such sorry chuck, I wished myself most dead
It was old jerked beef, croton coffee and sour bread.
Pease River's as salty as hell fire, the water I never could go
O God! I wished I had never come to the the range of the buffalo.

Our meat it was buffalo hump and iron wedge bread
And all we had to sleep on was a buffalo robe for a bed.
The fleas and gray-backs worked on us, O boys, it was not slow
I tell you there's no worse hell on earth than the the range of the buffalo.

Our hearts were cased with buffalo hocks, our souls were cased with steel,
And the hardships of that summer would nearly make us reel;
While skinning the damned old stinkers, our lives they had no show
For the Indians watched to pick us off on the hills of Mexico.

The season being near over, old Crego he did say
The crowd had been extravagant, was in debt to him that day;
We coaxed him and we begged him, and still it was no go,
So we left old Crego's bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo.

Oh, it's now we've crossed Pease River, and homeward we are bound,
No more in that hell-fired country shall ever we be found.
Go home to our wives and sweethearts, tell others not to go
For God's forsaken the buffalo range, and the damned old buffalo.

Unfortunately Lomax gave no contextual information. Exact scholarship á la Child and or other professional Folklorists was not his purpose and he insisted that "the volume is meant to be popular" (quoted in Stanfield, p. 47). Only in the enlarged edition published in 1938 (p. 335) he credited his source, J. E. McCauley from Seymour, Texas who had included a short note when he sent him the song:

"Song made by Buffalo Jack [...] I don't know the author or how it come to be wrote, or anything of that kind, but they must have been somebody of that name for a starter".

According to another story included in his Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (1947) he had heard this song from an old buffalo hunter from Abilene, Texas (quoted from Trager 2004, p. 636-38):

[He] went on to tell the story of a group of buffalo hunters that he had led from Jacksboro, Texas, to that region of Texas far beyond the Pease River. The hunt lasted for several months. The plains were dry and parched. The party drank alkali water, 'salty as hell-fire,' so thick it had to be chewed; fought sandstorms, flies, mosquitoes, bed-bugs and wolves. The Indians watched to pick them off from near-by Mexico. At the close of the season the manager of the outfit, who had been hauling the hides to the nearest markets, announced to the men as they broke camp for the trip home that he had lost money on the enterprise and could not pay them wages. The men argued the question with the manager.

'So,' the old man told me, 'we shot down old Crego, the manager and left his damn ol' bones to bleach where he had left many hundreds of stinking buffaloes. It took us many days to get to Jacksboro. As we sat around the campfire at night, some one of the boys started up a song about our hunt, the hard times and old Crego. and we all set in to help him. Before we got to Jacksboro we shaped it up and our whole crow would sing it together. And he sang to me in nasal monotonous tone, "'The Buffalo Skinners'" [...]

This of course sounds more like the typical Folklorists' yarn. But interestingly here he also claimed that he had collected "twenty-one separate versions from all over the West" from which he then collated his text.

II.

"Buffalo Skinners" is not an original song from Texas. This was first noted by writer and Folklore collector Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (1865-1946) from Maine. In 1914 she met John Lomax at one of his lectures and pointed out to him that it's "only a variant of our own 'Canada I O'" (Eckstorm/Smyth 1927, p. 21), an older local ballad about a group of lumberjacks and their exhausting trip to Canada. Ms. Eckstorm had heard this song in her childhood and in 1904 she found a fragmentary version (see dto., p. 24, first published in Gray 1924, p. 37-39). Only in the twenties she managed to get hold of a complete text. It was sent to her by one Annie Marston who "had learned it in her youth". This set of lyrics was first printed in 1927 in her collection Minstrelsy of Maine (Eckstorm/Smyth 1927, p. 28/9):

Come all ye jolly lumbermen, and listen to my song,
But do not get discouraged, the length it is not long,
Concerning of some lumbermen, who did agree to go
To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada-I-O.

It happened late one season in the fall of fifty-three,
A preacher of the gospel one morning came to me;
Says he, "My jolly fellow, how would you like to go
To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada-I-O?"

To him I quickly made reply, and unto him did say:
"In going out to Canada depends upon the pay.
If you will pay good wages, my passage to and fro,
I think I'll go along with you to Canada-I-O."

"Yes, we will pay good wages, and will pay your wages out,
Provided you sign papers that you will stay the route;
But if you do get homesick and swear that home you'll go
We never can your passage pay from Canada-I-O."

"And if you get dissatisfied and do not wish to stay,
We do not wish to bind you, no, not one single day,
You just refund the money we had to pay, you know,
Then you can leave that bonny place called Canada-I-O.

It was by his gift of flattery he enlisted quite a train,
Some twenty-five or thirty, both well and able men;
We had a pleasant journey o'er the road we had to go,
Till we landed at Three Rivers, up in Canada-I-O.

But there our joys were ended, and our sorrows did begin,
Fields, Phillips and Norcross they then came marching in.
They sent us all directions, some where I do not know,
Among those jabbering Frenchmen up in Canada-I-O.

After we had suffered there some eight or ten long weeks,
We arrived at headquarters, up among the lakes;
We thought we'd find a paradise, at least they told us so,
God grant there may be no worse hell than Canada-I-O.

To describe what we have suffered is past the art of man;
But to give a fair description I will do the best I can;
Our food the dogs would snarl at, our beds were on the snow,
We suffered worse than murderers up in Canada-I-O.

Our hearts were made of iron and our souls were cased with steel,
The hardships of that winter could never make us yield;
Fields, Phillips and Norcross they found their match, I know
Among the boys that went from Maine to Canada-I-O.

But now our lumbering is over and we are returning home,
To greet our wives and sweethearts and never more to roam;
To greet our friends and neighbors; we'll tell them not to go
To that forsaken G---- D--- place called Canada-I-O.

In a short article for the Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast (Eckstorm 1933, p. 11) she also published the melody and quoted some interesting information given to her by Mrs. Marston:

[...] this song was composed by Ephraim Braley, a lumberman who lived in Hudson, Maine, the town on the west line of Oldtown. She remembers him as a man of about her fathers age, a good singer with a comic and highly satiric turn, who made up many songs about local people and events. In 1853 he and other local men hired out to Fields, lumbermen, to go to Three Rivers, P.Q., to work in the woods. The song, composed after the return of the men in the spring, commemorates their experiences".

It seems that "Canada-I-O" is based on the British ballad "Canadee-I-O", a variant of an earlier Scottish song "Caledonia" (see a version from the Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection at the Digital Tradition Database). "Canadee-I-O" was known at least since the 1830s and printed regularly on broadsides in Britain, for example:

"Kennady I-O" (between 1813 and 1838, Harding B 11(1982))
"Canada, I O" (between 1849 and 1862, Harding B 11(2920))
"A Lady's Trip to Kennedy" (undated Firth c.12(330))

This song was also popular in North America and it was included in the Forget-Me-Not Songster, a "choice collection of old ballad songs, as sung by our grandmothers. Embellished with numerous engravings", printed a couple of times at least since 1845:

There was a gallant lady all in her tender youth,
She dearly lov'd a sailor, in truth she lov'd him much,
And for to get to sea with him the way she did not know,
She long'd to see that pretty place call'd Canada I O.

She bargain'd with a sailor all for a purse of gold,
When straightway he led her down into the hold,
Saying I'll dress you up in sailor's clothes, the color shall be blue,
You soon shall see that pretty place called Canada I O.

And when the lover heard of this, he flew into a rage,
And the whole ship's company was willing to engage,
Saying, I'll tie your hands and feet, my love, and overboard you'll go,
You ne'er shall see that pretty place called Canada I O.

Up steps the noble captain, and says, that thing shant be,
For if you drown that fair maid all hanged you shall be,
I'll dress you up in sailor's clothes, the color shall be blue,
You ne'er shall see that pretty place called Canada I O.

She had not been in Canada for the space of half a year,
Before the captain married her, and called her his dear,
She does dress in silks and satins, and she cuts a gallant show,
She's now the finest lady in Canada I O.

Come all you pretty fair maids wherever you may be,
You must follow your true lovers when they are gone to sea,
And if the mate proves false to you, the captain he'll prove true,
You see the honor I have gained by wearing of the blue.
[quoted from Jackson 1933, p. 188/9)

Some versions were also collected from oral tradition in Canada - see this one from Labrador at the Digital Tradition Database - though not in the USA. But according to Ms. Eckstorm "Canadee-I-O" was "much sung in Maine, both in the woods and elsewhere" (Eckstorm/Smyth 1927, p. 25). Of course the lyrics are completely different. Braley only retained "Canada-I-O" at the end of each verse. Also the melody for the British ballad as given by Ms. Eckstorm - it's is very different to the tunes used today, for example by Nic Jones on Penguin Eggs (1980) and Bob Dylan on Good As I Been To You (1992) - is only very loosely related to the one used by Mrs. Marston for the Maine song. But the phrase structure is very similar and it's in fact possible to sing the lyrics of "Canada-I-O" to the melodies used for the British "Canadee-I-O" and vice versa. It sounds a little strange but it works!

We have only this single piece of evidence for Braley's authorship. He is mentioned nowhere else and no other songs known from Maine are ascribed to him. Also the song's purpose is not clear: was it a protest against working conditions, an adventurous story about tough lumbermen or maybe even a humorous parody of a popular hit? Not at least is there no way to know how popular Braley's song really was at that time. Ms. Eckstorm claims that it was "once sung by every lumberman in the Maine woods" (Eckstorm/Smyth 1927, p. 22). That leaves the question why she or other collectors haven't found more complete variants besides this one and the two fragmentary versions (the other one is in Linscott, p. 181-183, collected 1935)

But interestingly the song was quickly carried to other places. Folklorists in fact have found some localized variants. H. W. Shoemaker collected a Pennsylvanian version, "The Jolly Lumbermen", in 1901 and published it in 1919 (Gray 1924, p. 41-43 ):

Come, all you jolly lumbermen, and listen to my song;
But do not get uneasy, for I won't detain you long.
Concerning some jolly lumbermen who once agre[e]d to go
And spend a winter recently on Colley's Run, i-oh!

We landed in Lock Haven, the year of seventy-three.
A minister of the Gospel one evening said to me,
Are you the party of lumbermen that once agreed to go
And spend a winter pleasantly On Colley's Run, i-oh?
[...]

In 1913 George F. Will published "Shanty Teamster's Marseillaise" in the Journal of American Folklore (p. 187/88). This variant about the teamsters in lumber camps in the Opeongo Hills in Ontario included an additional chorus and was obviously regarded as a "comic song". Will's informant had "heard it sung on various occasions during my four winter's shantying in that region, between the Bonne Chere and the Madawaska in Ontario. And that was during the years 1871 - 1876":

Come, all ye gay teamsters, attention I pray,
I'll sing you a ditty composed by the way,
Of a few jovial fellows who thought the hours long,
Would pass off the time with a short comic song
[...]

"Michigan-I-O" is about lumberjacks from "Kennedy" spending a hard winter in Michigan. It was first published in 1926 in Franz Rickaby's Ballads and Songs of the Shanty Boy (p. 41/42). Another variant collected in 1935 is available in Gardner & Chickering's Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan in 1938 (p. 261):

It was early in the season, in the fall of sixty-three,
A preacher of the gospel, why, he stepped up to me.
He says, "My jolly good fellow, how would you like to go
And spend a winter lumbering in Michigan-I-O ?"

I boldly stepped up to him, and thus to him did say,
"As for my going to Michigan, it depends upon the pay.
If you will pay good wages, my passage to and fro,
Why, I will go along with you to Michigan-I-O."

[...]

O now the winter is over it's homeward we are bound,
And in this cursed country no more we shall be found.
We'll go home to our wives and sweethearts, tell others they must not go
To that God-forsaken country called Michigan-I-O.

"Way Out In Idaho" is at least partly related to this song family and different versions have been collected and printed since 1923 (see Cohen 2000, p. 560-565). Here are the first two verses and the additional chorus from Lomax' collection Our Singing Country (1941, p. 269/270)

Come all you jolly railroad men, and I'll sing you if I can
Of the trials and tribulations of a godless railroad man
Who started out from Denver his fortune to make grow,
And struck the Oregon Short Line way out in Idaho.

[Chorus]:
Way out in Idaho, way out in Idaho,
A-workin 'on the narrow-gauge, way out in Idaho.

I was roaming around in Denver one luckless rainy day
When Kilpatrick's man, Catcher, stepped up to me and did say,
"I'll lay you down five dollars as quickly as I can
And you'll hurry up and catch the train, she's starting for Cheyenne."
[...]

To make matters more complicated there are also three cowboy versions. "The Hills Of Mexico" is clearly derived from "Buffalo Skinners". John Lomax had collected a couple of variants (see Thorp 1966, p. 217) but he didn't include it the early editions of his Cowboy Songs. It was first published as "Boggus Creek" in 1923 by W. P. Webb (in Dobie, Coffee In The Gourd, p. 57/8). Unfortunately this variant is incomplete and the last verses are missing.

J. Evetts Haley found a complete text in 1927. He got this song from James "Honey Jim" Mullens, an old cowboy whom he described as a "human anthology of western ballads [...] all his knowledge of the field had been gained from oral sources". Mullens had learned it "in the early eighties [...] while driving over [the] Goodnight-Loving Trail with a cowman from Mason County" (Haley 1927, p. 198/201):

I found myself in Griffin in the spring of '83,
When a noted cow driver one morning came to me,
Say: "How do you do young fellow? Say, how'd you like to go
And spent one summer pleasantly out in New Mexico?"

I being out of employment, to the driver thus did say:
"A going out in New Mexico, depends upon the pay.
If you pay to me good wages, transportation to and fro,
I believe I'll go along with you out in New Mexico.

"Of course I'll pay good wages, and transportation, too
Provided you stay with me the summer season through.
But if you do get homesick, and want to Griffin go,
I'll even loan you a horse to ride from the Hills of Mexico.

With all this flattering and talk he enlisted quite a train,
Some ten or twelve in number, strong able-bodied men.
Our trip it was a pleasant one, over the road we had to go,
Until we reached old Boggy Creek out in New Mexico.

Right there our pleasures ended - our troubles then begun;
The first hailstorm that came on us, Christ how those cattle run!
In running through thorns and stickers we had but little show,
And the Indians watched to pick us off the hills of Mexico.

The summer season ended, the driver could not pay.
The outfit was extravagant he was in debt today.
That's bankrupt law among the cowboys. Christ, this will never do.
That's why we left his bones to bleach out in New Mexico.

So now, we'll cross old Boggy Creek and homeward we are bound;
No more in this cursed country will we ever be found.
Go home to our wives and sweethearts - tell others not to go
To that god forsaken country they call New Mexico.

In 1938 John and Alan Lomax published another complete text - as "Boggy Creek" - in the new enlarged edition of Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads (p. 41/2). Unfortunately they didn't give any contextual information except that they had received it from "H. Knight, Sterling City, Texas". This version is virtually identical to the one unearthed by Haley. But here the introductory verse is included:

Come all you old-time cowboys and listen to my song,
But do not grow weary, I will not detain you long;
It's concerning some cowboys who did agree to go
To spend one summer so pleasantly on the trail to Mexico

Also the last line of the 4th verse is different. Instead of "I'll even loan you a horse to ride [...]" it's the opposite: "I will not furnish you a horse to ride [...]" but that is of course more true to the corresponding line in "Buffalo Skinners".

There are also two field recordings that I haven't been able to check out: one by Alec Moore that was recorded in 1934 in Austin by John Lomax (LOC, John Lomax Southern State Collection, AFS 00057 A01) and one by Mamie Reed from Kentucky (1940, Mary Elizabeth Barnicle-Tillman Cadle Collection, Archives of Appalachia, E. Tenn. State Univ., Disc BC-345; Roud# S273394). In 1950 John Donald Robb found a localized variant from New Mexico called "Murphy's Farm" (J. D. Robb Collection, University of New Mexico, MU7 CD 14 Track 9). Alan Lomax included another version - "On The Trail To Mexico" - in The Folk Songs of North America (p. 380) but that was his own adaption of Mr. Knight's "Boggy Creek" from the 1938 edition of Cowboy Songs.

Then there is "The Crooked Trail To Holbrook" (Lomax 1910, p. 121-123; Thorp 1921, p. 53/4), a variant from Arizona that is loosely based on the same model. It's another story about a difficult cattle drive. One line in the fourth verse - "[...] Christ, how the cattle run" - strongly suggests that this song was derived from "The Hills of Mexico". Some other phrases have survived too, for example in the last verse "homeward we are bound" and the "wives and sweethearts". Apart from that there are not much similarities except the structure: no trouble with the boss, no dangerous Indians: "across the reservation no danger did we fear".

"John Garner's Trail Herd"(Lomax 1910, p. 114-16 ; Thorp 1921, p. 84-86) seems to be member of this song family, too. But there are even less parallels to the others. According to Thorp it was "written by one of the waggoners at Fort Worth, Texas, many years ago. I first heard it sung in the Spearfish Valley, Dakota". Interestingly both songs are only known from the versions published in Lomax' and Thorp's books, which are in both case very similar to each other. To my knowledge no more variants from oral tradition have been found.

Both Eckstorm (p. 12) and Welsch (p. 109, 115) think the dissemination of this song family is an example for what is called "multiple diffusion". All major localized variants - "Jolly Lumbermen", "Michigan-I-O", "Way Down In Idaho", "Buffalo Skinners" - seem to derive directly from "Canada-I-O": "[...] the song passed westward by three different leaps, each one from Maine, and got to different sections of the country [...] the case is one of distribution from a focal point, not by drift" (Eckstorm 1933, p. 12). This sounds reasonable but the available evidence is of course extremely fragmentary and we are walking on very thin ice here. We know that these songs have existed in oral tradition but not how and by whom they were carried to other places.

III.

We don't know how "Canada-I-O" traveled from Maine to Texas but it seems we know who has written the original "Buffalo Skinners". In 1941 Texan Folklorist J. Frank Dobie had an interesting encounter:

"In the late summer of 1941 M.A. Tracy of Dallas brought John B. Freeman, his father-in-law, to talk with me and sing me a song that he had composed sixty-three years back and now wanted to get copyrighted and put into circulation. He called it "The Buffalo Song," and as soon as he started to sing it I was convinced that it was the original version of "The Buffalo Skinners" so popularized by Lomax, Sandburg, and others. He had however, never heard the popularized version, had no idea that any form of the song had been put into print. He told me how, when and where he composed the song" (Dobie 1943, p. 2).

Freeman came to Texas from Tennessee in 1872 at the age of 15. Five years later in the fall of 1877 he was hired in Fort Griffin by a professional hunter named James Ennis. Ennis is no fictional character, a buffalo hunter with this name really did exist (see the story in Gard, p. 284). Freeman and another fellow had to skin the buffaloes and the party also included a cook. The trip lasted a whole year: "I made up my song little by little while we were on the buffalo range, keeping it in my head [...] I had it all finished before we finally headed in for Fort Griffin, leaving the last buffalo behind us. I remember when we crossed the Brazos one of the other boys said, 'Well, you've got a good song out of the trip anyway.'" (Dobie 1943, p. 2/3).

Come all you jolly buffalo hunters and listen to my song,
And do not grow outrageous, for the length is not long.
It was concerning some buffalo-skinners who did agree to go
And spend one winter pleasantly amongst the buffalo.

I happened into Fort Griffin early in the fall of '73
When James Ennis by name one morning came to me,
Said, "My jolly young fellow, how would you like to go,
And spent one winter pleasantly amongst the buffalo.

I being out of employment, I to James Ennis did say,
"This going out on the buffalo range depends upon your pay.
If you will pay good wages, find transportation to and fro,
I think I will go with you out amongst the buffalo."

Oh, yes, I will pay good wages, find transportation too,
Provided you will stay with me the winter season through.
But if you do grow homesick and back to Griffin go,
I'll not pay you transportation from the range of the buffalo.

With all such flatterations we enlisted quite a train,
Some four or five in number of strong, able-bodied men.
Our ride it was a pleasant one o'er the road we had to go,
Until we came to Pease River amongst the buffalo.

There all of our pleasures ended, our sorrows did begin,
And the first darn tail I tried to split, - Christ, how I cut my hand!
Pease River's as salty as hell-fire, with gyp and alkali too;
Oh God! I wisht I never had come out amongst the buffalo.

We lived on buffalo hump and salty water bread,
Strong coffee and alkali water to drink, and a buffalo hide for bed.
The way the mosquitos and gray-backs worked upon us was not slow.
God grant there's no worse than hell on earth than amongst the buffalo.

Our souls were cased in iron, our hearts were cased with steel,
The hardships of one winter's work could never make us yield.
While skinning them darned ol' stinkers our lives they had no show,
For the Indians watched to take our scalps while skining them buffalo.

And after the winter was over Ennis swore he could not pay,
For the outfit had been so extravagant that he was in debt that day.
But we showed him amongst the skinners that the bankrupt did not go,
And we took poor Ennis' hides to pay for skinning them buffalo.

Oh, now we've crossed Brazos River and homeward we are bound,
No more in that God-forsaken country will we ever be found.
We'll go home to our wives and sweetheats, tell others not to go
To that god-forsaken buffalo range to skin them Buffalo.
[Dobie 1943, p. 5/6]

Although this happened in 1877/78 Freeman "gave the date as '73, I had to do that in order to rhyme with 'me'" (Dobie 1943, p. 3). It seems he tried to retain as much as possible from the second verse of "Canada-I-O". But it's also important to know that 1873 "was a bit early for hide hunting in Texas" (Gard 196, p. 291):

"I don't think there was any organized buffalo hunting on the on the Texas plains as early as 1873. The Indians were too bad. The battle of Adobe Walls, just north of the Canadian River, wasn't until June 1874 [...] By 1877, when we went out, the Comanches and Kiowas had been rounded up" (Freeman quoted in Dobie 1943, p. 3/4).

In fact the "great slaughter" of the buffaloes on the Southern plains "began in earnest in 1874 and was over by 1878" (The Handbook of Texas Online: Buffalo Hunting). In December 1877 and January 1878 "a hundred thousand" buffaloes were killed "on the Texas ranges alone" (Clayton, p. 86). In the winter of 1878 the hunters had already problems finding them. At the end of decade they were more or less extinct in Texas and the hunters and skinners had to search for another job or move to the Northern plains.

Freeman "minimizes the hardships of this hunting trip", his song "depicts the very opposite of the reality" (Welsch, p. 114). The food was good, the cook was very competent and the Indians were no problem: "Once in a while a few Indians would come to the camps, but they were peaceful. I was thinking about the old days when I put them in the song as 'watching to take our scalps" (Dobie 1943, p. 4)

What distinguishes "Buffalo Skinners" from "CanadayI-O" and its other off-springs is the penultimate verse about the conflict between the workers and the boss who "swore he could not pay" because "the outfit had been so extravagant that he was in debt that day", "a vast improvement" to the this song as it turns a "series of complaints" into a drama (A. Lomax 1960, p. 360). But this story was also made up by Freeman:

"In the song I made out that Ennis was trying to beat us out of our pay just as a joke on him. He was fair and square and we all liked him; he would laugh when I sung that part of the song" (Dobie 1943, p. 4).

Interestingly in this version the workers only take the hides but they do not kill their boss as in the other variants of this song. This seems to be a later addition. There is another dateable early text of "Buffalo Skinners" published by Robert W. Gordon in 1924. He had received it from someone who "sang the ballad on the Chisholm Trail in the early 1880s" (Friedman 1977 [1956], p. 429/30). Here this motif is already included:

The season being ended, Old Crigor could not pay -
The outfit was so extravagant he was in debt that day -
But among us jolly bull-skinners bankruptcy will not go,
So we left poor Crigor's bones to bleach on the Range of the Buffalo.

It's also part of "The Hills of Mexico", as here in the version James Mullens had learned "in he early eighties" (Haley 1927, p. 202):

[...]
That's bankrupt law among the cowboys. Christ, it will never do.
That's why we left his bones to bleach out in New Mexico.

Maybe someone has modified the original version shortly after it had been written - between 1878 and 1883 - by introducing this motif. In fact it is a very effective change: the bosses bones are bleaching among those of the buffaloes he has killed. This text then must have been the point of origin for all later variants of both "Buffalo Skinners" and "The Hills of Mexico" - at least those we know. But it's also possible that this line was first invented for the cowboy version - because here taking the hides would make no sense - and then migrated back to "Buffalo Skinners". But of course that's only speculation and most likely we will never know.

On the other hand it's important to note that the most effective line of this song wasn't included at first and only added later by an anonymous editor. Austin and Alta Fife (in Thorp 1966, p. 205) quote other even more graphic variants of the second half of the penultimate verse. Unfortunately they don't identify the sources but to me they look like they are from later incarnations of this song:

[...]
We tripped him and we kicked him to make the money flow
We left his pesky hide to bleach with the bones of the buffalo

[...]
But the skinners clubbed together and said that did not go
So we left old Trego's bones to bleach with the bones of the buffalo.

Today we tend to believe that "Buffalo Skinners" tells a true story or that it's even some kind of protest song. But a song is not supposed to tell the "truth", whatever that is. This song is a romanticized image of a trip that had consisted mainly of hard work. The food was OK, the Indians didn't harm them, the boss was nice and the money was good, the only problem was that there were no girls (see Dobie 1943, p. 3). That's boring, isn't? So the writer turns it into a dramatic fantasy of how it could have been. Maybe it was even intended as a humorous parody. Obviously Mr. Ennis didn't regard this song as a threat to his reputation although it tells how he tried to cheat them out of their money. So maybe they knew all it was a joke and not a protest against the boss.

I see no reason to doubt the authenticity of Freeman's text, not at least because it is much closer to "Canada-I-O" than Lomax', Thorp's and Gordon's versions and he definitely must have known it. Unfortunately Dobie doesn't tell us if he had asked him about Braley's song. Welsch (p. 114) seems to think that James Ennis himself may have been the source as he was from Canada but I presume we'll never find out.

There are some important differences to the other available variants of this song that are worth discussing. Thorp, Lomax and Gordon have Jacksboro as the town where the story starts. But that must be a later addition. Freeman met Ennis in Fort Griffin and at this time Griffin was the "capital of the buffalo hunting world" (Dobie 1943, p. 3):

"Fort Griffin, the frontier town on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, was headquarters for the buffalo hunters during the great slaughter. It was the wildest and the most colorful of all the bordertown [...] Fort Griffin was the last town with any semblance of civilization on the western frontier of Texas, and that semblance was very thin [...] The buffalo hunters and the skinners, fresh from a womanless country farther west, flocked to Fort Griffin for a fling, their pockets bulging with money" [...] During the extermination of the buffalo it was necessary to go to Fort Griffin for various and sundry reasons. We sold our hides there, and we hauled out supplies from there" (Collinson/Clark, p. 84; for more about this town see also The Legends of America: Fort Griffin - Lawlessness on the Brazos and Handbook of Texas Online: Fort Griffin)

Why this was later changed to Jacksboro is not clear, maybe because Fort Griffin had been closed by the army in the eighties and had lost its relevance. I haven't found any evidence that Jacksboro had ever served as a starting point for buffalo hunting parties. It should also be noted that the known texts of "The Hills of Mexico" retain Fort Griffin: "as the buffalo were hunted out, the cowboys came. The Great Western Trail ran through Fort Griffin and straight upcountry to Dodge City" (quoted from Forttours.Com: Clear Fork/Fort Griffin)

Just like the lumberjacks in "Canaday-I-O" the buffalo hunters in Freeman's text start their trip in the fall and spend the winter on the plains while Lomax, Thorp and Gordon say it was in the spring and summer. But Freeman's real trip also began in the fall and and it was of course much more profitable to hunt the buffaloes during the winter because the hides were much thicker and brought much more money. Interestingly a text published in the Frontier Times in 1925 (p. 39; from "Dot Babb, Amarillo, Texas") also claims this all happened in the winter and the second half of the first verse is nearly identical to the respective lines in Freeman's text:

It's concerning some buffalo skinners who did agree to go
And spend the winter pleasantly among the buffalo.

Also the name James Ennis was quickly dropped from the song. In the available versions of "Buffalo Skinners" I know of the boss happens to be someone called "Crego" (Lomax), "Bailey Criego" (Thorp), "Crigor" (Gordon), Craig" (Frontier Times) or "Ira Crago" (in a version collected between 1940 and 1964, available in Moore 1964 and reprinted in Welsch, p. 125/6; Fife in Thorp 1966, p. 200, n18 lists even more variants of that name). It's not clear if this was a real person (see Gard 1960, p. 191). But it should also be noted that the "noted cow driver" in "The Hills of Mexico" remains anonymous.

These are the major variations that can be found in all available versions of "Buffalo Skinners":

the workers kill their boss instead of only taking the hides as payment;
the town is Jacksboro instead of Fort Griffin;
the trip starts in the spring not in the fall and the working season is the summer instead of the winter (except in the text from the Frontier Times where the "winter" is retained);
the name of the boss is Crego or some variation thereof;

I'm tempted to speculate that these modifications - maybe except the change from winter to summer - were introduced to the song at a very early stage. This revised version must have been the starting point for the further dissemination of this song while Freeman's original seems to have vanished. It's not clear if this happened before or after the creation of "The Hills of Mexico" or if the cowboy variant had some influence on later versions of "Buffalo Skinners". At least it should be noted that Lomax even used a line from this song in his version at the end of his ninth verse where the "Indians waited to pick us off on the Hills of Mexico".

There are also a lot of minor discrepancies between the different versions of "Buffalo Skinners" that are worth examining. Every time a song or a story is transmitted orally the singer or storyteller may change the text. Often the reason for these changes is simply that he has forgotten something. So a line may be dropped completely or it may be replaced by something else that sometimes makes no sense. Not everybody has a perfect memory and this is especially important when a collector gets a text from someone who had learned it some decades ago.

The collector himself plays an important role, too, especially if he only is able to get fragmentary versions and then tries to collate a more complete text. John Lomax for example was notorious for editing texts before publishing because he was more interested in producing singable songs for public consumption than academic collections.

I was able to examine five variants of "Buffalo Skinners" that are distinctively different from each other and seem to be collected from oral tradition. It may be useful to list them here in order of the publishing date:

Thorp's was published in 1908 but it's not known when he had collected this text.
Lomax' version was printed in 1910 and he later told different stories of where he had got it from;
R. W. Gordon published his text in 1924 in the magazine Adventure where he had a regular column. His informant claimed to have learned the song in the "early eighties".
Frontier Times published a text in 1925 (p. 39): from "Dot Babb, Amarillo, Texas", but they don't say when it was written down;
Ethel and Chauncey O. Moore found one more variant some time between 1940 and 1964 and included it without any contextual information in her collection Ballads and Folksongs of the Southeast (1964).

In case of Lomax and Thorp it is not known if and how much they have edited their texts or if they have collated them from different versions. The Moores' variant is a little bit chaotic as if their informant had serious problems remembering the song. On the other hand it seems to me that it's not derived from any printed source.

In 1934 John Lomax recorded in Richmond, Texas a very short and extremely mutilated version of "Buffalo Skinners" by Pete Harris that is of no help here (available on Rounder CD 1821). According to the Roud Index two more variants are stored in archives, but they never have been published and they are not from Texas: a text collected in Virginia 1938 (Roud# S249726) and a recording from New Hampshire (1945, Roud# S272660). Even more texts from manuscripts and field recordings - mostly from Lomax' collection - that have never been published are listed by the Fifes (in Thorp 1966, p. 216) but of course it was not possible for me to investigate them.

All other printed and recorded versions of "Buffalo Skinners" that I have seen - although I wasn't able to check all mentioned by the Fifes (in Thorp 1966, p. 215/6) - are derived from earlier books and recordings and most of them can be traced to Lomax who was mostly responsible for this song's further dissemination.

The five different versions of "Buffalo Skinners" examined here - Thorp, Lomax, Gordon, Frontier Times and Moore - all retain different elements - a word, a line, a phrase or a motif - from Freeman's text and leave out others. For example the first two lines in Freeman's eighth verse are these:

Our souls were cased in iron, our hearts were cased with steel,
The hardships of one winter's work could never make us yield.[...]

This is nearly identical to "Canada-I-O":

Our hearts were made of iron and our souls were cased with steel,
The hardships of that winter could never make us yield;

In Lomax's text this couplet is turned into:

Our hearts were cased with buffalo hocks, our souls were cased with steel,
And the hardships of that summer would nearly make us reel;
[...]

Here the first line makes even less sense than the one in the original. The other versions - Thorp, Gordon, Frontier Times and Moore - don't have these lines. I presume they were dropped some time before these texts were collected because the singers simply didn't know what it was supposed to mean. Interestingly some other versions of "Canada-I-O" retain this idea. Shoemakers "Jolly Lumberman" (Gray 1924, p. 69) collected in 1901 includes another corrupted variation:

Our hearts are clad with iron, our soles [sic!] were shod with steel.
But the usages of that winter would scarcely make a shield.
[...]

A version of "Michigan-I-O" collected in 1935 (Gardner/Chickering 1939, p. 262) is much closer to the original:

Our hearts was cased in iron, and our souls were bound in steel;
The hardships of that winter could not force us to yield;
[...]

This is a fine example of how two lines of a song can be changed in different ways when transmitted orally.

In "Canada-I-O" the second verse is:

It happened late one season in the fall of fifty-three,
A preacher of the gospel one morning came to me;
Says he, "My jolly fellow, how would you like to go
To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada-I-O?"

Freeman's text retains as much as possible from the the song that had served as his model:

I happened into Fort Griffin early in the fall of '73
When James Ennis by name one morning came to me,
Said, "My jolly young fellow, how would you like to go,
And spend one winter pleasantly amongst the buffalo.

This is closer to "Canada-I-O" than all the other variants of "Buffalo Skinners" where we can find different kinds of variants of this verse. But they all leave out the phrase "one morning". On the other hand it's included in Mullens' "The Hills of Mexico" ("[...] when a noted cow driver one morning came to me") so it must also have been part of the very early versions of "Buffalo Skinners". And in the text from the Frontier Times the boss at least greets his future employees with the words: "Good morning, young fellows".

In "Canada-I-O" the "preacher of the gospel" manages to enlist his men "by his gift of flattery". In Freeman's text it is changed to:

With all such flatterations we [sic!] enlisted quite a train

The word "flatteration" is very unusual, it can't be found in any dictionary and it has been used very rarely. I presume Freeman simply made it up. In Thorp's version it is turned into "through promises and flattery", in Mullens' "Hills of Mexico" it's "flattering and talk", Lomax drops it completely but surprisingly Gordon's version retains this artificial word:

By such talk and flatteration he enlisted quite a crew

I have searched Google Books for this word and found exactly five cases of its use from the 19th century. Two of these are the texts for Gordon's and Freeman's "Buffalo Skinners". This may be taken as evidence that the word "flatteration" had in fact been included in early versions of this song and it may be one more proof for the authenticity of Freeman's version.

In the last verse Freeman crosses the "Brazos River and homeward we are bound". In Thorp's and Lomax's versions the Brazos is replaced by the Pease River, in the Frontier Times and in Moore's it's the Wichita. The text published by Gordon retains the Brazos. Interestingly John J. Callison's Bill Jones of Paradise Valley, Oklahoma (1914, p.117/18) quotes - in a story about Buffalo Bill - two verses from what looks like another early variant and here it's also the Brazos River:

And now we are across the Brazos, and homeward we are bound;
No more in that cursed country will ever we be found;
We will go home to our wives and sweethearts tell others not to go
To that god forsaken cactus country way out in Mexico.

This strongly suggests that the Pease River was a later addition - maybe because it was already mentioned earlier in the song - while the Brazos seems to have been the original river of this verse.

Even the version collected by the Moores seems to have saved some elements from Freeman's lyrics that can't be found in the other texts. The last line of his 8th verse is:

For the Indians watched to take our scalps while skinning them buffalo

In Thorp's version "the Indians tried to pick us off on the range of the buffalo", in Gordon's and Lomax' variant half of the original line is still there: "the Indians watched to pick us off while skinning them buffalo" but the Moores' informant had this line more or less complete and is the only one to mention that the Indians were eager to scalp the poor skinners:

For the Indians watched to scalp us, while skinning the buffalo

On the other hand the phrase "pick us off" is also included in "The Hills of Mexico". So this may also have been an early change predating the creation of the cowboy variant while what was possibly the original line is only retained in the latest collected version.

I could easily add more examples. This may look like a severe case of nitpicking but a careful comparative analysis all the available texts is instrumental for any attempt to reconstruct the song's development. Of course it's still guesswork or more like a jigsaw puzzle where a lot of important parts are missing.

Nonetheless it's possible to draw some conclusions: the five variants published by Thorp, Lomax, Gordon, the Frontier Times and the Moores obviously have reached the collectors on different routes of oral transmission. Gordon's has retained some elements the earliest version while the others seem to represent later stages in the song's develoment. "The Hills of Mexico" is occasionally closer to Freeman's "Buffalo Song" than all the five "Buffalo Skinners". Freeman's text in turn is has much more similarities to "Canada-I-O" than all the other versions of "Buffalo Skinners" so it really seems to be a very early or even the earliest version.

In fact I think there's much evidence that Mr. Freeman was the originator of this song. His story makes sense, it fits well into the historical context and his text is not only more consistent than the others. It also fits perfectly well into the blank space between "Canaday-I-O" and all the later variants of both "Buffalo Skinners" and "The Hills of Mexico". On the other hand his original lyrics seem to have vanished very quickly from oral tradition while a revised version with some major modifications has taken its place.

IV.

It's not known how widespread "Buffalo Skinners" was in Texas in the first years of its existence. John Lomax's claim to have collected "twenty-one separate versions from all over the West" (quoted in Trager, p. 638) suggests a certain popularity. But at the time it was collected first it surely wasn't sung anymore around every campfire. It's more likely that it simply was one more old song only remembered by some old-timers that was on the way to fall into oblivion.

It was John Lomax himself who saved it from obscurity - Thorp's book obviously had much less influence - and turned it into a modern "Folk Song", a song that is better known among the Folkfans and Folklorists than among the "Folk" itself. It's for example amusing to read that even John B. Freeman, most likely the originator of this ballad, seems to have been completely unaware of it's new-found popularity (see Dobie 1943, p. 2).

Lomax genuinely liked this song and performed it regularly on his lectures throughout the USA. Also Carl Sandburg - another great popularizer of "old Folk Songs" - picked up "Buffalo Skinners" from Lomax. He included it in his American Songbag (1927, p. 270) where he introduced this song with a somehow bombastic comment:

This is one of the magnificent finds of John Lomax for American folk song lore. It is the framework of a big, sweeping novel of real life, condensed into a few telling stanzas [...] We may hunt for a harder sardonic than that of Crego telling the man they had been 'extravagant' and were in debt to him. They killed him; it is told as casually and as frankly as the doing of the bloody deed and their immediate forgetfulness about it except as one of many passing difficulties of that summer. Lomax speaks of this piece as having in its language a 'Homeric quality.' Its words are blunt, direct, odorous, plain and made-to-hand, having the sound to some American ears that the Greek language of Homer had for the Greeks of that time.

Sandburg also used to perform it. Lloyd Lewis saw him singing this song at a dinner party for Sinclair Lewis in 1925 and wrote about it in his article "The Last of the Troubadours" in the Chicagoan in 1929 (reprinted in Lewis 1970, p. 73/4). Now the "Buffalo Skinners" had safely arrived in circles of the progressive intelligentsia for whom it was both a reminder and a relic of an adventurous world lost long ago:

The best singing Carl Sandburg ever did was the dinner Morris Fishbein gave for Sinclair Lewis in 1925 [...]. Down at the very end of the table, opposite the host, sat Chicago's biggest literary figure, Carl Sandburg, behind his hair and his stogy [...] Somebody brought a guitar and the iron-jawed Swede stood up and, in that soft, don't-give-a-damn way of his, sang "The Buffalo Skinners". Everything got quiet as a church, for it's a great rough song, all about starvation,blood, fleas, hides, entrails, thirst, and Indian-devils, and men being cheated out of their wages and killing their employers to get even - a novel, an epic novel boiled down to simple words and set to queer music that rises and falls like the winds on Western plains. [...] It was like a funeral song to the pioneer America that has gone, and when Carl was done Sinclair Lewis spoke up, his face streaked with tears, 'That's the America I came home to. That's it."

But the highlight of the song's new life surely was Alan Lomax' performance in the White House in 1939 for the King and the Queen of England (Gard, p. 293 ). "Buffalo Skinners" was also canonized by its inclusion in important Folk song collections like Louise Pound's American Ballads And Songs (1922, p. 181) and of course Lomax' own influential American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934, p. 390). It also was included in at least 18 popular songbooks published between 1928 and 1950 (see the bibliography by the Fifes in Thorp 1966, p. 215/6), for example Ina Sires' Songs of the Open Range (1928), Carson J. Robinson's World's Greatest Collection of Mountain Ballads and Old Time Songs (2930), Margaret Larkin's Singing Cowboy: A Book Of Western Songs (1931), the Treasure Chest of Cowboy Songs (1935) or the Lone Ranger's Songbook (1938). Lomax' classic Cowboy Songs from 1910 remained a steady seller and was published again in 1938 in an vastly expanded edition.

Surprisingly no commercial recordings of this song were made in the 20s and 30s. John Lomax himself recorded it three times in 1936, 1939 and 1941 for the Library of Congress although these weren't released at that time. The one from 1941 - a short version with only 4 verses - is available on Cowboy Songs, Ballads & Cattle Calls from Texas (at first AFS L28 [1952] and later Rounder CD 1512 [1999], see the liner notes by Duncan Emrich; a transcription is in Emrich 1972, p. 504). Popular cowboy singer Jules Verne Allen included it in his book Cowboy Lore (1931) but to my knowledge he never a made recording of "Buffalo Skinners". Instead it happened to be Bill Bender, The Happy Cowboy who was responsible for the very first recorded version in 1939 (Varsity 5144). I must admit I have never heard of him before but it seems he was busy singing Cowboy songs on the radio at that time.

In 1945 Woody Guthrie managed to record his version of "Buffalo Skinners" (here on YouTube). It was first released on Struggle: Asch American Documentary, Vol. 1 (Asch 360, 1946, later Stinson 360, now SFW 40025) and is now also easily available on different CDs, for example on Buffalo Skinners: The Asch Recordings, Vol.4 (Folkways SFW 40103)

Come all you old time cowboys and listen to my song,
Please do not grow weary, I'll not detain you long.
Concerning some wild cowboys who did agree to go,
Spend the summer pleasant, on the trail of the Buffalo.

I found myself in Griffin, in the spring of '83,
When a well known famous drover came walking up to me.
Said, "How do you do, young fellow, well how would you like to go,
And spend the summer pleasant, on the trail of the Buffalo?"

Well I being out of work right then, to the drover I did say,
"Going out on the Buffalo Road depends on the pay.
If you will pay good wages, transportation to and fro,
I think I might go with you, on the hunt of the Buffalo."

"Of course I'll pay good wages, and transportation too,
If you will agree to work for me until the season's through.
But if you do get homesick, and you try to run away,
You'll starve to death out on the trail and also lose your pay."

Well with all his flattering talking, he signed up quite a train,
Some 10 or 12 in number, some able bodied men.
The trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road,
Until we crossed old Boggy Creek in old New Mexico.

There our pleasures ended and our troubles all began.
A lightning storm hit us and made the cattle run.
Got all full of stickers from the cactus that did grow,
And the outlaws watching to pick us off in the hills of Mexico.

Well our working season ended and the drover would not pay,
You hadn't drunk too much, you are all in debt to me.
But the cowboys never had heard such a thing as a bankrupt law,
So we left that drover's bones to bleach on the Plains of the Buffalo.

Guthrie didn't use Lomax' standard version of "Buffalo Skinners", instead he tried his hand at "Boggy Creek" (or "The Hills of Mexico"), the cattle drivers' variant from the 1938 edition of Cowboy Songs. But for some reason in a couple of verses he inserted the "buffalo" instead of "Mexico" so it's really not clear if he is singing about cowboys or buffalo skinners. I presume he was not so much interested in these kind of subtleties but more in what he understood as a kind of "anti-capitalist" message as he wasn't so fond of bosses. In fact this recording was first released on as part of a song collection depicting the struggles of working class Americans.

But on the other hand Guthrie also managed to modernize the text by avoiding some of the stilted language of the original: "out of work" is used for "out of employment", "try to run away" sounds much better than "back to Griffin go", "drunk too much" replaces "extravagant" and "starve to death [...]" is a much more effective line than "I'll even loan you a horse to ride [...]". He also dropped the last verse about coming home and ends the song at its dramatic climax when the worker's have killed their boss and "leave his bones to bleach" on the plains.

Guthrie also used a new minor key melody that is different from those of Lomax' and Sandburg's versions of "Buffalo Skinners" but it works very well. Unfortunately the dreary one-chord-accompaniment doesn't do the song justice.

Woody Guthrie's recording was the first of many from the Folk Revival era. Most of them were derived from John Lomax' standard version from the first edition of Cowboy Songs while some singers - like Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Cisco Houston - had learned it from Guthrie:

Hermes Nye, Texas Folk Songs (1955, Folkways FW 02128)
Ed McCurdy, Songs of the Old West (1956, Elektra EKL 112, see amazon.co.uk)
Raphael Boguslav, Songs From A Village Garret (1956, Riverside RLP 12-638, see this post in the fine blog Record Fiend)
John A. Lomax, Jr, Sings American Folk Songs (1956, Folkways FW 03508)
Pete Seeger, at first on American Industrial Ballads (1956, Folkways SW 40058) and then on American Favourite Ballads, Vol. 5 (1962, Folkways SW 40154; this is an abbreviated version with 5 verses, the lyrics are derived from Lomax' original "Buffalo Skinners", the melody and accompaniment are closer to Woody Guthrie).
Ramblin' Jack Elliott & Derroll Adams, Roll On Buddy (1957, Topic 12T 105; a later live version by Jack Elliott is available on YouTube)
Richard Dyer-Bennet, Vol. 9, (1960, Dyer-Bennet DB 09000)
Cisco Houston, Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie (1961, Vanguard VRS 9089, available at YouTube)
Carl Sandburg also recorded his version for Cowboy Songs and Negro Spirituals (1964, Decca DL 9105, see the discography at wirz.de; unfortunately this is not available on CD at the moment)
Eric Von Schmidt, Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt (1963, Prestige 7717)
Jim Kweskin, Relax Your Mind (1965, Vanguard VSD-79188, see amazon.com)
Slim Critchlow, Cowboy Songs: The Crooked Trail To Holbrook (1969, Arhoolie 479; includes also "John Garner's Trail Herd" and "The Crooked Trail To Holbrooke"; recorded 1957-63; see allmusic.com)

I started this with Bob Dylan, so I may also close with him although of course he only plays a small part in the song's history. But maybe he can take the credit for bringing it to a wider audience. I presume many who saw him perform "Buffalo Skinners" in one of his shows weren't familiar with this song. Unfortunately Dylan never recorded it officially. But it should be noted that Good As Been To You (1992) includes one of its precursors, the British "Canadee-I-O" and also Cisco Houston's "Diamond Joe", another cowboy song that at least owes a little to this song family. So we only have the "unofficial" recordings.

There is a private performance from 1961 - available on the so-called East Orange Tape - that is clearly derived from Woody Guthrie's version. In March 1963 Dylan used this melody for his own topical song "Cuban Missile Crisis" (recorded at the Broadside office) Then there is an abbreviated version from the recording sessions in 1967 that would later be called the Basement Tapes: here he drops the introductory verse, forgets some of the lyrics and stops halfway through the song although it is a promising performance .

From 1988 to 1992 he performed this song at 43 concerts. Like Guthrie Dylan conflates "Buffalo Skinners" and "Hills of Mexico" and it's never clear if it's a story about buffalo hunters or cowboys. Again the first verse ("Come all you...") is dropped but the last verse about coming home from Lomax' version is reinstated. Occasionally it sounds as if he's forgotten the lyrics and that seems to be the main reason for some - mostly minor - changes of the text: sometimes the town is Griffin, sometimes it's Jacksboro, the year is '73 or '83 and at other times unintelligible. Thankfully Dylan avoids Guthrie's one-chord accompaniment and his arrangement sounds much better and much more appropriate. Most of these live performances are very impressive and among the best versions of this song I've heard.

Literature

Benjamin A. Botkin, A Treasury of American Folklore, New York & Avenel, New Jersey 1993 (first published 1944; p. 568: reprints the two verses from Callison, Bill Jones; p. 854/5: melody and lyrics for "Buffalo Skinners" as sung by John A. Lomax himself, repr. from Charles Seeger (ed.) Resettlement Song Sheets No. 7)
John J. Callison, Bill Jones of Paradise Valley, Oklahoma, Chicago 1914 (online at The Internet Archive)
Lawrence Ray Clayton, John Lomax' Cowboy Songs And other Frontier Ballads: A Critical Study, Diss. Texas Tech University, 1974 (pdf file available here)
Norm Cohen , Long Steel Rail. The Railroad in American Folksong, Urbana & Chicago 2000
Frank Collinson & Mary Whatley Clarke, Life In The Saddle, Norman 1997 (1963; these are reminiscences of Frank Collinson, an Englishman who arrived in Texas in 1872 and worked for some time as a buffalo hunter)
J. Frank Dobie, A Buffalo Hunter And His Song, in: M. C. Boatright & Donald Day (ed.), Backwoods To Border (Publications of the Texas Folklore Society 18), Austin 1943, p. 1-10 (This is Dobie's article about John B. Freeman and his version of "Buffalo Skinners", most likely the original; interestingly he reports that John Henry Faulk made a recording of Mr. Freeman singing this song. I wonder if it still exists today)
Duncan Emrich, Folklore On The American Land, Boston & Toronto 1972 (p. 500 - 505, includes words and melody of John Lomax' 1941 version of "Buffalo Skinners" as well as a short summary of the song's history)
F.H.E (i.e. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm), Canaday I O, in: Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast 6, 1933, p. 10-13
Fannie Hardy Eckstorm & Mary Winslow Smyth, Minstrelsy of Maine, Boston 1927
Benjamin Filene, Romancing The Folk. Public Memory & American Roots Music, Chapel Hill & London 2000
Albert Friedman, The Penguin Book Of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, New York 1977 (first publ. 1956; reprints on p. 429/30 the text of "Buffalo Skinners" first published by Robert W. Gordon in Adventure Magazine, Oct. 20, 1924; this text as pdf-file for research only)
Wayne Gard, The Great Buffalo Hunt, New York 1960 (classic book about the history of buffalo hunting)
Emelyn E. Gardner & Geraldine J. Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan, Ann Arbor 1939 (online at traditionalmusic.co.uk)
Roland Palmer Gray, Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks, Cambridge 1924 (online at The Internet Archive)
J. Evetts Haley, Cowboy Songs Again, in: J. Frank Dobie (ed.), Texas And Southwestern Lore (Publications Of The Texas Folklore Society 6), Austin 1927, p. 198 - 204 (includes the first complete version of "The Hills of Mexico")
George Stuyvesant Jackson, Early Songs Of Uncle Sam, Boston 1933
Lloyd Lewis, It Takes All Kinds, Manchester NH 1970 [1947] (online at Google Books)
Eloise Hubbard Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England, Mineola 1994 (first published 1939)
Guy Logsdon, The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing and Other Songs Cowboys Sing, Urbana & Chicago 1995
John Lomax, Cowboy Songs And other Frontier Ballads, New York 1910 (online at The Internet Archive)
John & Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads, New York 1938 (enlarged new edition; p. 41/2: "Boggy Creek", this text as a pdf-file for research only)
John & Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folksongs, New York 1934 (online at traditionalmusic.co.uk)
Alan Lomax, The Folk Songs Of North America, New Yok 1960 (No. 196, "On The Trail To Mexico", p. 380, is Alan Lomax' own adaption of "Boggy Creek" from the 1938 edition of Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads, p. 41)
Ethel & Chauncey O. Moore, Ballads and Folksongs of the Southwest, Norman 1964 (p. 289-291: another version of "Buffalo Skinners" from oral tradition, text reprinted in Welsch 1970, p. 125/6, this text as pdf-file for research only)
Louise Pound, American Ballads And Songs, New York, Chikago & Boston 1922 (online at The Internet Archive)
Nolan Porterfield, The Last Cavalier. The Life And Times Of John A. Lomax, Urbana & Chicago 1996 (excellent biography!)
Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag, New York 1927 (online at The Internet Archive)
Peter Stanfield, Horse Opera. The Strange History of the 1930s Singing Cowboy, Urbana & Chicago 2002
N. Howard "Jack" Thorp, Songs Of The Cowboy, Estancia, NM 1908 (reprint 1989, online at Google Books)
N. Howard "Jack" Thorp, Songs Of The Cowboys, Boston And New York 1921 (enlarged second edition, online at traditionalmusic.co.uk)
N. Howard "Jack" Thorp, Songs Of The Cowboys, New York 1966 (reprint of 1908 edition with: Variants, Commentary, Notes and Lexicon. by Austin E. & Alta Fife; p. 195 - 214: a good summary of the song's history; the bibliography is indispensable as it lists all published and unpublished versions of "Buffalo Skinners" and some related songs that were available at that time; a "composite text" on p. 202-206 includes a lot of variant lines from other texts)
Oliver Trager, Keys To The Rain. The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, New York 2004
W. P. Webb, Miscellany of Texas Folklore, in: J. Frank Dobie (ed.), Coffee In The Gourd (Publications of the Texas Folklore Society 2), Austin 1923, p. 47-63 (reprint 2007 is available online at Google Books; p. 57/8: the first published version of "The Hills of Mexico" [here as "Boggus Creek"], unfortunately only an incomplete text)
Roger L. Welsch, A "Buffalo Skinner's" Family Tree, in: Journal Of Popular Culture 4, 1970, p. 107-129 (This is an interesting and helpful article. The author attempts to untangle the history of this song and draws some important conclusions. Unfortunately he doesn't use all available variants, for example he seems to be unaware of Thorp's book. But he discusses Dobie's article about John B. Freeman's version and regards it as authentic)
George F. Will, Four Cowboy Songs, in: Journal Of American Folklore 26 , 1913, p. 185-188 (online at The Internet Archive)

Online Resources

allegro Catalogue Of Broadside Ballads (Bodleian Library, Oxford)
Cowboy Poetry (Songs of the Cowboys & Jack Thorp's Songs Of The Cowboys)
Digital Tradition Database
Handbook of Texas Online (Buffalo Hunting, Fort Griffin, Jacksboro)
James Prescott, Folk Song Index
Jane Keefer, Folk Music - An Index To Recorded Sources
Smithsonian Folkways
Steven Roud, Folk Song Index (VWML Online): Canada-I-O (R# 309), Caledonia (R# 5543), Canaday-I-O/Michigan-I-O (R# 640), Buffalo Skinners/The Hills of Mexico (R# 634)
The Traditional Ballad Index. An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk Songs of the English-Speaking World (Buffalo Skinners, Canaday-I-O, Michigan-I-O etc, The Crooked Trail to Holbrook, Boggy Creek/The Hills of Mexico, Canada-I-O )
A Traditional Music Library of folk music, tune-books, songbooks and sheet music

Note: This text is also available as a Google Document so it's possible to print it or save it as a pdf-file

Tampa Red, "When I Take My Vacation In Harlem" (1935)

2010-08-13T21:02:00.001+02:00

Tampa Red was one of those black recording artists who was able to record more than the standard Blues fare. One example is "When I Take My Vacation In Harlem" (1935), a song celebrating the "Jazz of old Duke and old Calloway". It's a parody of the Gospel song "When I Take My Vacation in Heaven" (Herbert Buffum, 1925).

mp3: Tampa Red, "When I Take My Vacation In Harlem"

When I Take My Vacation In Harlem,
What a hell of a time it will be.
With the rhythm of that Harlem hi-de-hi-de
And the girl that I know care for me.

To the Jazz of old Duke and old Caloway,
We can love, kiss and dance till the break of day.
I don't care if it's sleetin', snowin' or rainin'.
We will ready when that Harlem fun begin.

When old Duke sits down to the old piano,
And old Cab shakes his wicked hi-de-ho,
I'll be there with an armful of heaven,
When I take my vacation in Harlem

Lyrics quoted from Robert MacLeod, Document Blues 6, PAT Publications, Edinburgh, 1999, p. 17/18

Tampa Red & Georgia Tom 1929

2010-08-13T16:15:00.006+02:00

After the great success of "It's Tight Like That" (1928) Tampa Red quickly became one of the most successful and popular Blues recording artists. In the year 1929 he found himself regularly in the studio and recorded a lot of songs, many of them with his partner "Georgia Tom" Dorsey who occasionally took over the lead vocals. Here is a small selection of some of my favorites that show his versatility both as a singer and guitar player.

mp3: "Juicy Lemon Blues" (9.1.1929)

This is one of Tampa's few solo recordings, a beautiful Blues:

Folk, you hear me screamin', moanin' this lonesome song.
Folk, you hear me screamin', moanin' this lonesome song.
The woman I love done packed her trunk and gone

She left me this mornin', she wouldn't even tell me why.
She left me this mornin', didn't even tell me why.
I've got the Blues so bad, I could lay right down and die.
[...]

mp3: "The Duck Yas-Yas-Yas" (13.5.1929)
This is a cover of a song first recorded by James "Stump" Johnson in December 1928. Tampa plays a short but wonderful guitar solo at the end of the song.

mp3: "Pat That Bread" (25.5.1929)

This is not a Blues but up-tempo Hokum with Tom Dorsey as the lead singer while Tampa Red tries out some scat-singing:

[...]
Now, Sam come home late last night.
All keyed up and he wanted to fight.
Filled with booze up to his head.
Felt kinda like he wanted to eat some bread.
Called his wife 'bout half-past four.
Get up girl, and make some dough.
Put on the skillet, put on the lead.
I feel kinda like I wanna pat that bread.
[..]

mp3: "Pig Meat Papa" (18.7.1929)

Here Georgia Tom (as "Memphis Mose") is singing while Tampa plays some great slide guitar.

[...]
Now, I wish the good Lord would send me an angel down.
Now, I wish the good Lord would send me an angel down.
Now, if He can't send me an angel, for goodness sake don't send no clown
[...]

mp3: "Mama Don't Allow No Easy Riders Here" (4.9.1929)

[...]
Mama told me when I was ten years old.
My mama told me when I was ten years old.
Mama told me when I was ten years old.
The women would all have me under their control.
Mama don't allow no easy riders here.
[...]

Lyrics quoted from Robert MacLeod, Blues Document, PAT Publications, Edinburgh, 1997, p. 237 ("Pig Meat Papa") & Document Blues 2, PAT Publications, Edinburgh, 1995, p. 332, 346, 350.
Discographical data from from Dixon/Godrich/Rye, Blues & Gospel Records 1890 - 1943, 4th ed., Oxford University Press 1997

Roots of Bob Dylan (3): "Another Side of Bob Dylan" & "Bringing It All Back Home" (1964/65)

2010-07-18T09:22:00.024+02:00

This is Vol. 3 of my series Roots of Bob Dylan 1962 - 1966. Here I will discuss the original songs from Another Side Of Bob Dylan and Bringing It All Back Home plus some important outtakes.

Please read the

Introduction

that also includes the necessary credits and a list of the most important literature and online resources used here.

The complete series:

Vol. 1: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Bob Dylan" & "The Freewheelin'" (1962/63)
Vol. 2: Roots of Bob Dylan: "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1963)
Vol. 3: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Another Side of Bob Dylan" & Bringing It All Back Home" (1964/65)
Vol. 4: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Highway 61 Revisited" & Blonde On Blonde" (1965/66) (coming later)

Another Side Of Bob Dylan

- All I Really Want To Do

Original melody, no known precursor

There is related song by Irving Berlin, "I Don't Want To Be Married", a quasi-feminist comical duet written in 1932 for Face The Music that also uses the phrase "to be friends" and challenges traditional gender stereotypes in a surprisingly provocative way. For more about this song see in this blog: "...Be Friends With You" - Questioning Stereotypes: Bob Dylan & Irving Berlin

- Black Crow Blues

This is a standard 12-bar-Blues with a generic melody.

- Spanish Harlem Incident

Original melody, no known precursor.

But of course the "gypsy" is a common motif in popular music. Dylan was not the first to write this kind of exoticist pseudo-erotica, songwriters long before him used to know about gypsy girls. A nice example from 1902 is "Little Gypsy Maid", written by Harry B. Smith, Cecil Mack (words) and Will Marion Cook (music) for the stage show The Wild Rose (sheet music c/o Lester S. Levy Collection). I presume she doesn't look much like the gypsy girl Bob Dylan was singing about. At least the lyricists were nearly as fond of alliterations as Dylan was when he wrote "Spanish Harlem Incident":

There's a charming dark-eyed little lassie that I know,
Who with tender teasing glances sets the heart aglow,
Lips as red as ripest cherries, eyes of dusky shade,
Sunburned as the leaves of Autumn is the gypsy maid.

She's no violet, she's no red, red rose,
And though the lily of the valley's sweet,
A sweeter flower grows.
She is no tulip rare in colors bright arrayed,
She's just a wild flow'r of the forrest shade,
This little gypsy maid.

- Chimes Of Freedom

This song was at least partly inspired by "Chimes Of Trinity" (Michael J. Fitzpatrick, 1895), see Dave van Ronk, The Mayor Of MacDougal Street, Da CapoPress, p. 4:

"Bob Dylan heard me fooling around with one of my grandmother’s favorites, “The Chimes Of Trinity,” a sentimental ballad about Trinity Church [...] He made me sing it for him a few times until he had the gist of it, then reworked it into the 'Chimes Of Freedom'. Her version was better".

The sheet music for this song is available at Jscholarship and the Lester S. Levy Collection. Here's an mp3 of a recording by the Peerless Quartet (1925, c/o The Internet Archive):

Dylan only retained a slightly reworked variant of the first four bars of the refrain:

For more about this song please check out an earlier post on this blog: Chimes of Trinity, Chimes of Freedom and the Girl on the Police Gazette.

- I Shall Be Free No. 10

See "I Shall Be Free" (on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)

- To Ramona

The melody is clearly derived from Rex Griffin's "The Last Letter" (1937). Here is an mp3 (c/o The Internet Archive) :

Why do you treat me as if I were only a friend,
What have I done that makes you so distant and cold,
Sometimes I wonder if you'll be contented again,
Will you be happy when you are withered and old.

I cannot offer you diamonds and mansions so fine
I cannot offer you clothes that your young body crave
But if you'll say that you long to forever be mine
Think of the heartaches all the tears and the sorrow you'll save.

When you are weary and tired of another man's gold
When you are lonely remember this letter my own
Don't try to answer me though I've suffered anguish untold
If you don't love me I just wish you would leave me alone.

While I am writing this letter I think of the past
And of the promises that you are breaking so free
But to this world I will soon say my farewell at last
I will be gone when you read this last letter from me.

The lyrics of “To Ramona” are surprisingly close to "My Melancholy Baby", a popular music standard by Ernie Burnett & George A. Norton first published in 1911. In 1915 this song was a hit for Walter van Brunt (mp3 at the Cylinder Preservation And Digitization Project), then in 1928 for Gene Austin (mp3) and in 1939 for Bing Crosby. Besides that it was performed and recorded by nearly everybody including Bob's favourite "girl from next door" Judy Garland who sang it in A Star Is Born (1954).

(Refrain:)
Come to me my melancholy baby,
Cuddle up and don't be blue
All your fears are foolish fancies, may be
You know dear, that I'm in love with you.
Ev'ry cloud must have a silver lining;
Wait until the sun shines through.
Smile my honey, dear, while I kiss away each tear,
Or else I shall be melancholy too.

This song could have easily have served as a starting-point and model for Bob Dylan when he set out to write “To Ramona”. The opening lines are very closely related, Dylan's read like a more “poetical” reshaping of the original words:

Come to my my melancholy baby
Cuddle up and don't feel blue
[...]
Wait until the sun shines through

Ramona, come closer,
Shut softly your watery eyes.
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise.

The idea that all her "fears are foolish fancy" is revived a couple of times in "To Ramona":

It's all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe [...]

You've been fooled into thinking [...]

If you really believe that [...]

And Dylan's final twist "I'll come and be crying to you" looks like an echo of "[...] or else I shall be melancholy, too".

[This is a shortened version of my article on justanothertune.com that includes more information about these songs]

- Motorpsycho Nightmare

Original "melody" (but there ain't much melody in this song), no known precursor .

- My Back Pages

Original music, to my knowledge no precursor. Dylan later used a melody quite similar to this one for his version of "Belle Isle" (on Self Portrait).

- I Don't Believe You

I think this song is based on or inspired by the refrain of "You Forgot To Remember" (1925) by Irving Berlin (for more about this song see Philip Furia, Irving Berlin. A Life In Song, New York, p. 112 - 114). This may sound a little surprising and and it takes a lot of fantasy to find out about the relationship between these two songs only by listening to recordings of "Remember", for example by Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards (1943, YouTube), John McCormack (1925, YouTube) and Franklyn Baur (1925, YouTube). I only noticed it when I learned to play it on guitar. Then the parallels became very obvious. In fact it's not that difficult to sing the lyrics of Berlin's song to the music of "I Don't Believe You" and vice versa.

Remember the night
The night you said, I love you
Remember?

Remember you vowed
By all the stars above you
Remember?

Remember we found a lonely spot
And after I learned to care a lot

You promised that you’d forget me not
But you forgot
To remember.

Both "Remember" and "I Don't Believe" are songs debunking one of our favourite romantic hyperboles. They are about a poor guy adressing a girl who had promised and vowed never to forget but now turns a cold shoulder towards him:

"you promised that you forget me not
[...] but you forgot to remember"

"she said she would never forget
[...] but she acts like we never have met"

Both songs have a similar structure. In fact "I Don't Believe You" is Bob Dylan's very first song using AABA', the so-called standard form of classic popular music since the 20s. Berlin's refrain has 32 bars in 3/4 time, Dylan's verses have 16 bars in 4/4 time. The A-parts are divided into three phrases:

I Don't Believe You

I

C/G -------G7'---------/
can't understand she let

C/G------G7'-------/
go off my hand and

C/G---------G7'-------/C
left me here facing the wall

Remember

Re-

Bb----------/F+
member the night, the

Bb----------/F+
night___you said___"I

Bb------/C7b9----C7/F
love----you"_____remember?

In both songs also the harmonies are used in a very similar way. Berlin changes back and forth between Bb and F+ (the easiest way to play these chords on guitar on the top three strings: Bb - xxx331, F+ - xxx221): a part of the chord is moved a half step up and down. Dylan instead plays a Blues lick (that can be found for example in the introduction to Chuck Berry's version of "Worried Live Blues", 1960, mp3 of the intro) where he moves part of the chord two half steps up and down the fret (C/G - xxx053, G7' - xxx031).

The melodies are of course different but there are still some interesting parallels, especially the use of the rising 3rd as a key interval. Berlin's tune is pentatonic plus one dissonant note (the augmented 5th), Dylan's is - in the A-parts - purely pentatonic. In fact both songwriters were black key beer hall style piano players. Berlin surely developed his melody by playing around with the black keys of the piano and it's not that difficult - I've tried it myself - to start playing the melody line of his A-part and then arrive at the characteristic musical phrase Dylan created for his song.

Here are the first 8 bars of "Remember":

The first two bars of "I Don't Believe You" (in C) show that the melodic contours of both songs are very similar at the start. Only instead of going a 5th higher as in "Remember" on night Dylan simply returns to where he had started and then repeats this phrase.

In fact the melody and the harmonies of "I Don't Believe You" look like a simplified and much less sophisticated variant of what Berlin wrote for "Remember". Dylan built his new song around some of Berlin's musical ideas and adjusted them to his own style by replacing the original chords with an something most likely borrowed from the intro to Chuck Berry's "Worried life Blues". Of course I don't know if Dylan was unconsciously assimilating some ideas from a half-remembered song from the past or if he deliberately wrote a new song over this old classic. But it should come as no surprise that at this point in his career he was looking for inspiration outside the sphere of Folk and Blues.

- Ballad In Plain D

Based on "I Loved A Lass", Ewan MacColls version of a British ballad known since the 17th century ("The False Bride"/"The Forlorn Lover"/"A Week Before Easter", see the Traditional Ballad Index ; see a 17th century broadside: "The Forlorn Lover " ). I don't think the melody used by MacColl is that old as other versions seem to use different tunes (see f. ex. "Week Before Easter" at the Digital Tradition Song Database). He recorded it in 1961 for Classic Scots Ballads, Tradition TLP 1015 (see review ; a short snippett is available on allmusic.com and amazon.co.uk).

The tune and the first verse c/o The Digital Tradition Song Database:

Carolyn Hester recorded the song in 1963 on This Life I'm Living, Columbia CL-2032 and Richard Farina used the melody for his "Birmingham Sunday" (see the Richard & Mimi Fariňa Fan Site ).

This is another example where Dylan not only adapted the tune but where also the lyrics served as a starting point and offered some inspiration. His first verse starts with the same motif: "I once loved a girl [...] but now she is gone" echoes "I once loved a lass [...] but now [...] she's gone". Also his last verse:

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"
And I answer them most mysteriously,
"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"

is built like one verse in MacColl's version (also noted by Heylin, p. 196):

The men of yon forest, they ask it of me
"How many strawberries grow in the salt sea?"
And I ask of them back with a tear in my eye
"How many ships sail in the forest?"

- It Ain't Me Babe

This is an original song with a new melody. Dylan recycled some ideas for the lyrics from his own earlier song "Hero Blues" and the "No, no, no..." of the refrain may be an ironic reference to the Beatles' "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah..." (see Heylin, p. 189 )

Though the opening line may be taken from "Go Way From My Window" by John Jacob Niles there are no further musical parallels. Niles' song is no traditional. He wrote it in 1908, when he "was 16 years of age [...] The idea came from one line, sung over and over again by a ditch-digger employed by my father around the turn of the century":

Go 'way from my window,
Go 'way from my door,
Go 'way, 'way, 'way from my bedside,
And bother me no more.

[...]

Go on your way, be happy,
Go on your way, and rest,
Remember dear that you're the one,
I really did love the best,
I really did love the best.

Niles recorded this song a couple of times since 1941 (see discography on John-Jacob-Niles.com). One version was included on John Jacob Niles Sings Folk Songs (Folkways FW02373, released 1964; the quote and the lyrics are taken from the liner notes for this collection). A live-recording from 1957 is at the moment available at YouTube. No Direction Home included a short clip of Niles performing "Go 'Way From My Window". Other Folk Revivalist have recorded this song, too (see a discography on Folk Music - An Index To Recorded Resources), for example Burl Ives (1959), Carolyn Hester (1961) and Joan Baez (1964, on her 5th Album, available at YouTube).

The phrase "go away from my window" has also been used in other songs, for example in Sleepy John Estes' "Drop Down Mama" (1935, on YouTube; also one of the "prototypes" for "From A Buick 6", thanks to Gray, Encyclopedia, p. 212 for pointing this out):

Go away from my window, quit scratchin' on my screen.
You's a dirty mistreater, I know just what you mean.

"Go 'Way From Mah Window", a "negro woodchopper's song" is included in Carl Sandburg's American Songbag, 1927, p. 377 (also in Lomax, American Ballads And Folk Songs, 1934, p. 198 ). This may be the kind of song John Jacob Niles had heard in his youth:

Go 'way f'om mah window,
Go 'way f'om mah do',
Go 'way f'om mah bedside,
Don' you tease me no mo'

There is also a much older British ballad called "Go From My Window" (see Digital Tradition Database, a recording by Shirley & Dolly Collins is available on YouTube) that is known at least since the 16th century, see Chappell/McFarren, The Ballad Literature And Popular Music Of The Olden Time, 1855, p. 140 - 142 .

--------------------------------

- Mama, You've Been on My Mind

Original melody, no known precursor

During some RT shows in '75 Dylan said that this song had been inspired by a song by Bill Monroe but I have no idea which one it could be. To me it seems the biggest musical influence on "Mama..." was his own "Don't Think Twice".

Bringing It All Back Home

- Subterranean Homesick Blues

Dylan has credited - in an interview with Robert Hilburn in 2004 - Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" (1956, here at YouTube) as a major inspiration for this song (see the interesting analysis at The Dylan Commentaries) . But it seems to me that Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" (also at YouTube) played a great role, too.

Chuck Berry's Rock'n Roll songs were based on the Hokum Blues of the late 20s and the 30s. "It's Tight Like That" by Tampa Red & Georgia Tom in 1928 was the key song of this genre and also one of the most influential and most often copied Blues recordings ever (mp3).

And this kind of Hokum Blues was in some way a simplified variant of the Ragtime dance music of the 1910s that had been created by black songwriters like Chris Smith and Shelton Brooks as well as Jewish immigrant songwriters, especially Irving Berlin. Someone once wrote about Berlin:

[He] was to use language itself as the medium of his self-invention. Language for him was not something fixed and traditional; it was an assemblage of exploitable accidents. [His] contribution to [American popular music] was the "ragged" rhyme", [...] the fusion of Yiddish rap and African-American ragtime. He had a genius for giving common American phrases the nervous musical impulse of the modern city. Over and over he discovered the syncopation in ordinary speech rhythms (David Schiff, For Everyman, by Everyman: ... Irving Berlin Helped to Create a National Identity, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 277, March 1996).

These lines make me always think of the Bob Dylan of "Subterranean Homesick Blues".

- She Belongs To Me

The melody of "She Belongs To Me" sounds to me as if it was derived from or inspired by "Betty And Dupree" (or "Dupree Blues" or "Frank Dupree"), a murder ballad from the 20s based on a real story (see Traditional Ballad Index & The Originals for discographical data). This song was written and first recorded by Blind Andy Jenkins (i. e. Rev. Andrew Jenkins, a very profilic songwriter) in 1925, the same year also by Vernon Dalhart (I haven't been able to find these two recordings) and since then there have been many versions, for example this one by the legendary guitar player Willie Walker (1930):

Other recordings were for example by: Georgia White (1935), Woody Herman (1937, YouTube) Teddy Grace (1939, YouTube), Josh White (1946, now available on Free And Equal Blues, Folkways SFW40081), Brownie McGhee (1955, on Brownie McGhee Blues, Folkways FW02030), Chuck Willis (1957), Billy Lee Riley, Billy Adams (195? , YouTube), Dave van Ronk (1959) and Peter, Paul & Mary (1965).

Here is one version of the melody and the lyrics (c/o Digital Tradition Database):

Betty told Dupree, "I want a diamond ring." (2x)
Dupree told Betty, "l'Il give you most anything."

He said, "Lie down, little Betty, see what tomorrow brings," (2x)
It may bring sunshine, may bring you that diamond ring."

Then he got his pistol, went to the jewelry store,(2x)
Killed a policeman and he wounded four or five more.

Then he went to the post office to get the evening mail (2x)
Sheriff caught poor Dupree and put him in that old Atlanta jail.

Dupree's mother said to Betty, "Looka' here what you done done."(2x)
"Made my boy rob and steal, now he is gonna be hung"

Betty went to the jailhouse, she could not see Dupree (2x)
She told the jailer, "Tell him these words for me."

"I come to see you, baby, I could not see your face." (2x)
"You know I love you, but I cannot take your place."

Sail on, sail on, sail on, Dupree, sail on. (2x)
You don't mind sailing, you'll be gone so doggone long.

- Maggie's Farm

Heylin (p. 231) claims that this is "an electric reworking of the traditional 'Down On Penny's Farm'". But the only thing these two songs have in common is the "farm". Apart from that they are completely different. "Maggie's Farm" has an original melody and to my knowledge there are no musical parallels to other songs.

- Love Minus Zero/No Limit

Original song with a new melody.

- Outlaw Blues
- On The Road Again

Generic Blues melodies without any specific precedent.Please see The Dylan Commentaries for an interesting discussion of "Outlaw Blues"

- Bob Dylan's 115th Dream

Recycles the melody of "Motorpsycho Nightmare"

- Mr. Tambourine Man

Original song with a new melody.

Enough has been written about this great song but it should be noted that it was Bob Dylan who introduced the "Tambourine Man" to popular culture. Before him there were only "Tambourine Girls". For example Irving Berlin wrote a song called "My Tambourine Girl" for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 (performed by John Reed with a couple of girls as the "Salvation Lassies", see Kimball/Emmett, The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, 2005, p. 187). It's a WWI song about a fellow who falls in love with a girl from the salvation army he had first seen

[...]
in the city's mad whirl;
Ere we thought of goin' to war

[Refrain]
I met her on Broadway
With a tambourine in her hand
"Follow on, follow on"
Was her solemn cry
To the passersby
[...]

Later, when he's a soldier in Europe he meets her again "out in no-man's land":

Out in Flanders she came to my aid

In fact songs about the Salvation Army, especially about the girls with the tambourine were very popular in these years. One example is "My Salvation Army Girl" by Al Piantadosi & Jack Mason (1918, sheet music at the Lester S. Levy Collection) and another from before the war is "Salvation Nell" (1913) by Grant Clarke, Edgar Leslie & Theodore Morse (sheet music c/o The Lester S. Levy Collection, an mp3 of a recording by Henry Burr & The Peerless Quartet, 1913, c/o The Internet Archive). In this song all the men in town follow the "swell" girl from the Salvation Army with her "cute" tambourine:

There's a girl of sweet seventeen,
Always has a cute tambourine
Heavenly grace, heavenly face
Neath a bonnet, with 'Salvation' written on it,
Every fellow living in town
Thinks she's mighty swell,
Ev'ry night they gather around
Sweet Salvation Nell

[refrain]:
She keeps on saying "Follow Onward! Brothers!"
And they always follow Salvation Nell.
She gets them shouting
"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
Doctors, lawyers, butchers and bakers,
And some sporty old fellows as well.
They've been sinners for years
Yet they burst out in tears,
And join the army, join the army
Just to be around Salvation Nell

- Gates Of Eden

Original song with a new melody.

- It's Alright, Ma

The guitar riff Dylan plays between the verses is borrowed from the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Suzie" (1957). Dylan had used it before on "Highway 51" (on Bob Dylan, see Harvey, p. 42). The descending bass-line played during the verse is similar to the one used in the third line of "Ballad Of Hollis Brown".

- It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Original song with a new melody. Dylan has mentioned Gene Vincent's "Baby Blue" (YouTube) as an inspiration but Matthew Zuckerman correctly notes that "there is no relationship between the songs beyond the name, Baby Blue".

-----------------------------------

- Farewell Angelina

The melody of "Farewell Angelina" is borrowed from "Farewell To Tarwathie", the song of a whaler from Tarwathie (Aberdeenshire) who is about to set out for Greenland. It is easy to see that the lyrics also offered Dylan a good starting point for his own surreal Farewell song (melody & lyrics c/o Digital Tradition Database):

Farewell to Tarwathie, adieu Mormond Hill
And the dear land o' Crimond, I'll bid you fareweel
I'm bound out for Greenland and ready to sail
In hopes to find riches in hunting the whale

Adieu to my comrades, for awhile we must part
And likewise the dear lass that fair won my heart
The cold ice of Greenland, my love will not chill
And the longer my absence, more loving she'll feel

Our ship is well rigged and she's ready to sail
Our crew, they are anxious to follow the whale
Where the icebergs do float and the stormy winds blow
Where the land and the ocean are covered with snow

The cold coast of Greenland is barren and bare
No seed time nor harvest is ever known there
And the birds here sing sweetly on mountain and dale
But there isn't a birdie to sing tae the whale

There is no habitation for a man to live there
And the king of that country is the fierce Greenland bear
And there will be no temptation to tarry long there
Wi' our ship bumper full, we will homeward repair

"Farewell To Tarwathie" was first recorded by A. L. Lloyd for the LP Thar She Blows! (Riverside RLP 12-635, 1956) which was reissued in the 60s in the USA on Whaling Ballads (Washington WLP 724). At the moment the song is available on A.L. Lloyd, Leviathan! - Ballads And Songs Of The Wailing Trade (Topic TSCD 497, 1967 &1998; here on amazon.co.uk). Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger printed it in 1960 in their important and influential collection The Singing Island. A Collection of English and Scots Folksongs and it was also included in MacColls Folk Songs and Ballads of Scotland (Oak Publication, 1965) although the latter obviously postdates Dylan's recording. A fine recent performance by Raymond Crooke is available at YouTube

For more about this song's history see my article on justanothertune.com .

Roots of Bob Dylan (2): "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1963)

2010-07-06T19:46:00.031+02:00

This is Vol. 2 of my series Roots of Bob Dylan 1962 - 1966. Here I will discuss the original songs from The Times They Are A-Changin' plus some important outtakes.

Please read the

Introduction

that also includes the necessary credits and a list of the most important literature and online resources used here.

The complete series:

Vol. 1: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Bob Dylan" & "The Freewheelin'" (1962/63)
Vol. 2: Roots of Bob Dylan: "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1963)
Vol. 3: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Another Side of Bob Dylan" & Bringing It All Back Home" (1964/65)
Vol. 4: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Highway 61 Revisited" & Blonde On Blonde" (1965/66) (coming later)

- The Times They Are A-Changin' (& Paths Of Victory)

Harvey (p. 112) claims that the melody is derived from "Deliverance Will Come" although he also writes (p. 119) that "the distance in terms of melodic development from 'Deliverance Will Come' to 'The Times...' is considerable" . This is a 19th century hymn most likely written in 1836 by The Reverend John B. Mathias. It has also been recorded by Uncle Dave Macon (1926, as "Palms Of Victory") and the Carter Family (1936, as "The Wayworn Traveler").

For more information about the song's history see Hymntime.com, Manfred Helfert's BobDylanRoots.com, Wikipedia and Harvey, p. 84. Here's a printed version from the Church and Sunday school hymnal : a collection of hymns and sacred songs, appropriate for church services, Sunday schools and general devotional exercises, 1902, p. 132 (c/o The Internet Archive):

Dylan had already used this song as a blueprint for his own "Paths Of Victory" (see Harvey, p. 84-86) but I must admit I can't hear any musical relationship to "The Times They Are A-Changin'".

Recently Dylan himself revealed the source for the melody of "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (see this article on the website of Tour Scotland. Thanks to Stew for bringing it to my attention and sending me some more information including some of the links used here): "51st (Highland) Division's Farewell To Sicily" (lyrics: Hamish Henderson (194?), music: "Farewell To The Creeks" by Pipe Major James Robertson (1915). About " Farewell To The Creeks", quoted from: Andrew Kuntz, The Fiddler's Companion:

Scottish, English, American; Pipe March and Jig. D Major. Standard tuning. AABB. “Farewell to the Creeks” is a well-known north country tune composed by Pipe Major James ‘Pipie’ Robertson of Boyne, Banffshire, in 1915 when he was a prisoner of war in Germany[...] It is the vehicle for Hamish Henderson’s popular song "The Highland Division’s Farewell to Sicily,” also called “Banks of Sicily,” composed while he was Intelligence Officer for the Highland Division in World War II. G. W. Lockhart (in Fiddles and Folk, 1998) relates that Henderson had been viewing the smoke curling from Mt. Etna’s crater in the distance behind the Pipes and Drums of the division’s 153 Brigade, when the band launched into “Farewell to the Creeks.” “Without hindrance,” said Henderson, “the words came flowing to me.”

More info about this song is available on TheSessionOrg : Farewell To The Creeks (including sheet music). It's not so much Henderson who deserves the credit but Major Robertson for his beautiful melody. But Dylan didn't use the whole tune but only a very distinctive musical phrase that he turned into a kind of leitmotif for "The Times They Are A-Changin'"

Henderson's "Farewell To Sicily" was recorded by Ewan MacColl on Barrack Room Ballads (Topic 10T26, ca. 1958?). and then reissued on The Real MacColl (Topic, 1993, see amazon.co.uk for 30 seconds of this song). Hamish Henderson's own recording is now available on A' The Bairns O Adam (Greentrax CDTRAX244, 2003, hear a 30-second snippet at amazon.co.uk).

Richard Farina recorded it with Carolyn Hester and the McEwens on the Scottish EP Four For Fun (1962) and later used the tune as part of his Dulcimer instrumental "Hamish" (on Celebrations For A Gray Day, 1965, see the Richard and Mimi Farina Fan Site). The song was also printed in SingOut! in 1959 and in Norman Buchan, 101 Scottish Songs (1962). Unfortunately I can't use any these recordings here. But there are some more recent performances available at YouTube:

"Farewell To The Creeks played on a bagpipe
The McCalmans, Farewell To Sicily (1977)

- Ballad Of Hollis Brown

Based on "Pretty Polly". For the history of this song see the Traditional Ballad Index. It's a simplified variant of the older British ballad "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" or "The Gosport Tragedy" (printed since 1767 , see also the Traditional Ballad Index). Pretty Polly was first printed in the USA in Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway, Lonesome Tunes: Folk Songs from the Kentucky Mountains, Volume I (1916), p. 79-81 and first recorded by B.F. Shelton in 1927 (mp3 )

Most later versions seem to derive from Shelton's recording. Dylan himself performed that song in 1961 (mp3: Bonnie Beechers Apartment, May '61) and here the melody already sounds very close to the one used for "Hollis Brown". Harvey (p.13 ) thinks Jean Ritchie's version may have been Dylan's source (although Dylan surely knew Shelton's recording). She has recorded the song in 1959 for Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand & David Sear, A Folk Concert at Town Hall, New York (Folkways FW 02428) and then later in 1963 for Jean Ritchie And Doc Watson at Folk City (Folkways FW 40005). But of course it could also have been Pete Seeger's recording (on American Ballads, Folkways FW 02319, 1957).

- With God on Our Side

Based on Dominic Behan, "The Patriot Game" (see Wikipedia; Behan's own recording is at the moment available at YouTube). Dylan may have learned it from the Clancy Brothers, who used to perform this song; a live version was released in 1963 . In the USA "The Patriot Game" was also recorded by the Kingston Trio (YouTube) so I presume it was well known among Folk Revivalists. According to Heylin (p. 138) Dylan heard it first from British singer Nigel Denver.

The melody is older ("The Bold Grenadier"/"The Nightingale"/"One Morning In May", "The Lady And The Soldier") and variants have been collected since 1903 (see the Traditional Ballad Index, see also "Song To Woody"). There is also an undated 19th-century broadside in the collection of the Bodleian Library. Behan may have borrowed the tune from a recording of "The Nightingale" by Jo Stafford (1948, YouTube) that seems to be derived from a printed version in Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway, Lonesome Tunes: Folk Songs from the Kentucky Mountains, Volume I (1916), p. 68-72.

But it also could have been Burl Ives' version of this ballad: "Hear A Nightingale Sing", recorded 1952, issued 1956 on In The Quiet Of The Night , Decca, now available on The Singing Wayfarer, Proper Records. See Harvey, p. 123 for a discussion of this two songs' relationship to "The Patriot Game".

- One Too Many Mornings

According to Harvey (p. 77) Dylan "once again uses 'Deliverance Will Come' as a point of departure [...] He maintains some aspects of [that song] but significantly alters the form and phrase structure [...] the result is unique and fresh, the mark of a maturing composer".

- North Country Blues

[...] the melody derives from the late 19th century Great Lakes ballad 'Red Iron Ore' [...] The song was printed in Franz Rickaby's 'Ballads And Songs Of The Shanty Boy' (1926, p. 161 [here as a Google book , a short comment is on p. 225 ]) from the singing of Michael Cassius Dean of Virginia, Minnesota, 15 miles east of Hibbing [...] Dylan drops the [...] refrain, while retaining the meter, phrase structure, and much of the melodic contour from 'Red Iron Ore'" (Harvey, p. 76f).

This lyrics of "Red Iron Ore" were first printed in Dean's own book Flying cloud, and one hundred and fifty other old time songs and ballads of outdoor men, sailors, lumber jacks, soldiers, men of the great lakes, railroad men, miners, etc (1922, p. 12) Via Rickaby's book - who combined it with a tune, I wonder if that one really was the melody used by Dean - the song found its way into Carl Sandburg's American Songbag (1927, p. 176) and John Lomax, American Ballads And Folk Songs (1934, p. 477):

See also the Digital Tradition Database for a set of lyrics and the melody.

The earliest recordings:

Bob Gibson, There's A Meetin' Here Tonight, Riverside RLP 111, 1958 (a snippet of this version can be found on allmusic.com )
Vivien Richman, Sings Folk Songs of West Pennsylvania, FW03568 , 1959
Alan Mills, Canada's Story In Song, Folkways FW0300 (as "Iron Ore by 'Fifty-Four'" same melody with a new set of lyrics about the building of a railway written in 1954)

- Only A Pawn In Their Game

Original melody, no known precedent. One of the major motifs in "Only A Pawn In Their Game" is the idea that the people are taught racism ("He's taught in his school...", "And he's taught how to walk in a pack..."). The same idea - only expressed in a more universal way - can be found "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" (from South Pacific, 1949) by Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

- Boots Of Spanish Leather

See "Girl From The North Country" that has exactly the same melody.

The lyrics are typical Dylanesque patchwork. The "lonesome ocean" may have been borrowed from "Golden Vanity", the "diamonds from the deepest ocean" make me think of Irving Berlin's great classic "How Deep Is The Ocean", "[...] stormy weather" may also be a reference to the famous song by Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler and the "spanish leather" is surely derived from the "Gipsy Laddie/Gipsy Davy" song family where it was an important textual hook that has survived from the earliest 18th century broadsides until today:

She pulled off her high heel'd shoes,
They were made of Spanish Leather.

"My Ship" by Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin from the 1941 musical Lady In The Dark shares with "Boots Of Spanish Leather" the major motif: all the material things don't mean nothing if I don't get my "own true love" back

My ship has sails that are made of silk
The decks are trimmed with gold
And of jam and spice
There's a paradise in the hold.

My ship's aglow with a million pearls
And rubies fill each bin
The sun sits high in a sapphire sky
When my ship comes in

I can wait the years till it appears
One fine day one spring
But the pearls and such
They don't mean much
If there's missing just one thing

I do not care if that day arrives
That dream need never be
If the ship I sing
Doesn't also bring
My own true love to me

Another closely related 20th century song is "Something To Remember You By" by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, written in 1930 for the revue Three's A Crowd where Libby Holman sang it to a sailor. This song later became a standard, it was recorded and performed by many singers. In the 40s it was a hit for Dinah Shore, see YouTube for Vera Lynn's version, 1941:

Oh, give me something to remember you by
When you are far away from me, dear;
Some little something, meaning love can not die,
No matter where you chance to be.
Though Ill pray for you, night and day for you;
It will see me through like a charm,
Till youre returning.
So give me something to remember you by
When you are far away from me.

Here the woman asks her sailor to give her a token "to remember you by", "some little something" that should help her during the time when he's away. But - unlike Dylan's song - it's only one side of the story and the listener somehow knows that the sailor won't be back. This is a song that Dylan surely knew well. "Something To Remember You By" may have also been an influence on "Girl From The North Country" where a variant of the line "pray for you, night and day for you" was used. Other related sailor songs from this era are "I Cover The Waterfront" and "Red Sails In The Sunset", both torch songs where a lonesome lover is waiting for a ship to return with the lost love.

Even more songs from this song family were published during the 19th century: a sailor leaves his girl and sails away, she is usually waiting patiently at home, sometimes he comes back, sometimes not. Examples are ballads like: "Sailor and His Bride", "The Gallant Sailor", "Sweet Jenny On The Moor", "Bid Me Good-bye", "Sailor's Bride", "Sailor And His True Love", "Phoebe And Her Dark-Eyed Sailor", Robert Burns' "The Soldier's Return", "Black-Eyed Susan" and many more. Many of them were later collected from oral tradition by 20th century Folklorists, so they must have been really popular.

A very interesting song from this family is "Sailor's Love Letter" (or "The Letter"). The lyrics share some motifs with "Boots Of Spanish Leather". I wonder if Dylan was aware of this one at that time. This ballad (first published ca. 1800) was very popular during the 19th century. There were a lot of broadsides printed in Britain and also some in the USA.

Some examples from Britain (c/o the Allegro Catalogue of Ballads, Bodleian Library):

Harding B11 (3106) (between 1813 and 1838)
Firth c.12 (332) (between 1863 and 1885, "The original song")
Firth c.12(338) (undated)

From the USA:

a broadside, dated (ca. 1860s) (from America Singing: Nineteenth Century Songsheets, LOC)
and as as sheet music:The Letter. A Popular Ballad. From the Songs of the Superstions [sic] of Ireland. (undated, "Written and Composed by Samuel Lover, Esqr." [I presume he wrote a new melody]; "as Sung with great Applause by Madame [Maria] Caradori Allan [Italian concert & opera singer, 1800-1865] " (c/o Lester Levy Collection Of Sheet Music).

This is a compilation of all verses used for this song. The versions I know are either missing the first two stanzas or the last two.

Dearest maiden I must leave thee,
Far to sail on the raging sea,
I'll return when Fortune waves me
Back again my love, to thee.
I'll return, and then we'll marry;
-Oh, how happy then we'll be!-
But if I am forced to tarry,
I'll send a long letter back to thee.

Morn is broke and they are parted
Still the bark's in sight of home;
She walks the beach quite broken-hearted;
She can but view the bark alone.
"Adieu," she cried, "let fortune guide thee
O'er the wide and trackless sea;
Pray forget not those behind thee,
And send a letter back to me."

Fare thee well, love, now thou art going,
Over the wild and trackless sea;
Smooth be its waves, and fair the wind blowing,
Though it's to bear thee far from me.
But when on the western ocean,
Some happy home-bound bark you see,
Swear by the truth of your heart's devotion,
To send a letter back to me.

Think of the shore thou'st left behind thee,
Even when reaching a brighter strand,
Let not the golden glories blind thee,
Of that glorious Indian land.
Send me not its diamond treasures,
Nor pearls from the depths of its sandy sea,
But tell me of all your woes and pleasures,
In a long letter back to me.

But while dwelling in lands of pleasure,
Think as you bask in the bright sunshine,
That while the lingering time I measure,
Sad and wintry hours are mine.
Lonely by my taper weeping,
And watching the spark of promise to see,
All for that bright spark my night watch keeping,
For, oh! 'tis a letter back from thee.

To say that soon thy sail will be flowing,
Homeward to bear thee over the sea,
Calm be the waves, and swift the wind blowing.
For, oh! thou art coming back to me.
To say thy heart is as true as ever
Though many fair ones thou hast seen,
But from love's pledge you ne'er shall siver
Till death his dart does pierce so keen.

I can't leave out Irving Berlin's "Kiss Your Sailor Boy Goodbye" (1913, see the sheet music), an amusing parody of these kind of songs. At this time Berlin was experimenting with ballads and he regularly made fun of Victorian values and the romantic ideology in general:

My honey dear, my honey dear
You hear the steamboat whistle blowin'
My honey dear, my honey dear
The whistle means I must be going
Far across the sea
Hear them calling me
It's the Captain's orders
I must go
So

[chorus:]
Kiss your sailor boy goodbye
Now don't you cry
Just dry that tear from your eye, my honey
Don't feel so blue
I'll write to you
If I don't I hope to die
When I'm away
You bet I'll stay
All by my "own-some," real lonesome for you
Honey
Sweet letters I'll be sending
With crosses on the ending
Kiss your sailor boy goodbye

[2nd verse:]
My honey dear, my honey dear
You better save up all your lovin'
Remember dear, remember dear
My heart'll be just like an oven
When my ship comes in
Honey, we'll begin
To make up for lost time
Don't forget
Pet
[chorus:]

Most important in "Boots Of Spanish Leather" is the reversal of the gender roles. The song starts with a male voice singing "Oh I'm sailin' away my own true love" and seems to take the typical path of these kind of stories. But with verse 2 we hear that it is a dialogue between two lovers and only with verse 7 it becomes clear that it is the woman who has left to sail "across the lonesome ocean". This skillful dramartugy gives the song most of its effectivity.

In 19th century songs it was usually the man - a "real" sailor or soldier - who had to leave. 20th century songs like "Something To Remember You By" and "I Cover The Waterfront" had originally been writen for female performers. But when male singers recorded them they already anticipated the reversal of gender roles. One of the major developments in 20th century popular songs was change of female role models. Now the girls became more active and more self-confident and it is often enough the man who has to wait patiently for lost lover.

- When The Ship Comes In

Original melody, no known precursor ("no specific melodic precedent" - Harvey, p. 118).

- The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

Heylin (p. 166) claims that Dylan has set his lyrics "to the tune of Child Ballad 173 [see also the Traditional Ballad Index], 'Mary Hamilton'". I presume he means one of the melodies (see for example the different tune printed in Child, The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, Vol. 5, 1898, p. 421) used for this ancient ballad, the one that is common today (c/o : Digital Tradition Database):

This is the melody used for example by Joan Baez, who recorded the song in 1960 (here is an early live performance at YouTube; check out a fine recent performance by Raymond Crooke, also at YouTube ). Heylin (p. 168) mentions Jeannie Robertson's "deathless rendition" (first released on The Folk Songs Of Britain: Child Ballads 2, Caedmon TC1146) as a possible inspiration. But I only hear very few echoes of the melody of Joan Baez' version in the refrain of Dylan's song.

Dylan himself once claimed (in the liner notes to Biograph) that "Pirate Jenny" (also called "The Black Freighter", original German title: "Seeräuber Jenny") from the Dreigroschenoper by Brecht & Weill (1928) had served as a model for "Hattie Carroll". Harvey (p. 64) sees "structural, melodic, and lyric connections" to "Hattie Carroll". But I must admit that his analysis doesn't convince me. Here's Lotte Lenya singing the original German version in the movie Die Dreigroschenoper (1931):

In 1962 she performed the English version for the BBC:

I think "Hattie Carroll" owes very little to those two songs and the melody is for the most part Dylan's own work.

But maybe it was another ballad by Brecht that gave Dylan some ideas for the structure of "Hattie Carroll": ín his "Von der Kindesmörderin Marie Farrar" (written 1922, first published 1926 in the "Hauspostille"; engl. "Of The Infanticide Marie Farrar"; see Gray, Encyclopedia, p. 86) the verses close with a short refrain that directly adresses the listener:

[1st verse in German]
Marie Farrar, geboren im April
Unmündig, merkmallos, rachitisch, Waise
Bislang angeblich unbescholten, will
Ein Kind ermordet haben in der Weise:
Sie sagt, sie habe schon im zweiten Monat
Bei einer Frau in einem Kellerhaus
Versucht, es abzutreiben mit zwei Spritzen
Angeblich schmerzhaft, doch ging's nicht heraus.

Doch ihr, ich bitte euch, wollt nicht in Zorn verfallen
Denn alle Kreatur braucht Hilf von allen.

An English translation:

Marie Farrar, born in April,
No marks, a minor, rachitic, both parents dead,
Allegedly, up to now without police record,
Committed infanticide, it is said,
As follows: in her second month, she says,
With the aid of a barmaid she did her best
To get rid of her child with two douches,
Allegedly painful but without success.

But you, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.

- Restless Farewell

This song is of course based on the Clancy Brother's version of "The Parting Glass" (or: "Good Night and Joy Be With You All"). They brought it to America, it was in their live repertoire in the early 60s and they released a live version in 1964 on The Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, In Person At Carnegie Hall (see allmusic.com).

A19th century broadside.
A fine performance by Liam Clancy & Tommy Makem (Dublin 1977) at YouTube.
More about this song on my website: Some Notes On The History Of "The Parting Glass"

-----------------------------------

- Lay Down Your Weary Tune

"I had heard a Scottish ballad on an old 78 record that I was trying to really capture the feeling of, that was haunting me [...] There were no lyrics or anything. It was just a melody [...] I wanted lyrics that would feel the same way" (Bob Dylan, liner notes to Biograph)

Now it is not known what recording Dylan was listening to but the melody he wrote for "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" is surely related to the one used for the Folk revival standard "The Water Is Wide" (see also Harvey, p. 60/61). Here is one variant (thanks to the Digital Tradition Database, from a recording by the Beers Family that is available at the website of the State Archives Of Florida):

Please see my attempt at reconstructing the history of this song that is now available on my website:

"The Water Is Wide" - The History Of A "Folk Song"

- Percy's Song

This song is based on "The Wind And The Rain", an obscure and very rare variant of "The Two Sisters" (Child No. 10) collected a couple of times in southwestern Virginia (1937, 1941, 1962). Dylan may have learned it from Paul Clayton who "performed three variants of 'The Two Sisters' for the 1963 Newport Folk Festival Saturday morning (June 27) Ballad Workshop" where he was present (Harvey, p. 87, see also Heylin, p. 159)

Melody and lyrics for a version by Dan Tate recorded in 1962 are available at the Digital Tradition Database:

Two loving sisters was a-walking side by side,
Oh the wind and rain.
One pushed the other off in the waters, waters deep.
And she cried, "The dreadful wind and rain."

[...]

The only tune that my fiddle would play,
was Oh the wind and the rain.
The only tune that my fiddle would play, was
And she cried, "The dreadful wind and rain."

Another version of this variant was recorded in 1969 and is available on Kilby Snow, Country Songs And Tunes With Autoharp (Folkways FW 03902)

Roots of Bob Dylan 1962 - 1966: Introduction

2010-07-06T15:07:00.018+02:00

Vol. 1: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Bob Dylan" & "The Freewheelin'" (1962/63)
Vol. 2: Roots of Bob Dylan: "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1963)
Vol. 3: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Another Side of Bob Dylan" & Bringing It All Back Home" (1964/65)
Vol. 4: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Highway 61 Revisited" & Blonde On Blonde" (1965/66) (coming later)

Introduction

It is widely known a lot of Bob Dylan's songs are in some way based on or derived from or influenced by earlier songs. Discussing these influences is a favourite subject among Dylan fans and professional "Dylanologists". Unfortunately these days Dylan is often enough smeared as a plagiarist who has stolen "everything". That's of course laughable.

There is also the opposite attitude: everything is justified because it is the so-called "Folk process". But this term often only serves as an excuse for blatant plagiarism and a songwriters inability or unwillingness to come up with something original. The truth is somewhere in between. Every songwriter borrows and "steals". Musicologist Charles Hamm for example once wrote about Irving Berlin:

"[he] more effectively than any of his peers, drew on the collective knowledge and memory of his audience to fashion dramatic situations and musical phrases similar to those found in songs they already knew, [but] shaped in slightly unexpected ways. His best songs were almost - but not quite - already known to his listeners when heard for the first time. They were old stories with a new twist [...] Berlin [...] deliberately and routinely used rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic patterns similar to those found in other pieces, as well as direct quotations of lyrics and music from other songwriters, for associative and expressive effect" (quoted from Professor Hamm's great book Irving Berlin, Songs From The Melting Pot: The Formative Years 1907 - 1914, New York & Oxford 1997, p. 108/9).

Writing a popular song often means using bits and pieces from very disparate sources and then turn it into something new. It is important to understand how Dylan used this bits and pieces because it helps to understand the songwriting technique. At first it's always necessary to explain exactly the relationship to the song used as a source:

sometimes the melody is lifted completely, as for example in "Song To Woody", "Masters Of War", "Bob Dylan's Dream" or "Farewell Angelina".
then there are Dylan songs that are in one way or another based upon on songs: sometimes the melody is still very close to the original (as in "North Country" Blues"), sometimes it's partly changed and only retains some elements but is still recognizable (as for example in "Lay Down Your Weary Tune"), often it's very different, in fact a new melody (as in "Girl From The North Country" or in "I Don't Believe You")
then there are many examples where Dylan only uses an idea, a musical phrase, a motif, a structural device etc. from an older song and reshapes it to serve his purposes.

I tried to put together what is known today and sometimes tried to dig a little deeper (and added some of my own research). For the early songs I will regularly refer to and quote from Todd Harvey's great book The Formative Dylan (2001). Unfortunately Clinton Heylin's Revolution In The Air. The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973 (2009) is often very disappointing.

I will write mostly about possible sources and influences for the music but will occasionally also discuss the lyrics. I'm also interested in Dylan's relationship to mainstream popular music, a question that is rarely approached by other researchers and writers. Too often they only refer to Folk & Blues. But I think that Bob Dylan was from the start (and especially since "Another Side of Bob Dylan", 1964) also influenced and inspired by the songs and writers of this genre (even though he rarely acknowledged them).

I have included all the songs from the regular LP's as well as a few important outtakes. Maybe I'll add some more later. An earlier version of this work as well as some individual parts have been used by me in Bob Dylan forums (especially the ExpectingRain discussion board).

Credits

I wish to thank Stew in Scotland with whom I have discussed some of these songs, who has always supported me with additional information and who has written some articles for my website some years ago.

The research for the sources of Dylan's songs started long time ago and much information was unearthed in groundbreaking articles in Dylan-fanzines in the 80s & 90s. Especially Matthew Zuckermann's article If There's An Original Thought Out There, I Could Use It Right Now: The Folk Roots of Bob Dylan (in Isis magazine ca. 1996, an expanded version is available online at Expectingrain) is still inspiring. I am also indebted to Manfred Helfert's great site Bob Dylan's Musical Roots & Influences.

Literature & the most important online resources used here

Todd Harvey, The Formative Dylan. Transmissions And Stylistic Influences, 1961 - 1963, Lanham, Maryland & London 2001 (indispensable).
Clinton Heylin, Revolution In The Air. The Songs Of Bob Dylan, 1957 - 1973, Chicago 2009
Michael Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, New York & London 2006.

BobDylan.Com (lyrics for all Dylan songs)
A Traditional Music Library
The allegro Catalogue of Ballads (Bodleian Library)
Digital Tradition Database (with lyrics to a lot of songs and many scores, some of which I used here)
Folk Music - An Index to Recorded Resources
Smithsonian Folkways
Traditional Ballad Index

Many thanks also to all the uploaders at YouTube and the Internet Archive and to Google Books

Roots of Bob Dylan (1): "Bob Dylan" & "Freewheelin'" (1962/63)

2010-07-04T12:13:00.048+02:00

This is Vol. 1 of my series Roots of Bob Dylan 1962 - 1966. Here I will discuss the original songs from "Bob Dylan" and "Freewheelin'" plus some important outtakes.

Please read the

Introduction

that also includes credits and a list of the most important literature and online resources used.

The complete series:

Vol. 1: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Bob Dylan" & "The Freewheelin'" (1962/63)
Vol. 2: Roots of Bob Dylan: "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1963)
Vol. 3: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Another Side of Bob Dylan" & Bringing It All Back Home" (1964/65)
Vol. 4: Roots of Bob Dylan: "Highway 61 Revisited" & Blonde On Blonde" (1965/66) (coming later)

Bob Dylan (1962)

- Song To Woody

Dylan borrowed the melody from Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" (1945, here at YouTube ). Of course the melody used by Guthrie is a variant of an older tune. Harvey (p. 99/100 ) discusses two possibilities: "One Morning In May" (or "The Soldier And The Lady", see the Traditional Ballad Index) and "Sweet Betsy From The Pike". Neither of them is completely identical to "1913 Massacre" but he decides for "One Morning In May".

To my ears "Sweet Betsy From Pike" sounds equally close. Maybe Guthrie simply conflated both melodies. "Sweet Betsy" was written by John A. Stone and first printed in 1858 (see the Traditional Ballad Index). It can be found in a lot of Folk song collections (here for example in Carl Sandburgs American Songbag,1927, p. 108 and John Lomax, American Ballad And Folk Songs,1934, p. 424, see also the Digital Tradition Database). The earliest recordings were by Crockett's Kentucky Mountaineers (1931), Harry McClintock (1932) and Bradley Kincaid (1934). "Sweet Betsy From The Pike" uses the tune of a British music hall song known at least since the 1820s: "Vilikens And His Dinah", (see the Traditional Ballad Index).

- Talkin' New York

For Dylan's use of the Talkin Blues see Harvey, pp. 102-105 and Manfred Helfert,John Greenway - Obvious Source for Dylan's Talkin' Blues. See also Wikipedia: Talking Blues and Chris Bouchillon - The Original Talking Blues Man (Wirz.de)

-------------------------------

- Hard Times In New York Town

This song is derived from "Down On Penny's Farm" a song recorded by the Bently Boys in 1929. This recording was also included on Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music. (see Harvey, p. 37 and the Traditional Ballad Index) . One variant ("On Tanner's Farm") was recorded in 1934 by Gid Tanner & Riley Puckett (available at The Internet Archive):

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1962/63)

- Blowin' In The Wind

This is an original melody that is loosely based on or inspired by "No More Auction Block/Many Thousands Gone": "If the melody for 'Blowin' In The Wind' does derive from 'No More Auction Block', it represents a significant reworking [...] Melodically, the two share only a few fragments: the opening and final measures" (Harvey, p. 15). That song was first printed in William Francis Allen, Slave Songs Of The United States, 1867 (no. 64). John Lomax included this version in his influential collection American Ballads And Folk Songs, 1934, p. 577:

In the early 1960s recordings of this song were easily available. Folkways alone offered at least five recordings: by Bill Bonyun (1950), Alan Mills (1956), Ella Jenkins (1960), The Harvesters (1960) and Pete Seeger (1961, on American Favourite Ballads, Vol. 4, Folkways FW 02323). Paul Robeson had recorded it too in the 50s (reissued on On My Journey. Paul Robeson's Independant Recordings, Folkways SFW 40178). Most closely related to both Dylan's own performance of "No More Auction Block" (Gerde's Folk City 1962, rel. on Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3) and to "Blowin' In The Wind" seems to me Seeger's version.

- Girl From The North Country

This is also an original melody that is loosely based on Martin Carthy's version of "Scarborough Fair". Carthy knew it from Ewan MacColl. See Digital Tradition Song Database for melody and lyrics:

It's no ancient Public Domain melody, this variant was first recorded in 1956 by Audrey Coppard on English Folksongs (Folkways FW 06917). Her source was also MacColl who recorded it in 1957 & I presume he has written the melody himself. In fact it looks like a very simplified version of a variant of "Scarborough Fair" in Cecil Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs, 1916, p. 167). See this article on this blog for an extensive discussion of "Girl From The North Country" and its relation to "Scarborough Fair" and other songs, especially Scott Wiseman's "Remember Me (When The Candle Lights Are Gleaming".

- Down The Highway

"[...] is Dylan's most original blues to date [...] signals Dylan's arrival as a Bluesman. He [...] is now capable of generating original material. His other 1962 blues were built around existing songs [...] 'Down The Highway' is wholly original" (Harvey, p. 26f). This one has nothing to do with Charlie Picket's "Down The Highway" (1937, available at YouTube).

- Masters Of War

This one is of course based on the Ritchie family's version of "Nottamun Town" . An mp3 of this song can be found on the website of the State Archives Of Florida.

Melody and lyrics are available in the new edition (1997, first publ 1965) of Jean Ritchie, Folk Songs Of The Southern Appalachians, p. 5 and at the Digital Tradition Song Database:

This version was released in 1960 and in 1963 on the LPs Jean Ritchie, Elektra 125 resp. Jean Ritchie: A Time For Singing, Warner W 1592 (discographical data from Harvey, p. 192). It was available in print in Jean Ritchie, Singing Family Of The Cumberlands (Oak Publ. 1955). The song itself - though with different melodies and titles - is of course a little older, see the Traditional Ballad Index . One version ("Fair Nottiman Town", collected in Knotts County Kentucky) was printed in an arrangement for piano and voice in Lorraine Wyman/Howard Brockway, Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs, 1920, p. 6. Cecil Sharp collected a version from members of the Ritchie family in 1917. Jean Ritchie's comments (from: Mudcat Cafe discussion board , 2000):

Lorraine Wyman collected "Fair Nottamun Town" in Knott County, in our community. "Uncle" Jason Ritchie (actually Dad's first cousin, but all called him uncle) took her around to find singers, and sang several for her, himself. It was Uncle Jason who supplied his daughter Sabrina and her cousin (my sister Una- students atHindman Settlement School where Sharp and Karpeles were 'headquartering-') with all the lyrics and melody to, "Fair Nottamun Town," and, "The Little Devils."[...] As to, Masters of War, I wanted only to ask Bob Dylan (then my friend, in the Greenwich Village folk group of those days )to honor the source of the melody, with something like, "Trad.Ritchie Family, KY." But lawyers take things out of one's hands...however, the "royalties" were a small out-of-court settlement- I never got any royalties since. And "words and music by Bob Dylan" was dropped in connection with the song (where the music should have a credit is left blank). I was satisfied with that, and I believe that Bob acted honorably with me.

Already in the 19th century a precursor of this song with different words (the melody used for this variant is not known) was performed in the USA, see this broadside: "The Gray Mare - As sung by Bob Hart at the American Concert Hall, 444 Broadway, N.Y." (undated, ca. 1860s). It was filed as "Ethiopian. Coloured", that means the song was used by black or black-face performers. Bob Hart was obviously a popular artist in that genre as there was even a songster with his repertoire available (published as Bob Hart s Plantation Songster, ca. 1862).

It's not unreasonable to assume that the so-called "Folk" versions collected in the 20th century were in fact heavily edited relics of a 19th century popular Minstrel Song. It may also be possible that "The Gray Mare" is related to or derived from an English popular song from the early 19th century ("Paddy's Ramble To London"), see the discussion about "Paddy Backwards" in the Traditional Ballad Index .

I don't want to discuss the lyrics of "Masters Of War" here but it seems to me that Dylan's last verse (especially the last line: "stand over your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead") is a nod to Lonnie Johnson's version of "Careless Love" (first recorded in 1928). The last lines of that song are:

Now damn you, I'm goin' to shoot you
And shoot you four five times
And stand over you until you finish dyin'

- Bob Dylan's Blues

"[...] doesn't draw from any specific song or artist" (Harvey, p. 17)

- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

This one was of course partly inspired by Lord Randall (Child No. 12, see also the Traditional Ballad Index):

Oh, where have you been, Lord Randal, my son?
Oh, where have you been, my handsome young man?

Dylan wrote an original melody that has "no connection" (Harvey, p. 4) to the tunes used for this old ballad (see for example the two printed in Child, The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, Vol. 5, 1898, p. 412/13 and the many variants available at the Digital Tradition Database). But on the other hand on recordings for example by Ewan MacColl (YouTube) or especially by Jimmy Driftwood (1959, available at the Wolf Folklore Collection and at YouTube) the melodies sound not that far away from the one Dylan created for the opening lines of his song and Raymond Crooke in a fine recording from June 2007 (also available on YouTube) actually uses parts of the melody of "Hard Rain".

- Don't Think Twice It's All Right

Inspired by "Who's Gonna Buy Your Ribbons When I'm Gone" by Paul Clayton, released first as a single on Monument 45-416, 1959, b/w "This Land Is Your Land", then in 1961 on the LP Homemade Songs & Ballads, Monument M 4001 (reissued on CD in 2008 on Paul Clayton, Sings Homemade Songs And Ballads/Folk Singer , Omni 120). The original lyrics are (c/o Manfred Helfert's site):

It ain't no use to sit and sigh now, darlin,
And it ain't no use to sit and cry now,
T'ain't no use to sit and wonder why, darlin,
Just wonder who's gonna buy you ribbons when I'm gone.

So times on the railroad gettin' hard, babe,
I woke up last night and saw it snow,
Remember what you said to me last summer
When you saw me walkin' down that road.

So I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road,
You're the one that made me travel on,
But still I can't help wonderin' on my way,
Who's gonna buy you ribbons when I'm gone?

The melodic similarities between "Who's Gonna Buy Your Ribbons" (a fine song and a beautiful performance by Paul Clayton; he was really a great singer) and "Don't Think Twice" are obvious and the lyrics also were an major inspiration for Dylan.

It has been claimed that Clayton's song is derived from an earlier "traditional" called "Who's Gon Bring Your Chickens" or "Who's Gonna Buy Your Chickens" but surviving songs with these or similar titles are very different (Harvey, p. 25). Heylin (p. 102) calls it a "bastardized variant drawn from the 'Who's Gonna Shoe Your Horse' family of songs" but fails to present any evidence. According to another theory "Who's Gonna Buy Your Ribbons" is based on "Scarlet Ribbons". But that's a folkified popular song(in fact many thought it was an ancient Folk ballad) written in 1949 by Jack Segal & Evelyn Danzig that was recorded in the 50s by everybody from Jo Stafford to Joan Baez (YouTube), from Jim Reeves to Harry Belafonte and a great hit for The Browns in 1959. But that one also sounds completely different.

I rather think that "Who's Gonna Buy Your Ribbons" is an original work by Clayton, in fact another folkified Pop song. Maybe these stories were simply made up, at first to save Paul Clayton from embarassment (because a Folk singer isn't supposed to write Pop song, he needs folkloristic credibility) and then to save Bob Dylan from even more embarassment (because Dylan isn't supposed to borrow from original songs, only from ancient traditionals).

By the way, another important influence on the lyrics of "Don't Think Twice" may have been "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (1958), written by Paul Anka and recorded by Buddy Holly:

There you go and baby here am I
Well you left me here so I could sit and cry
Golly gee what have you done to me
Well I guess it doesn't matter anymore

[...]

There's no use in me a-crying
I've done everything now I'm sick of trying
I've thrown away my nights
Wasted all my days over you

Now you go your way baby and I'll go mine
Now and forever till the end of time
I'll find somebody new and baby
We'll say we're through
And you won't matter anymore

- Bob Dylan's Dream

Dylan took the melody and some ideas for the lyrics from Martin Carthy's version of "Lord Franklin/Lady Franklin's Lament" (Carthy recorded it in 1966 for his Second Album; this version is at the moment available at YouTube). This ballad (see the Traditional Ballad Index) was printed on broadsides since the 1850s (see one example: Glasgow Broadside Ballads) . The first British recording was by A. L. Lloyd (ca. 1956, The Singing Sailor ,Topic). Some American and Canadian Folk singers like Wade Hemsworth (Folk Songs Of The Canadian North Woods, Folkways FW06821, 1955) and Alan Mills (O' Canada. A History In Song, Folkways SW03001, 1956) have recorded it too. They all took and most of the lyrics from Greenleaf/Mansfield, Ballads And Sea-Songs of Newfoundland, (1933) p. 308:

Paul Clayton included it on Whaling & Sailing Songs from the Days of Moby Dick, 1956, also at the moment available on YouTube:

Dylan may have known any of these versions. The tune is a variant of one of the melodies used for "The Croppy Boy" (see the Traditional Ballad Index), an Irish song printed on broadsides and songsheets in Britain and the USA since 1813 (c/o The Digital Tradition Database):

This melody was first collected by Edward Bunting in Ireland in 1803 ("The Robber - or Charles Reilly", published in: Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland, Dublin 1840, No. 65, p. 48). For more about the history of "Lady Franklin's Lament" see this text my website:

"Bob Dylan's Dream" & "Lady Franklin's Lament"

- Oxford Town

Based on "Cumberland Gap" (the "old banjo tune" Dylan once claimed as his source). For the history of this song see The Traditional Ballad Index. and Wikipedia. The first recording was in 1924 by Uncle "Am" Stuart, then the same year also by Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett. Here is the melody from Lomax, American Ballads And Folk Songs (1934):

Pete Seeger recorded this song for Frontier Ballads (Folkways FW 05003, 1954) and for my ears that version sounds as if it was Dylan's source. Many variants of Cumberland Gap have a verse like this:

Me and my wife and my wife's pap.
We all live down in the Cumberland Gap

Bob Dylan turned it into:

Me and my girl, my girl's son
We gotta met with a tear gas bomb

- Talkin' World War III Blues

A Talking Blues don't need no new melody.

- Corrina, Corrina

This adaption of a Blues- and Pop standard is a rather drastic rewrite that leaves not much of the song's original mood and content: " from a happy-go-lucky jug band song, it becomes a wistful evocation of the memory of a woman" (Matthew Zuckermna). It is so different from the precursors that he could have copyrighted it for himself. Dylan's "Corrina" is more or less a new song and not a rearranged "traditional". In fact the real "Corrina" never was a traditional, by all accounts it was written by Bo Chatmon. For more about the history of this song see Roots of Bob Dylan: "Corrina, Corrina" on this blog.

- Honey, Just Allow Me one More Chance

This is Dylan's adaption of "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance" by Texas songster Henry Thomas (1929, available on YouTube). For more about this song's history and it's relationship to Dylan's version see Harvey (p. 43/44).

- I Shall Be Free

This is derived from Woody Guthrie & Co., "We Shall Be Free", 1944 (available on YouTube) But that song has a longer prehistory, it ultimately derives from a 19th century spiritual (see Harvey, p. 51-53)

-----------------------------------

- Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Original melody, no known precursor.

As is widely known (see f. ex. Heylin, p. 87) the refrain refers to an ancient song: "Westron Wynde".

Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Cryst, if my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde again!

It first appears in a manuscript from ca. 1530 (British Museum Royal Appendix 56) but it could be a relic of an older song. The words and the original melody were reprinted for example in Ritson/Frank, Ancient Songs And Ballads, From The Reign Of King Henry The Second To The Revolution, Vol. 1 (1829), p. lxxvi/vii and in William Chappell's very influential Popular Music Of The Olden Time (1853 & 1859), p. 57/58.

The lyrics found their way into the Oxford Book Of English Verse (as "The Lover In Winter Plaineth For The Spring", here from 1901) and the song was also well known among Folk Revivalists. Richard Dyer Bennett recorded it in 1947 as a single (as "Westryn Wynde", reissued in 1958 on No. 5: Requests, now available on Folkways SFW 40143). It was also recorded by both Cynthia Gooding and Ed McCurdy in 1956 and Alfred Deller in 1958 (see the discography at Folk Music - An Index to Recorded Resources)

- John Brown

The idea for the melody is borrowed from the "Reuben's Train/Nine Hundred Miles" family of songs (see Traditional Ballad Index for more about this song, also Harvey, p. 55-57). "Train 45" by Grayson & Whitter (1927, available on YouTube) was the first recording. But Dylan surely was familiar with Woody Guthrie's "Nine Hundred Miles" (1944, YouTube). The melody (c/o) the Digital Tradition Database:

The lyrics of have some parallels both with "Reuben's Train/Nine Hundred Miles" (the train and the letter) and with the Irish anti-War song "Mrs. McGrath" (see the Traditional Ballad Index and the Digital Tradition Database, see Harvey, p. 54/55; recorded at that time for example by Tommy Makem, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives and Theodore Bikel)

[...]
But a cannon ball, on the fifth of May,
Tore my two fine legs from the knees away

But I wonder if Dylan also knew Irving Berlin's "They Are All Out Of Step But Jim" (1918), a spoof on parents boasting proudly about the soldier son.

Jimmy's mother went to see her son
Marching along on parade
In his uniform and with his gun
What a lovely picture he made
She came home that ev'ning
Filled up with delight
And to all the neighbors
She would yell with all her might

- Walls Of Red Wing

Dylan used the melody of "The Road And Miles To Dundee" as recorded by Ewan MacColl on Bothy Ballads of Scotland (Folkways FW 08759, 1961). For more about this song see the Traditional Ballad Index and Stewart Grant on morerootsofbob. The melody and lyrics are available at the Digital Tradition Database.

- Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie

Based on the Clancy Brother' version of "Brennan On The Moor" (see an Australian TV recording from 1963 on YouTube):

Brennan hadbeen a popular highwayman in Ireland in the early years of the 19th century. This ballad was printed on broadsides since the 1840s (see this one from the Bodleian's allegro Catalogue: "Brennan On The Moor") and was well known in Ireland, England and the USA.

For more about this song see: Some Notes On The History Of "Brennan On The Moor" (JustAnotherTune.com) and check out Liam Clancy's performance of "Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie" at a Dylan Tribute in 2005.

Irving Berlin - "When That Man Is Dead And Gone" (1941)

2010-06-25T17:19:00.011+02:00

On February 1st, 1941 on the radio show ASCAP On Parade a new song by Irving Berlin was introduced to the public: "When That Man Is Dead And Gone". According to the New York Times this "timely spiritual" was one of the "highlights" of the program

[...]
When that man is dead and gone
When that man is dead and gone
We’ll go dancing down the street
[...]
On the morning when we read,
That that man is dead and gone,
We've got a date to celebrate,
On the day we catch up with that one man spreading hate
His account is overdrawn.
All his chances are in pawn.
Some fine day the news will flash,
Satan with a small moustache
Is asleep beneath the lawn,
When that man his dead and gone.

Of course the "satan with a small moustache" was easy to identify. The NYT with its usual understatement only commented that this song was "generally believed to have Hitler in mind, though his name is not mentioned" (NYT, 2.2.1941, 22.2.1941)

In the years before WWII Irving Berlin was the politically most active popular songwriter. His daughter later wrote:

“For my parents, though, the war in Europe remained frighteningly close [...] they genuinely believed, in the summer and fall of 1940 and well into the next year, that the Germans would win [...] Eventually, so they went their worst imaginings, he would conquer England, then Canada, then ‘make an arrangement’ with the United States that would amount to conquest [...] Politics became the stuff of their lives" (Barrett, p. 186)

Irving Berlin and his wife - “a couple with a mission” (Barrett, p. 186) - took a very pronounced stand during these years. Actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. later remembered that the “American Jews [...] would, of course, risk beeing attacked as warmongers [...] if they supported anti-Nazi movements”. (Carr, p. 160). Nonetheless Berlin was for example busy assisting European refugees, helping out the British War Relief Society and became member of the Committee To Defend America By Aiding The Allies. In 1940 the Berlins campaigned once more for President Roosevelt and he “seemed to be spending all his time singing ‘God Bless America’ at civic events” (Barrett, p. 188). "God Bless America", published in November 1938 to "wake up America", had become the theme song of the pro-British and anti-German internationalists.

Months before Pearl Harbour Berlin wrote benefit songs in support of his government’s efforts for defense, for example in June 1941 “Any Bonds Today?” and “Arms For The Love Of America” (available on YouTube) . Those songs were not simple patriotic ditties but at that time outright political statements. The same can be said for his two songs performed at the ASCAP program. The other one was "A Little Old Church In England", a touching ballad reminding of war-harassed Britain.

"When That Man Was Dead And Gone" was performed once again three weeks later at a benefit show for the British War Relief Society by the St. Elmo Johnson Choir (NYT, 22.2.1941) and was also recorded by some popular artists, for example Mildred Bailey and Glenn Miller.

Literature & Sources:

Mary Ellin Barrett, Irving Berlin. A Daughter’s Memoir, New York 1994
Steven Carr, Hollywood & Anti-Semitism. A Cultural History Up To World War II, Cambridge & New York 2001
New York Times, 02.02.1941: Two New Berlin Songs Are Heard on Radio... (the song's lyrics are quoted from this article)
New York Times, 22.02.1941: War Relief Show Attended by 6,200
A part of the text used here was taken from my extensive essay on "God Bless America" (available on Justanothertune.com)

1925: The Most Popular Songs Of The Year

2010-06-20T12:13:00.025+02:00

1925 was another very interesting year with an abundance of classic songs that have survived until today and are still reissued, recorded and performed. Although it was in the midst of the so-called "Roaring 20s" only one of the five most successful songs happened to be a rhythm song, the other four were ballads. Two of them were rather old-fashioned - "Moonlight And Roses" and "I'll See You In My Dreams" - but the other two were modern radio ballads by Irving Berlin: "All Alone" and " You Forgot To Remember". These were among his greatest songs and in fact in the years 1924 to 1927 Berlin always had at least one song among the Top 5: "What'll I Do" (1924), these two in 1925, "Always" (1926), "Blue Skies" and "Russian Lullaby" (1927).

This year also saw two songwriting teams having their first great hits. Lady Be Good by the Gershwins - starring Fred & Adele Astaire - was a great success on Broadway and "Oh! Lady Be Good" and "Fascinating Rhythm", both introduced by Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, became very popular.

The Garrick Gaieties was the first successful stage show for Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart. "Manhattan" with its complex lyrics became one of key song for the further development of songwriting. Only Cole Porter had to wait a little longer. His "I'm In Love Again" - written for the show "The Greenwich Village Follies" - only became a minor hit 2 years later in 1927

Most successful musical of the year was Rose Marie with music by Rudolf Friml and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. "Indian Love Call" was the most popular song from this show (and was later revived for example by Jeannette MacDonald, Artie Shaw and Slim Whitman).

1. "All Alone" (Irving Berlin)

mp3: John McCormack
mp3: Al Jolson

"All Alone" is one of Irving Berlin's most beautiful songs. It starts with one of the bleakest depictions of loneliness and longing ever:

Just like a melody that lingers on
You seem to haunt me night and day
[...]
All Alone
I'm so all alone,
There is noone else but you

and ends with:

Wondrin' where you are,
And how you are
And if you are
All alone too.

Berlin was a master of minimalism, a songwriter who cut the lyrics of his love songs down to its barebones and wrote sad songs for lonesome listeners that were tailor made for the new media like the radio:

"Radio [...] was the perfect vehicle for the new kind of 'sob ballad' Irving Berlin had been writing. Intimate, introspective, reflective, the radio, like the phonograph called for ballads aimed at the solitary listener [...] In 1924, 'What'll I Do?' was sung over the radio by Frances alda and 'All Alone' was introduced by John McCormack, reaching millions of listeners without the extensive plugging network of Tin Pan Alley [..] Berlin portrays the singer in a lonely room [...] The tiltle itself is a commonplace phrase in which Berlin discerned a singable and memorable faceting of sound: 'All Alone.' Such repetitive syllables, words and phrases mirror the self-enclosed lyrical 'space' of both singer and listener of such radio and phonograph ballads" (Furia, Irving Berlin, p. 104/5)

2. "Moonlight And Roses" (Lemare, Black & Moret)

YouTube or mp3: John McCormack

The melody was adapted by the lyricists Neil Moret [i.e. Charles N. Daniels] and Ben Black from the "Andantino in D Flat", a very popular organ piece by Edwin Lemare (1888) without having asked for permission. Only after threatening with legal action Lemare managed to receive his share of the royalties.

3. "I'll See You In My Dreams" (Kahn/Jones)

YouTube: Isham Jones & His Orchestra

The music was written by the popular bandleader Isham Jones while the words were added by Gus Kahn, a lyricist very busy during these years. This is another song that is performed until today, a "cherished farewell song, a favorite when played as the last number at a dance" (Hischak, Tin Pan Alley Encyclopedia, p. 172). Chet Atkins later turned it into a guitar instrumental.

4. "Remember" (Irving Berlin)

YouTube and mp3: Franklyn Baur

YouTube: John McCormack

mp3: Isham Jones Orchestra

Later recordings are also available on YouTube: Cliff Edwards (1943), Red Norvo Orchestra (1937, instrumental)

This is another sad and poignant lament. The refrain consists of only three sentences, two of them questions: a poor guy is adressing the girl who had promised and vowed "by all the stars above" but now she acts as if they've never met. The song is built on the juxtaposition "you promised [...] but you forgot" and is effectively debunking a romantic hyperbole, the promise of eternal love. The careful use of dissonant sounds - uncommon for that era - gives the song an additional dimension.

Remember the night
The night you said, I love you
Remember?

Remember you vowed
By all the stars above you
Remember?

Remember we found a lonely spot
And after I learned to care a lot

You promised that you’d forget me not
But you forgot
To remember.

Bob Dylan later used this song as a kind of blueprint for his own "I Don't Believe You" (1964).

5. "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" (Kahn/Donaldson)

YouTube: Gene Austin
mp3: Lee Morse

This is another song with lyrics by Gus Kahn, who was inspired to write it while playing "with a mechanical pig belonging to one of [Eddie Cantor's] daughters. The openenig line of the song to the jerky rhythm of the toy, came to Kahn in a flash" (Paymer, Sentimental Journey, p. 83)

Other hits:

mp3: Cliff Edwards, "Lady Be Good" (George & Ira Gershwin)
mp3: Fred & Adele Astaire, "Fascinating Rhythm" (recorded in 1926 with George Gershwin himself playing the piano)

mp3: Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers, "Manhattan" (Rodgers & Hart)

mp3: Paul Whiteman Orchestra, "Manhattan"
I found only instrumental performances from the mid-20s. The definitive vocal performance of this songs is for me still Lee Wiley's (1951, here on YouTube)

mp3: Isham Jones Orchstra, "Indian Love Call"

YouTube: Richard Tauber, "Indian Love Call" (recorded 1927)

See also later versions for example by Jeannette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy (1936, YouTube) Artie Shaw (1938,YouTube).

mp3: Eddie Cantor, "If You Knew Susie" (see also Eddie Cantor singing this song in the movie of the same name, 1948, on YouTube )
mp3: Cliff Edwards, "If You Knew Susie" (DaSylva/Meyer)

mp3: Ethel Waters, "Sweet Georgia Brown" (Pinkard/Bernie/Casey)
mp3: Isham Jones Orchestra, "Sweet Georgia Brown"

Literature & Sources:

Philip Furia, Irving Berlin. A Life In Song, New York 1998
Marvin Paymer, Sentimental Journey. Intimate Portraits Of America's Popular Songs 1920 - 1945, Darien, CT 1999
Thomas S. Hischak, The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, Westport, CT & London 2002
Many thanks to all those people who have posted all this music at he Internet Archive and at Youtube.
Based again on the data found in: Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs Of The Twentieth Century. Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900 - 1949, St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000

All parts of this series:

1919
1921
1911

Irving Berlin, "Say it Isn't So" (1932)

2009-12-06T13:09:00.016+01:00

Irving Berlin wrote "Say It Isn't So" most likely in the late summer 1932. It was "registered for copyright as an unpublished song" on August 23rd that year. (Kimball/Emmet, p. 297). At this time he was facing some kind of a writer's block. The songs for Face The Music had been written in summer 1931. Since then he hadn't accomplished that much:

"I wrote them ["Say It Isn't So" and "How Deep Is The Ocean?"] at a period of my career when I felt I was all through [...] I had gotten rusty as a songwriter. I hadn't been working at my trade for quite some time. I developed an inferiority complex. No song I wrote seemed right. I struggled to pull off a hit. I became very self-critical. The result was that I was afraid to publish any song. I had written "How Deep Is The Ocean?" but didn't like it and convinced everyone in the office it wasn't good enough. Soon after, I wrote "Say It Isn't So", which I also discarded". (Irving Berlin 1945, quoted in Kimball/Emmet, p. 298).

While he was out of town "someone in his office" - his partner Max Winslow - gave "Say It Isn't So" to "the nation's number-one crooner" (Barrett, p. 108) , Rudy Vallee who was duly impressed with the song, not at least for personal reasons:

"Vallee, who was going through his own personal crisis in a divorce, related to the lyric; he commented, 'There was I singing the song about my girl seeing someone else and going away - it was all true and happening to me'". (Furia, p. 146)

Vallee performed it on his popular radio show and "Say It Isn't So" became an "overnight hit" (Barrett, p. 108):

"The reaction was good [...] I then re-examined "How Deep Is The Ocean?" and thought better of it. I think these two songs are important because they came at a critical time and broke the ice". (Berlin 1945, quoted in Kimball/Emmet, p. 298)

Gardner (p. 397) ranks "Say It Isn't So" as 13th in his list of the most popular songs of 1932. It was recorded that year by Rudy Vallee as well as by other popular artists of that time, for example :

- Greta Keller (YouTube)

- George Olson & His Orchestra, vocals by Paul Small (YouTube)

- Ozzie Nelson (mp3 from The Internet Archive)

- Connie Boswell (mp3 from The Internet Archive)

- Annette Hanshaw (YouTube)

This song includes an introductory verse that later often was dropped. The refrain has 32 bars but it is not structured along the lines of the AABA' form. Instead it's ABA'C:

Say it isn't so,
Say it isn't so,
Everyone is saying
you don't love me,
Say it isn't so.

Everywhere I go,
Everyone I know,
Whispers that you're growing tired of me,
Say it isn't so.

People say that you,
Found somebody new,
And it won't be long
before you leave me,
Say it isn't true,

Say that everything is still okay,
That's all I want to know,
and what they're saying,
Say it isn't So.

Like many Berlin songs "Say It Isn't So" is built around an popular catchphrase. In this case the title refers to "Say it ain't so, Joe", taken from an apocryphal story about Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Red Sox Scandal in 1920. I think he simply changed it from "ain't" to "isn't" to get this nice alliteration of the "i"-s that is bracketed by another alliteration, "say" and "so":

"On September 29, The New York Times reported that when Shoeless Joe Jackson left the grand jury room the previous day, “a crowd of small boys gathered round their idol and asked: ‘It isn’t true, is it, Joe?’ Shoeless Joe replied: ‘Yes, boys, I’m afraid it is.’ ” Other newspapers and two wire services reported the same basic story, [...] The version that has passed into popular mythology cannot be documented, but perhaps it is reasonable to assume that small boys are not overly sensitive to niceties of phraseology; perhaps the words actually were: 'Say it ain’t so, Joe!' (quoted from AmericanH eritage.com, this is an article written by Lewis Thompson and Charles Boswell, first published in 1960)

In fact it never happened and was only made up by a reporter, as Jackson himself explained in 1948:

"I guess the biggest joke of all was that story that got out about "Say it ain't so, Joe." Charley Owens of the Chicago Daily News was responsible for that, but there wasn't a bit of truth in it. It was supposed to have happened the day I was arrested in September of 1920, when I came out of the courtroom. There weren't any words passed between anybody except me and a deputy sheriff. [...] There was a big crowd hanging around the front of the building, but nobody else said anything to me. It just didn't happen, that's all. Charley Owens just made up a good story and wrote it. Oh, I would have said it ain't so, all right, just like I'm saying it now." (quoted from Nakedwhiz.com)

But this story was well known and regarded as true and as Berlin himself "liked to explain, [...] people were tickled by a love song derived from such an incongruous source" (Barrett, p. 108). "Say it isn't so" is an expression of disbelief, it signifies helplessness and the knowledge that it is in fact true what the song's protagonist wants to have denied by his partner. The use of this phrase paints the relationship between the lovers like the one between the kid and his hero, the admired sports star. This phrase - sometimes only the word 'say' - is repeated throughout the song and this kind of insistent repetition - a major stylistic device in many of Berlin's lyrics, the song titles are like slogans - is responsible for much of this song's effectivity.

The melody of the refrain of "Say It Isn't So" is built around this motif:

In the first bar it is set to 5 repeated e-s. In the third bar this phrase is repeated a half step lower and in bar five another half-step lower. The first eight bars:

This leitmotif, the four eights followed either by a long note or by consecutive quarter notes, crops up in different variations throughout the song. Wilder notes the use of repeated notes that were unusual for Berlin at that time:

"[...] for now here is a song the principal device of which is repeated notes. Well, and good, but Berlin has never resorted to them before. As unenthusiastic as I am about Gershwin's endless use of repeated notes, I'm almost hoping that Berlin continues to use them [...] In spite of the reiteration of repeated notes throughout the song, they somehow do not produce a monotonous effect. It all works" (Wilder, p. 105)

But "Say It Isn't So" had nothing to do with the Gershwins. I think he was inspired to try out this device by "Just A Gigolo" . This song with lyrics by Julius Brammer and music by Leonello Casucci (1928/29) was originally published in Austria as "Schöner Gigolo". Irving Caesar wrote new American lyrics that changed the song's scenery from post-war Vienna to a Parisian Café.

Just A Gigolo.
Everywhere I go,
People know the part I'm playing
[...]

"Just A Gigolo" became a hit in 1931 and it was available in recordings for example by Irene Bordoni (see here on YouTube a Betty Boop cartoon from 1932), Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby (YouTube; he includes the rarely performed verse, the refrain starts after ca. one minute) and Ted Lewis. Today this song is usually known in Louis Prima's swinging version, a medley with "I Ain't Got Nobody" (see a Live version on YouTube).

The first four bars look like this:

This is basically the same idea as the one applied by Berlin in "Say It Isn't So". But it's more important to see the musical differences between "Just A Gigolo" and "Say it Isn't So" as they are much more interesting than the parallels.

For example Berlin used dotted eights instead of Casucci's straight eights to stress the words "say" and "isn't". His descending melody lline is not diatonic but chromatic. This is another example for Berlin's careful and effective use of dissonant sounds. He also makes the long notes even longer, from a half note to a whole and a half. Crooners like Vallee loved this long open vowels. At the end of the p hrase Casucci simply goes down to the d. Berlin from bar 5 to 7 steps up in quarter notes to the b then drops down nearly an octave not to the d but to the c# which is a "blue note" (a raised 4th or flatted 5th) anticipated by the half tone steps e-d#-d in the first 6 bars. In fact Berlin reworks and varies an idea from Casucci's melody in a very creative and intelligent way and makes it his own

The rest of the melody is very different from Casucci's, but in spite of all these differences the reference to "Just A Gigolo" is still recognizable. I don't doubt that this was intended as a musical allusion. He even used one line from Caesar's lyrics ("everywhere I go"). Irving Berlin "knew all the music his audiences knew, and [...] he deliberately and routinely used [...] direct quotation of lyrics and music from other songwriters for associative and expressive effect" (Hamm, p. 108/9). Professor Hamm w rote this about Berlin's early songs but it seems to me equally true for much of his later work (see also my piece about "The Girl On The Police Gazette" and Michael Fitzpatrick's "Chimes Of Trinity"). These musical and lyrical allusions to a song about a "gigolo" give the song a kind of European touch that is evident especially in the recordings by Greta Keller - the Austrian singer whose voice "carried the charm of the Parisian women but never lost the heart of the girl from Vienna" (quote from Wikipedia) - and Connie Boswell.

The chromatic descent in the in the melody of first part of the refrain is very common in popular music. Berlin backs it with major chords G6 - G+ G. But it is more often used with minor chords. In fact it's sometimes called the minor walk, or minor line cliche and can be found i in many songs in different variations. Example are "My Funny Valentine" (Rodgers & Hart), "In A Sentimental Mood (Duke Ellington), Bob Dylan's "Ballad Of A Thin Man", the Beatles' "Michelle" or "Stairway To Heaven".

In its most simple form it's a minor chord with a descending bass line from the tonic note to the sixth, for example in e minor: E - Eb - D - C#. The chords could be: em - emmaj7 - em7 - A7/c#, but there are many other possibilities. Irving Berlin had used it in "Blue Skies" (1925). The first for bars of the A-parts have exactly this chromatic bass line. Obviously he was fond of this device. It can also be found in "Russian Lullaby" (1927) and it seems it was on his mind at the time of writing "Say it Isn't So" as it is also included in "How Deep Is he Ocean".

In "Blue Skies" the chromatic bass line served as a counterpoint to happy sounding lyrics, undermining and debunking them. "Blue Skies" is a song about someone happy about falling in love who deep in his heart knows that the trouble will soon start. "Say It Isn't So" is the corresponding song about the end of love. The same dissonant chromatic descent has been transferred from the bass the melody.

"Say It Isn't So" is a song very typical for Irving Berlin. Writing a popular song often means using bits and pieces from very disparate sources and then turn it into something new . The question is not if a songwriter borrows but what he does with pieces and in Berlin's songs these kind of borrowings always make sense. A good popular song should always sound both familiar and new:

"[...] Berlin, more effectively than any of his peers, drew on the collective knowledge and memory of his audience to fashion dramatic situations and musical phrases similar to those found in songs they already knew, [but] shaped in slightly unexpected ways. His best songs were almost - but not quite - already known to his listeners when heard for the first time. They were old stories with a new twist" (Hamm, p. 108/9)

Of course the story doesn't end here. "Say It Isn't So" later served as an inspiration for other songwriters

"It's The Talk Of The Town" (1933; Symers/Neiburg/Livingston; Connee Boswell on YouTube) is clearly derived from Berlin's song. The lyrics touch similar ground:

I can't show my face,
Can't go anyplace,
People stop an' stare,
It's so hard to bare,
Everybody knows you left me,
It's the talk of the town . . .

The melody is based on a musical motif quite close to the one used in "Say It Isn't So":

The idea of someone hearing gossip that the partner is about to let him/her down was used later in "You Win Again" by Hank Williams (1952):

The news is out all over town,
that you've been seen running around.

Another example is "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (Whitfield/Strong, 1967), a great hit for Marvin Gaye in 1968:

Ooh, I bet you're wondering how I knew
About you're plans to make me blue
With some other guy that you knew before.
[...]
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
[...]

And then there is Bob Dylan's "Tell Me That It Isn't True" (lyrics at bobdylan.com), a pleasant song released in 1969 on Nashville Skyline. At first I thought it was only related to and inspired by "You Win Again". But in fact Dylan's lyrics tell the same story and uses exactly the same motives as "Say It Isn't So":

a) Rumours all over town (Dylan) - people talking/whispers (Berlin)
b) the girlfriend is planning to put him down (D) - they say she's untrue & she's growing tired of him (B)
c) She's been seen with some other man (D) - People say she's found someone new (B)
d) "All those awful things that I have heard" (D) - "...the things they're saying fill my heart with fear" (B)
e) " I don't want to believe them, all I want is your word" (D) - "I know that they're mistaken, still I want to hear it from you"
f) "Tell Me That It Isn't True"(D) - "Say It Isn't So" (B)

The melody and the harmonies are of course completely different (although Berlin's basic rhythmic motif - four eighth notes followed by a longer note - is still visible at some points, for example in the first bar of this song). Unconscious assimilation can explain a lot, but in this case it looks as though Dylan tried to rewite Berlin's lyrics in his own words.

Literature

Mary Ellin Barrett, Irving Berlin. A Daughter’s Memoir, New York 1994.
Robert Kimball & Linda Emmet (ed.), The Complete Lyrics Of Irving Berlin, New York 2000.
Philip Furia, Irving Berlin. A Life In Song, New York 1998.
Charles Hamm, Irving Berlin, Songs From The Melting Pot: The Formative Years 1907 - 1914, New York & Oxford 1997.
Alec Wilder, American Popular Song. The great Innovators, New York & Oxford 1990
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs Of The Twentieth Century. Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900 - 1949, St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000

Many thanks to the uploaders at YouTube and the Internet Archive

Bob Dylan, "Girl From The North Country" (1963)

2009-09-15T12:15:00.032+02:00

„Girl From The North Country“ is one of Bob Dylan's best early love songs. He wrote it in Italy in the winter 1962/63. In May 1963 he recorded it in New York City for "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"

Sadly a lot of writers have been more interested in searching for the girl that song could have been written about. But this biographical approach is pointless. It is not that important if it is about Ms. H or Ms. B. Much more interesting is the songwriting process. Here Dylan already showed his wide ranging knowledge of popular music of all kinds and his ability to build a song mosaically from motives and lines from other songs while creating something new that was in every respect his own.

“Girl From The North Country” - lyrics at bobdylan.com - is partly based on and inspired by Martin Carthy's version of “Scarborough Fair”, a British ballad with an interesting and complex history. Dylan heard him sing this song in winter 1962 in London. Carthy only recorded it two years later for his first album (Fontana STL 5269, 1965). But according to Nat Hentoff's liner notes for “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan” he also claimed that he had already conceived this song three years earlier.

---------------

From an interview with Martin Carthy by Dave Brazier in the Dylan fanzine Telegraph (Vol. 42, 1992, p. 94/5):

Q - Dylan based some of his songs on things he'd learned from you - "Girl From The North Country," for example, came from your "Scarborough Fair." Did he tell you at the time that that's what he was aiming at doing?

MC - Oh yes. He would always ask me to sing it, that one and Lord Franklin. And when he came back from... erm, I thought he went to Portugal but somebody told me he went to Italy, but anyway he went away [...] And when he came back, he'd written "Girl From The North Country", he came down to The Troubadour and said, "Hey, here's Scarborough Fair" and he started playing this thing. And he kept getting the giggles, all the time he was doing it. It was very funny. I think he sang about three or four verses and then he went. ''Ah man ah,'' and he burst out laughing and sang something else. So yeah, l knew what he was doing. It was delightful, lovely. 'cos I mean he... he made a new song.

Q - It's part of the folk tradition, isn't it, to base one song on another song?

MC - Well, I don't know whether it is a folk tradition or not, but I took it as an enormous compliment, to the song and, if you like, to me. You know, I thought he was a tremendously honourable bloke. Still do. It was a great thing to have done.

-----------

Although occasionally referred to as an “old riddle song” “Scarborough Fair” is in fact a “modern ballad” collected only since the late 19th century (Harvey, p. 32). The song derives from “Elfin Knight” (Child Ballad # 2). The earliest known variant of this one can be found on a broadside printed ca. 1670: "A proper new ballad entitled The Wind hath blown my Plaid away, or A Discourse betwixt a young Woman and the Elphin Knight" (Child, version A):

My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And owre the hills and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be blawn awa.

The Elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Ba, ba, ba, lillie ba
He blaws his horn baith loud and shrill.
The wind hath blawn my plaid awa

[...]

But the line about “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” as well as the “true love of mine” - refrains are only known from variants found since the late 18th and early 19th century. Child's version G, “The Cambrick Shirt” (1810), starts with this verse:

Can you make me a cambrick shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Without any seam or needle work?
And you shall be a true lover of mine

The melody (c/o Digital Tradition Database) used by Carthy isn’t that old, in fact it seems to be a product of the Folk Revival era. Todd Harvey in “The Formative Dylan” notes that it was not that common. The only parallels were recordings by Audrey Coppard (1956 on the LP English Folk Songs, Folkways FW 6917), Ewan McColl (1957 on Matching Songs For The British Isles And America, Riverside RLP 12-637, later also as a printed version in McColl/Peggy Seeger, The Singing Island: A Collection of English and Scots Folksongs,1960 and in Sing Out! 12 No. 5, Dec/Jan 62/63) and Shirley Collins (1959 on False True Lovers, Folkways FG 3564). Martin Carthy, Ms Coppard and Ms. Collins all obviously had learned the song from McColl who claimed to have collected it “in part” from an old Yorkshire miner (quoted in Harvey, p. 33). But according to Alan Lomax’ liner notes for Shirley Collins’ LP his source was Cecil Sharp’s One Hundred English Folk Songs (1916, p. 167, c/o The Internet Archive). Another earlier variant was included in Frank Kidson's influential Traditional Tunes. A Collection Of Ballad Airs (1891, p. 42-44).

The first two verses of Martin Carthy's version, quoted from Mainly Norfolk. English Folk And Other Good Music:

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
For once she was a true love of mine

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without no seam nor fine needle work
And then she'll be a true love of mine

[...]

The melodies of “Scarborough Fair” and “Girl Of The North Country” are not the same. Dylan only “retains elements of the 'Scarborough Fair” melodic contour and phrase structure for his new song” (Harvey, p. 33). The harmonic structure is changed, too and instead of the 3/4 or 6/8 meter he uses 4/4. In fact the differences are so great that it can be easily called an original melody.

The lyrics are also for the most part Dylan's own. He deletes nearly all of the motives of “Scarborough Fair”, uses lines 3 and 4 of verse 1 as a starting point and turns it into a song about nostalgia for an former love, a major topic in popular music. I wonder if he deliberately tried to write something like Scott Wiseman's “Remember Me (When The Candlelights Are Gleaming) ” (1940) , a song he was obviously fond of – we have a private recording from East Orange 1961 of him singing that song:

- mp3: Bob Dylan, Remember Me, East Orange, NJ 1961

Remember me when the candle lights are gleaming,
Remember me at the close of a long, long day.
It would be so sweet when all alone I'm dreaming
Just to know you still remember me

Another parallel coming close to the basic topic of “Girl Of The North Country” is Jimmie Rodgers' ”My Old Pal” (1928):

I'm wondering just where you are tonight, old pal.
And if you ever think of me.
It would make my weary heart so light, sweetheart,
Your face again to see.
[...]
Still you always be a pal of mine,
though it may be only in dreams.

The messenger sent to the girl is retained. But it's not his duty anymore to give her tasks to fulfill, as in “Scarborough Fair”. He is simply on the way to remind her of her former love. And that's another common motif in popular song. Examples pre-dating “Girl Of The North Country” are Johnny Cash's “Give My Love To Rose”, the Everly Brothers' hit “Take A Message To Mary” (B. & F. Bryant), both songs definitely known to Dylan. Also worth mentioning is “Tell Him I Said Hello” (Hagner/Canning, 1956), a song recorded for example by Betty Carter, that obviously inspired Dylan - as Andrew Muir has noted - when he returned to that topic for “If You See her Say Hello”:

When you see him
Tell him things are slow
There's a reason and he's sure to know
But on second thought, forget it
Just tell him I said hello

If he asks you when I come and go
Say I stay home 'cause I miss him so
But on second thought, forget it
Just tell him I said hello

Look into his eyes
When you speak my name
Maybe there's a spark to start another flame
Do I love him?
Don't say yes or no
If he should ask you
But he won't I know
Cause it's all over and forgotten
Just tell him I said hello

The “north country fair” is of course an allusion to “Scarborough Fair” , but the messenger is not travelling to that fair but to the fair North Country. This inversion of noun and adjective makes the language sound somehow old fashioned (or he simply wanted to keep the rhyme fair/there). Surely there is also an autobiographical connotation but more important is the fact that in English folk songs the “North Country” is occasionally referred to as a land of pastoral beauty different and far away from the unpleasant modern towns, as in "The Northern Lasses Lamentation" (Roud ID 1367, variants are called for example "A North Country Maid" or "The Oak And The Ash"):

A North country lass
Up to London did pass,
Although with her nature it did not agree,
Which made her repent,
And so often lament,
Still wishing again in the North for to be,
O the oak, the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,
Do flourish at home in my own country.
[...]

(quoted from: Thomas Evans, Old Ballads, rev. edition 1810, p. 115)

This contrast, although never explicitly stated in “Girl Of The North Country”, is still there. It's a nostalgic juxtaposition of present and past (also the topic of “Bob Dylan`s Dream”): by remembering the girl in the North Country he reconnects to this mythical place - which is obviously very different from the one in Dylan's “North Country Blues” (1963) - and searches for the lost youth.

An interesting precursor using a similar set of motives is Dylan's “Ballad For A Friend” (1962). Here the singer is reminiscing about an old, deceased friend and the time he spent with him in a pastoral “North Country”:

Sad I'm sittin' on the railroad track,
Watchin' that old smokestack.
Train is a-leavin' bit it won't be back.

Years ago we hung around,
Watchin' trains roll through the town.
Now that train is a-graveyard bound.

Where we go up in that North Country,
Lakes and streams and mines so free,
I had no better friend than he.

[...]

Verses 2 and 3 of “Girl Of The North Country” paint an image of the girl. But it's surely not a “real” girl. It's an image of purity and innocence that sounds old fashioned and is based on archetypical male fantasies. Also here – as with the North Country – there is some kind of juxtaposition in the background. When painting such a picture of a pure girl there must be somewhere other girls not so pure and innocent. In fact this girl is as mythical as the North Country. On the other hand this is the first instance of Dylan creating an image of an idealized woman, a topic he returned to later with more mature and opulent songs like “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” or “Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands”.

To ask the messenger to see if she “has a coat so warm to keep her from the howling winds” plays with the male instinct for protection and is a somehow unusual motif in 20th century popular song. This is usually either used jokingly, as in “Button Up Your Overcoat” (DaSylva/Brown/Henderson, 1928):

Button up your overcoat, when the wind is free,
Take good care of yourself, you belong to me”

Or else making love is proposed as the best means against the cold. Irving Berlin used this motif in his classic “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” (1936):

The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing
But I can weather the storm
What do I care how much it may storm?
I`ve got my love to keep me warm.
[...]
Off with my overcoat, off with my glove.
I need no overcoat, I`m burning with love.

Other examples are Frank Loesser’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (1949) and Dylan's own “On A Night Like This” (1973). That song sounds in some way like an ironic return to some motives of “Girl Of The North Country”. It reads as if the boy himself has returned to the North Country to keep the girl warm instead of sending someone else to see if she has a coat "so warm".

[...]
We got much to talk about
And much to reminisce,
[...]

Let the four winds blow
Around this old cabin door,
If I'm not too far off
I think we did this once before.
There's more frost on the window glass
With each new tender kiss,
But it sure feels right
On a night like this.

The girl's long hair, rolling and flowing “all over her breast” is another old fashioned, antique image, maybe directly taken from a fairy-tale book and already in use in the 19th century, for example in “Sweetly She Sleeps My Alice Fair” by Stephen Foster & Charles Eastman (1851):

Sweetly she sleeps, my Alice fair,
Her cheek on the pillow pressed,
Sweetly she sleeps, while her Saxon hair,
Like sunlight, streams o’er her breast

The first line in the the fourth verse - “I'm wondering if she remembers me at all” - is clearly a paraphrase of line from either Scott Wiseman’s “Remember Me”:

It would be so sweet […] to know you still remember me

or Jimmie Rodger’s “My Old Pal”:

I`m wondering [...] if you ever think of me

But this motif can also be traced back to the 19th century, see for example John Greenleaf Whittier's “My Playmate” (1860), a poem about someone reminiscing about his childhood girlfriend, another work thematically related to “Girl Of The North Country”:

[...]
I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems, -
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.

I see her face, I hear her voice:
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine?

Dylan's next three lines:

[...]
Many times I've often prayed
In the darkness of my night
In the brightness of my day

may have been inspired by line from a 1930 torch ballad, “Something To Remember You By” (Schwartz/Dietz), a song that is thematically related to (and may have been the starting point for the lyrics of) “Boots Of Spanish Leather”:

[...]
Though I'll pray for you
Night and day for you[/i]

Examples from the 19th century in a more florid language are:

I will be true to thee;
I will pray for thee night and day;
Wilt thou be true to me,
As in years that have rolled away?
[Stephen Foster, I'll Be True To Thee, 1862]

If to dream by night and muse on thee by day,
If all the worship wild and deep, a true one's heart can pay.
If pray'rs in abscence said for thee to Heave'ns protecting pow'r,
If winged thoughts that flit to thee, an thousand in an hour".
[Jane Sloman, Forget Thee, 1843]

But all these three example show someone praying for the other one's well-being while Dylan only has prayed “many times” that she remembers him, which seems to me a little overblown.

Nostalgia for a former love is a major topic of 20th century popular music. One of the most perfect examples is Johnny Mercer`s “I Thought About You” (1939):

I took a trip on a train
And I thought about you
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about you

Two or three cars parked under the stars
A winding stream
Moon shining down on some little town
And with each beam, the same old dream

And every stop that we made, oh,
I thought about you
[...]

This is mature, grown-up nostalgia, songs about real people in an urban context. But I think that's not what Dylan intended with “Girl Of The North Country” although he freely borrowed from 20th century songs. Instead he made a trip straight back to 19th century nostalgia. If there is something that comes close in mood and in intent then it's a Stephen Foster song like “Voice Of The Bygone Days” (1850):

[...]

Ah! the voice of by gone days
Bid my memory rove
To the fair and gentle being
Of my early love.
She was radiant as the light,
She was pure as dews of night,
And beloved of angels bright,
She join’d their bless’d and happy train.

This song contains the major motives Dylan used in “Girl Of The North Country”: the evocation of the lost youth through nostalgia for an early love as well as the images of purity and innocence used to describe that girl. In the first half of the 60s Dylan tried to avoid the language and sentiments of the songs of the generation before and create something different. He used different strategies but in this case – as for example also in the verses of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” - he circumvented the Berlin tradition by reanimating 19th century sentiments. Instead of becoming a new Johnny Mercer he fosterisized himself. But this helps to make the song special and to overcome its inherent sentimentality.

Usually in 19th century songs and poetry it is an old man who remembers a dead (or – as in Greenleaf Whittier's “My Playmate” - otherwise unreachable) girl: “The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world” (Edgar Allan Poe). The “Girl Of The North Country” is not deceased. And the singer is no old man – although Dylan has experimented with the old man persona in some of his early songs and performances -, otherwise the messenger would be on the way to meet the granny in the north country. But by alluding to this ancient motif and transferring it into the 20th century he suspends the song from time and creates a air of timelessness and antiquity. This is a complicated process and I don't know if Dylan did it on purpose but the result he achieves is impressive.

But the song's sentimentality is still obvious. In fact it is much more sentimental than for example Johnny Mercer's “I Thought About You”. Dylan is walking on rather thin ice and only reading the lyrics on page without knowing the song might make some readers cringe. I presume that songwriters from the generation before would have regarded the lyrics as somehow corny and awkward. But Dylan manages to create an aura of authenticity that is essential for the song's effectiveness.

Personal authenticity and communication between performer and listener on a personal basis are major assets of 20th century popular song. This was developed by singers, songwriters and musicians at least since the twenties with the rising importance of the new technical innovations like electrical recording, radio, microphone and movies. Singers were forced to create personalized singing styles and innovative songwriters like Irving Berlin quickly responded to this new challenges. Berlin's 20s ballads “imply a solitary listener” , his songs create a “lyrical 'space' [...] that is designed for the self absorbed, plaintative singer who inhabits it. The solitary consumer [...] inhabits the same space” (Philip Furia, p. 58).

That is exactly the effect that Dylan achieves with “Girl Of The North Country” and many more of his love ballads. The only difference is that he has created a new – his own – authenticity. Singers like Crosby or Sinatra were as authentic to their audiences as is Dylan to his. One of the reasons for the popularity of Irving Berlin's love ballads in the 20s was his audience's tendency to understand them as growing out of his personal experiences. Of course he – like Dylan later, as in his famous comment about “You're A Big Girl Now” not being about his wife – denied any autobiographical connotations.

Authenticity is a matter of style, it's in no way universal. It is developed in interaction between the artist and his audiences. It's dynamic and permanently developed anew. Also the authenticity value of genres, performers or writers can change over time, as we can see for example in the history of Blues reception: revivalist listeners of today have completely different values than the original audiences. “Girl Of The North Country” is one of those songs of Dylan that can demonstrate in detail how he managed to build his own brand of personal authenticity and credibility as a singer and writer.

- Authenticity of genre

“Girl Of The North Country” is in no way a traditional, it's an original song. But the relationship to the folk ballad “Scarborough Fair” is clearly recognizable and sets his new song in the context of Folk music, a genre that at that time for his listeners had more credibility than the so-called commercial Pop song. But Dylan was never a revivalist, he was and is a popular music songwriter. In this case he was able to make a new song sound old and antique and in that way set it apart from the standard love song of that time.

- Authenticity of language

Also Dylan's use of language demonstrates his search for a different kind of authenticity. He doesn't try to achieve the refined quality of the best songwriters of the generation before and he obviously didn't want to sound like a professional writer but more like someone who tries to express something without knowing exactly how. This is characteristic for a lot of his early songs ("Tomorrow Is A Long Time" is another striking example).

The "antique lyric quality" (Todd Harvey) of "Girl Of The North Country" was somehow outdated at that time, the inversion of adjective and noun in "north country fair" and the second line of verse 4 ("many time I have often prayed" ) would be regarded as corny and unprofessional by songwriters with a different background. And also the rhyme scheme isn't that perfect.

Stylistical traits like these have led fundamentalist writers of the older generation like Gene Lees to regard Dylan and the new wave of songwriters as illiterate amateurs. But that misses the point. It was a change in style: the refined language and the artful composition of the lyrics is replaced by a "new authenticity". Credibility, sincerity and naturalness is achieved here by imperfection. Dylan has often been a master in using language – or better: different sets of languages – in his songs, for example antique Folk ballad speech, Blues lyrics, his different amalgams of poetic or quasi-poetic languages and the vernacular, to create an authentic mood, an atmosphere. “Girl Of The North Country” is one of the best early examples.

- Authenticity of performance

Important for Dylan was also a new set of performance values developed as a contrast and counterpoint to the music of the parents' generation. This older set of values were regarded as inauthentic and untrustworthy by a part of the new generation. Dylan's new "authenticity", derived from Folk, Blues, Rock'n Roll, television and poetry and reflected by his image, his singing style and his music was a result of the generational gap of the 50s and 60s. He surely didn't look and sound like Father Bing and this completely different performance style could even make an old fashioned and rather sentimental love song like “Girl Of The North Country” sound credible again.

I think Dylan in fact reanimated and re-established the love song for a new generation that was extremely skeptical of the older generation's way of writing and singing about love. But it should be noted that he was working on the same basic premises developed since the 20s. Dylan as a singer is still part of the Crosby school in his use of technical means (microphone, the record) to create a sense of intimacy with his listeners, to communicate with them “on a personal basis”. His direct role models may have been Guthrie, the “Singing Cowboys” from television like Gene Autry (surely the first “hero with guitar” he encountered in his youth) and maybe Buddy Holly, but he was still walking the same road that had been built by Crosby & Co. His new authenticity in performance and image was in no way a revolutionary change but a set of new clothes for a new generation.

- Autobiographical authenticity

Though a new kind of personal authenticity was very important for artists at least since the 20s, this romantic concept had much more impact on the audiences since the 60s. A new confessional quality of songs led in extreme to a tendency to regard personal or even autobiographical authenticity as the “hallmark of a 'good' song” (Jeness/Velsey, p. 277). In Dylan's case we are still confronted with endless discussion like: who is the “Girl Of The North Country”? Who is Johanna? He of course often enough alluded to an autobiographical context, not only with songs like “Sara” or “Ballad In Plain D”. But at times he obviously seemed to feel plagued by this approach, as in his comment about “You're A Big Girl Now” in 1985: “'You're A Big Girl Now' well, I read this was supposed to be about my wife [...] Stupid and misleading jerks sometimes this interpreters are [...]”. Or he joked about it, as in 1975, when he introduced “It Takes A Lot To Laugh” as “an autobiographical song for ya”.

I don’t know how important biographical interpretations were in the early 60s. But at least since Anthony Scaduto's biography the reception of “Girl Of The North Country” has been dominated by wondering if it was Ms H. or maybe Ms. B. For a lot of listeners this shaped a special context for understanding this song: by obviously singing about a real girl the singer shares his personal life with the audience and makes the song more “real”, more authentic. But: is “Girl Of The North Country” really about “someone”? Todd Harvey correctly notes that “the lyrics do not, however, contain enough specific information to suggest that Dylan was leaving clues about his personal life”. I agree.

But in fact this question is not that important! “Girl Of The North Country” is a song, it's in no way autobiography. It's an expertly crafted song - where even possible lingual and stylistic lapses sound appropriate - , drawing from a set of wide-ranging sources and recreating the sentimental, nostalgic love song in a new historical and cultural context for a new audience.

Literature & Links:

BBC Radio 2 - Sold On Song: Scarborough Fair (it seems to me that it is not possible anymore to listen to Martin Carthy's version there, at least it doesn't work for me)
Traditional Ballad Index: The Elfin Knight (a list of printed and recorded versions)
Francis J. Child, The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, Boston 1882 (online available at archive.org)
Philip Furia, Poets Of Tin Pan Alley. A History Of America’s Great Lyricists, New York 1990
Todd Harvey, The Formative Dylan. Transmissions And Stylistic Influences, 1961 - 1963, p. 32 - 34
Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind The Shades. Take Two, London & New York 2000, p. 105 - 111
David Jeness & Don Velsey, Classic American Popular Song. The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000, New York 2006
Andrew Muir, Troubadour. Early And Late Songs Of Bob Dylan, Bluntishsam 2003, p. 22, 127-146 (he was the first one - in his thought provoking chapter about “If You See Her Say Hello” - to write about the similarities of that song to “Tell Him I Said Hello” [p. 144/5] and to note the relationship to “Take A Message To Mary” and “Give My Love To Rose” [p. 134 - 136] )
Oliver Trager, Keys To The Rain. The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, New York 2004, p. 204 - 206
Jon W. Vinson, The Voices That are Gone. Themes In 19th Century American Popular Song, New York & Oxford 1994, p. 3 - 42
For more about Scott Wiseman see the Dreamtime blog

Quotations of lyrics from different online resources.

Thanks to Stewart Grant in Scotland for support and some ideas!

This is a revised version of a text first postedon www.morerootsofbob.com in November 2006

From YouTube: A Dylanesque Song by Ian Whitcomb

2009-08-15T12:47:00.005+02:00

I found this recently at YouTube:

A "Dylanesque song" by Ian Whitcomb, recorded at the Fret House, Covina, California in January 2008 with Fred Sokolow on guitar and Dave Jones on bass

The lyrics are an entertaining parody of mid-60s surreal Bob Dylan á la "Obviously 5 Believers" and Fred Sokolow even throws in some licks from that song.

Ian Whitcomb is of course "America's Foremost Tin-Pan Alley Man & Ukulele Virtuoso" (see his website: www.picklehead.com ) and there are some more performance videos of him available at YouTube, all of them very enjoyable (see for example "Sierra Sue", obviously from the same show).

Les Paul

2009-08-15T12:44:00.005+02:00

Some days ago, on August 13th, Les Paul passed away at the age of 94.

For obituaries see for example:

NY Times

Washington Times

A complete radio show (no date, but I presume it's from the 50s, thanks to user chimes from the NEP for that link) is available at archive.org.

Forthcoming Books

2009-07-12T14:29:00.007+02:00

The next six months will see the publication of some interesting books.

Walter Rimler, George Gershwin. An Intimate Portrait (Music In American Life), Illinois University Press (July 2009)

Info on the website of the IUP

Ira Gershwin, Selected Lyrics, ed. by Robert Kimball (American Poets Project), Library of America (September 2009)

No info yet available on the publisher's website. Robert Kimball has also edited the excellent Cole Porter collection (see my short review) in this series

Alyn Shipton, I Feel A Song Coming On: The Life of Jimmy McHugh (Music In American Life), Illinois University Press (September 2009)

The first biography of popular song composer Jimmy McHugh: info from the publisher's website.

David Lehman, A Fine Romance. Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Jewish Encounters), Schocken (October 2009)

Info from the publisher's website:

"[...] An acclaimed poet, anthologist, and cultural critic, David Lehman hears America singing—with a Yiddish accent. He guides us through America in the golden age of song, when “Embraceable You”; “White Christmas”; “Easter Parade”; “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”; “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat
Man of Mine”; “My Romance”; “Cheek to Cheek”; and countless others became nothing less than the American sound track. The stories behind these songs, the shows from which many of them came, and the composers and lyricists who wrote them give voice to a specifically American saga of love, longing, assimilation, and transformation [...]"

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer, ed. by Robert Kimball, Barry Day, Miles Kreuger, Knopf (October 2009)

Info from the publisher's website:

"The seventh volume in Knopf’s critically acclaimed Complete Lyrics series, published in Johnny Mercer’s centennial year, contains the texts to more than 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published here for the first time [...]"

Herbert Keyser, Geniuses Of American Musical Theatre. The Composers And Lyricists, Hal Leonard (October 2009)

Information is available on the publisher's website:

"Longtime theatre-lover and stage veteran Herbert Keyser takes us on a personal journey through the music that made these great artists so much a part of our history and our lives. Keyser has assembled a reader-friendly collection of stories that will capture your heart, bring a tear to your eye or a smile to your face, and all the while have you singing along".

Richard Barrios, A Song In The Dark. The Birth of the Musical Film. Second Edition, Oxford University Press (November 2009)

This is a revised and updated edition of a book first published in 1995, see the website of the OUP.

Court Carney, Cuttin' Up. How Early Jazz Got America's Ear (Culture America), Kansas University Press (November 2009)

Info from the publisher's website:

"[...] Court Carney takes a new look at the spread and acceptance of jazz in America, going beyond the familiar accounts of music historians and documentarians to show how jazz paralleled and propelled the broader changes taking place in America's economy, society, politics, and culture. "Cuttin' Up" takes readers back to the 1920s and early 1930s to describe how jazz musicians navigated the rocky racial terrain of the music business - and how new media like the phonograph, radio, and film accelerated its diffusion and contributed to variations in its styles. The first history of jazz to emphasize the connections between these disseminating technologies and specific locales, it describes the distinctive styles that developed in four cities and tells how the opportunities of each influenced both musicians' choices and the marketing of their music[...]"

Peter C. Muir, Long Lost Blues: Popular Blues in America, 1850-1920 (Music in American Life), Illinois University Press (December 2009)

Info at the publisher's website:

"[...] Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" is commonly thought to signify the beginning of commercial attention to blues music and culture, but by that year more than 450 other blues titles had already appeared in sheet music and on recordings. In this examination of early popular blues, Peter C. Muir traces the genre's early history and the highly creative interplay between folk and popular forms, focusing especially on the roles W. C. Handy played in both blues music and the music business [...]"

Jeffrey Magee, Irving Berlin (Yale Broadway Masters Series), Yale University Press (December 2009)

Another new book in the Yale Broadway Masters Series but at the moment there is no information available on the publisher's website. I'm really looking forward to reading this one as they are not many good books on Berlin available. A short excerpt: Jeffrey Magee, Irving Berlin's Musical Theater Of War (Institute for Studies in American Music, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2 (Spring 2007).

Charlotte Greenspan, I Feel A Song Coming On. Dorothy Fields And The American Musical. The Life Of Dorothy Fields, Oxford University Press (December 2009)

A new biography about one of the great lyricists. It strikes me as odd that it has exactly the same title as the new bio about her songwriting partner Jimmy McHugh. Information is available on the website of the OUP:

"Dorothy Fields was best known as a lyricist, one of the few women who played a central role in the great period of American popular song from 1920 to 1960. Fields first became prominent writing the lyrics for Cotton Club shows in Harlem in the late 1920s and 1930s, and her most successful collaboration was with the great songwriter Jerome Kern. Her role as a music creator in a world dominated by men makes a fascinating and unusual story- with particular interest for woman today [...]"

Irving Berlin, "Blue Skies" (1926)

2009-07-07T20:19:00.014+02:00

"Blue Skies" is another great song by Irving Berlin. He wrote it in December 1926 - most likely ca. a week before Christmas - for his first daughter (see Barrett, p. 55) who had been born the month before. Singer Belle Baker introduced it on December 28th in Betsy, a show by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Obviously both Ms Baker and producer Florenz Ziegfeld were dissatisfied with the songs written by Rodgers & Hart so they felt it necessary to call Berlin for help:

"Almost at the last minute, without saying a word to anyone, Ziegfeld bought a song from Irving Berlin and gave it to Belle Baker to sing in the show. Not only did the interpolated number get the biggest hand of the evening at the premiere, but Ziegfeld also had arranged to have a spotlight pick out Berlin, seated in the front row, who rose and took a bow [...]. It really didn't take a trained ear to appreciate that the Berlin contribution [...] was a great piece of songwriting, easily superior to anything Larry [Hart] and I had written for the production [...]" (Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 95/6)

The show was no success and closed after 39 performances but it was not Berlin's fault. "Blue Skies" became one of the most successful songs of the year 1927. Especially the recording by George Olsen & His Orchestra sold very well:

mp3: George Olsen Orchestra, Blue Skies (c/o The Internet Archive)

Other early recordings (all 1927) were for example by Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers (vocals by Charles Kaley, mp3), The Imperial Dance Orchestra (mp3 & YouTube), Vaughn De Leath , Whispering Jack Smith, Josephine Baker and the same year Al Jolson performed it in The Jazz Singer. From then on the song was recorded and performed by countless artists from all genres, from Frank Sinatra to Willie Nelson, from Benny Goodman to Moon Mullican, even by Pete Seeger who included into his Goofing-Off Suite (1955, available on Folkways SFW 40018)

The lyrics of this song explore the different meanings of "blue": "blue skies", "bluebirds", "blue days" and they are somehow ambiguous. Philip Furia (Poets, p. 59) for example notes the surprising and effective use of negative terms: "never", "nothing".

But what really "makes" the song is the "subliminally forceful [...] tension between words and music [...] This internal discord [...] may account for the remarkable vitality of 'Blue Skies' [...] The words assert total contentment with near-fatuous certainty [...] The music, however, clings to the mournful key of E minor, allowing only momentary glimpses of G major brightness (the ostensible key signature) to break, rather wanly, through the gloom. Then, when the song's 'b' section turns downright jubilant [...] the musical intensity builds as well [...] these eight bars [lean] heavily on the 'blue note' effect of the G chord's raised fifth" (Josh Rubins, Genius Without Tears)

This is a technique typical for Berlin (another striking example is "Always", written the year before): the music undermines and debunks the words and gives them an additional dimension. "Blue Skies" may look and sound simple at first but it is in fact a complex piece of work depicting the transient nature of happiness: the song "sounds sad and 'blue' even as its words celebrate gloriously 'blue' skies" (Furia, Poets, p. 59).

Literature:

Josh Rubins, Genius Without Tears, New York Review Of Books, 16.6.1988, reprinted in: Caroline Shrodes/Harry Finestone/Michael Shugrue, The Conscious Reader. Fifth Edition, New York 1992, p. 511-521 (an excellent essay about Berlin!)
Mary Ellin Barrett, Irving Berlin. A Daughter’s Memoir, New York 1994, p. 53-55
Robert Kimball & Linda Emmet (ed.), The Complete Lyrics Of Irving Berlin, New York 2000, p. 231/2
Philip Furia, Irving Berlin. A Life In Song, New York 1998, p. 121/2 (another discussion of this song)
Philip Furia, Poets Of Tin Pan Alley. A History Of America’s Great Lyricists, New York 1990, p. 59/60
Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages. An Autobiography, New York 1995 (first published 1975)

Many thanks to the uploaders at YouTube and the Internet Archive

100 Years Ago: Irving Berlin, "My Wife's Gone To The Country"

2009-06-18T12:14:00.011+02:00

June 18th 1909 - exactly 100 years ago - was the publishing date of "My Wife's Gone To The Country (Hurrah! Hurrah)", the very first great hit for Irving Berlin, although in this case he only wrote the lyrics and not the melody (the music was by Ted Snyder and George Whiting was involved, too). His first lyrics had been published in 1907 , in 1909 "Dorando" and "Sadie Salome" were the first minor successes but with this song his career really started.

(...)
He went into the parlor and tore down from the wall
A sign that read "God Bless Our Home" and threw it in the hall
Another sign he painted and hung it up instead
Next day the servant nearly fainted when these words she read:

My wife's gone to the country, hurrah, hurrah!
She thought it best, I need the rest, that's why she went away
She took the children with her, hurrah, hurrah!
Now I'm with you if you're with me, my wife's gone away.

He called on pretty Molly, a girl he used to know
The servant said "She left the house about an hour ago
But if you leave your name, sir, or write a little note
I'll give it to her when she comes" and this is what he wrote: [to refrain]

Berlin himself commented about this song in 1911:

"The idea arose out of a most simple incident. I was in a barber's shop with a friend who told me that his wife had gone away to the country and had left him to his own devices. 'Gee', said I, 'that's a good title for a song!' And we went back to the office, wrote it , and sang it that night at a cafe before an audience of thirty people. And it went - so much that orders were pouring in the next day [...]" (quoted in Kimball/Emmet, p. 7).

The song was performed to great success on vaudeville stage and Berlin was asked to write a lot of additional verses "for publication in the New York Evening Journal" (dto). It was also was recorded by some well-known recording stars of that time like Collins & Harlan and Bob Roberts. The performance style of these singers is of course somehow out of date today:

mp3: Arthur Collins, Byron Harlan (1909)

"My Wife's Gone To The Country" may sound harmless today but in fact at that time it wasn't. According to Berlin "ministers preached about" the song (Kimball/Emmett, p. 7) and they were surely not fond of its message. A critic from around that time complained about songs laughing "openly at the institution of marriage", "blamed the entire shameful state of American popular songs on the 'disciples of Irving Berlin & Co.'" (Jablonski, p. 47, see Hamm, p. 56) and even called for censorship upon this kind of dangerous music.

Sheet music is available here
More about early Berlin on my website: Irving Berlin & The Rhythmic Ballad

quotes from:
Charles Hamm, Irving Berlin, Songs From The Melting Pot: The Formative Years 1907 - 1914, New York & Oxford 1997
Edward Jablonski, Irving Berlin. American Troubadour, New York 1999
Robert Kimball & Linda Emmet (ed.), The Complete Lyrics Of Irving Berlin, New York 2000

Irving Berlin, "Let's Have Another Cup Of Coffee" (1932)

2009-06-16T16:12:00.017+02:00

Irving Berlin wrote "Let's Have Another Cup Of Coffee" for Face The Music, an innovative and entertaining depression era musical show with a book by Moss Hart. Sam Harris was the producer and George Kaufmann, Hassard Short, Morris Ryskind, Albertina Rasch and Robert Russel Bennett were involved. too, The show opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York on February 17th, 1932 but it wasn't as successful as it should have been.

J. Harold Murray and Katherine Carrington introduced the song on stage immediately after the "brilliant opening scene [...] where the captains of industry of another day are feeding off the regular five cent dinner" (J. Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, 18.2.1932) at the "automat". It became the most popular song of the show and the recording by Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians (vocals by Chick Bullock and the Waring Girls) was a minor hit:

mp3: Fred Waring's Pennsylananians, Let's Have Another Cup Of Coffee (1932)

It was also recorded by Phil Spitalny (vocals by Helen Rowland, available at YouTube) and in 1942 revived by Glenn Miller & His Orchestra (with vocals by Marion Hutton, here at YouTube). In the early 30s the song was very popular on radio (see New York Times, 6.5.1934) and it was "the theme song of the long-running radio show, The Maxwell House Show Boat, starring Lanny Ross and Annette Hanshaw" (Robert Lissauer, quoted in Kimball/Emmet, The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, p. 273)

[REFRAIN:]
Just around the corner
There's a rainbow in the sky
So let's have another cup o' coffee
And let's have another piece o' pie!

Trouble's just a bubble
And the clouds will soon roll by
So let's have another cup o' coffee
And let's have another piece o' pie

Let a smile be your umbrella
For it's just an April show'r
Even John D. Rockefeller
Is looking for the silver lining

Mister Herbert Hoover
Says that now's the time to buy
So let's have another cup o' coffee
And let's have another piece o' pie!

The song alludes to the well-known phrase ascribed to President Hoover: "prosperity is just around the corner". But according to They Never Said It: A Book Of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, And Misleading Attributions by Paul Boller and John H. George (p. 48) Hoover in fact had never used this expression and he himself in his autobiography denied it, too (see Time, 8.9.1952). It's not clear who had made it up originally but I presume it's older than the depression. Already in 1922 Indiana Democrat Frederick Van Nuys used it in a speech attacking the Republican State Administration: "'We have heard for a year that prosperity is just around the corner,' he said. 'The people want some tangible evidence of that fact'" (New York Times, 2.6.1922)

But this phrase became very common in the early 30s. For example on June 17th, 1930 the New York Times published an article about a businessman with the name Nathan M. Orbach - a "Fourteenth Street dress merchant" - who "thinks that prosperity is just around the corner [...] 'the crisis has been passed', he declared" . Time Magazine (August 17th, 1931) reported about Montagu Norman - the governor of the Bank Of England - that he "does not believe that 'prosperity is just around the corner'". Here it was already known as a quote.

Eddie Cantor in his book Yoo-Hoo Prosperity! The Eddie Cantor Five-year Plan wrote that "President Hoover told me that prosperity is just around the corner but he forgot to give me the name of the street" (see New York Times, 28.8.1931). The Gershwin's included their own parody of this phrase - "Posterity Is Just Around The Corner" - in their show Of Thee I Sing, that was running at the same time as Berlin's Face The Music. I don't know when exactly and by whom it was attributed to Hoover (maybe it was even Eddie Cantor) but it seems that many people actually wanted to believe that he had said it and I presume it was taken as an appropriate representation of what was regarded as the President's groundless and absurd optimism and the government's inactivity.

But Berlin's song also refers to "Just Around The Corner (Maybe Sunshine For You)" by Harry van Tilzer and Dolph Singer, a minor hit in 1926 (a recording by Ted Lewis is available at The Internet Archive):

Just around the corner,
Maybe sunshine for you.
Just around the corner,
Skies above may be blue.

Keep a little smile,
That's the right thing to do.
In a little while your troubles,
They will disappear like bubbles.

Just around the corner
There's a bluebird on high,
Waiting for a rainbow in the sky,
Why,

Even tho' it's dark and cloudy
Sun may peep thru' and say howdy.
Just around the corner from you.

Most of the rest of the lines are a "litany of Pollyanna weather songs" (Furia, Berlin, p. 150):
- "Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella" (Kahal/Wheeler/Fain, 1927)
- "Till The Clouds Roll By" (Kern/Bolton/Wodehouse, 1917)
- "April Showers" (DeSylva/Silvers, 1921)
- "Look For The Silver Lining" (DaSylva/Kern, 1919)

"Let's Have Another Cup Of Coffee" is in effect an amusing collage of song titles and common platitudes. Berlin turns the President into just another songwriter with rose-colored glasses:

[VERSE:]
[...]
Songwriters say the storm quickly passes
That's their philosophy
They see the world through rose-colored glasses
[...]

"Berlin's lyrics takes the cliches of Tin Pan Alley and equates them with the equally groundless political and economic reassurances of the Hoover administration" (Furia, Berlin, p. 150). He very effectively ridicules the President who was already very unpopular at that time and it may have been his little unofficial contribution to FDR's campaign. The melody - that sounds a little like the one later used by Jack Rollins for "Frosty The Snowman" - is as corny and simple as possible and gives the song an additional satirical edge.

Like other songs from this show "Let's Have Another Cup Of Coffee" was also a pointed and entertaining parody of the cliches of popular music. "I Say It's Spinach (And The Hell With It)" has a very similar melody and is in fact a more absurd and less political variant of the same idea. Here he combines the words (by E. B. White) from a cartoon by Carl Rose (New Yorker, 1928) with an ironic reference to the popular song "The Best Things In Life Are Free" as well as quotations of other well known platitudes like "Things don't come on a silver platter".

mp3: Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians, I Say It's Spinach (1932)

Long as there's you, long as there's me
Long as the best things in life are free
I say it's spinach and the hell with it
The hell with it, that's all!
[...]

Literature:

Philip Furia, Irving Berlin. A Life In Song, New York 1998
Robert Kimball & Linda Emmet (ed.), The Complete Lyrics Of Irving Berlin, New York 2000
Thomas S. Hischak, The Tin Pan Alley Encyclopedia, Westport & London 2002
Face The Music (lyrics & music by Irving Berlin, book by Moss Hart), 2007 Encores! Cast Recording, DRG-CD-94781

Tampa Red, "She's Got The Best In Town" (1938)

2009-06-09T18:55:00.005+02:00

During the 90s I used to listen to a lot of Blues and I collected nearly everything that was available back then (especially as much as possible from Document's massive catalog). One of my favourite artists turned out to be Tampa Red. He was a great guitar player and a fine singer who was responsible for many excellent recordings. He is still often neglected by Blues historians but in fact he was among the most influential and most successful artists of that genre. In 1928 he recorded - with his partner Thomas A. Dorsey (Georgia Tom) - "It's Tight Like That" , one of the greatest Blues hits of that era and surely one of the most often copied songs ever.

I just found this mp3 on my computer: "She's Got The Best In Town", one of his many variants of "It's Tight Like That". He recorded it in 1938 with Blind John Davies on piano and Bill Settles on bass:

I know a girl by the name of Bess.
She got somethin' better than all of the rest.
She got the best in town, she got the best in town.
Says, the men all love it, she got the best in town.

[...]

She shakes all over when she walks.
She made a blind man see and a dumb man talk.
She got the best in town, she got the best in town.
Says, the men all love it, she got the best in town.

Text transcription c/o Robert MacLeod, Document Blues 6, Pat Publications, Edinburgh 1999, p. 54/55

Cole Porter's 118th birthday

2009-06-09T15:16:00.006+02:00

Cole Porter was born on June 9th, 1891 so today would be his 118th birthday.

From YouTube:

Irene Bordoni, Let's Misbehave (1928):

Ray Noble (with Al Bowlly, voc), How Could We Be Wrong (1933):

Gertrude Lawrence, The Physician (1933):

Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, Night And Day (1932):

Frances Langford, Easy To Love (1936):

See also here in this blog:
- my review of Porter's "Selected Lyrics"

Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone

2009-06-06T15:12:00.007+02:00

In 1928 (and then again in 1935) the Carter Family recorded the song “Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone”:

I'm going to the new jail tomorrow
To leave the one that I love
To leave my friends and relations
And, oh, how lonely, my love

Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone

My parents, how cruel they treat me
They drive me away from their door
If I live 100 years longer
I'll never go back any more

Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me,
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone

If I had a ship on the ocean
All laden and lined with pure gold
Before my darling should suffer
I'd have that ship anchored and sold

Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me,
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone

If I had the wings of an angel
O'er land and sea I'd fly
I'd fly to the arms of my darling
Then I'd be willing to die

Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me,
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone

This was a remake of Vernon Dalhart's “Prisoner's Song”, a great and very influential hit in 1925:

Oh I wish I had someone to love me
Someone to call me her own,
Oh I wish I had someone to live with
For I'm tired of living alone.

Oh please meet me tonight in the moonlight
Please meet me tonight all alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
It's a story that's never been told.

I'll be carried to the new jail tomorrow
Leavin' my poor darlin' alone
With the cold prison bars all around me
And my head on a pillow of stone

Now I have a grand ship on the ocean
All mounted with silver and gold
And before my poor darling would suffer.
Oh that ship would be anchored and sold.

Now if I had wings like an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly.
And I'd fly to the arms of my poor darling
And there I'd be willing to die.

That song is a conflation of fragments from a couple of different songs - one major source is “Here’s Adieu To All The Judges And the Juries”, a British 19th century popular song - and it is not exactly clear if Dalhart and his co-writers Guy Massey and/or Nat Shilkret (it's not definitely known who was responsible – different sources tell different stories) put it together themselves or if they simply took the whole song as it is from oral tradition.

The lines about meeting in the moonlight are a fragment of another British popular song from the early 19th century, “Meet Me By The Moonlight” by J. A. Wade (1796 – 1845), a well-known and successful composer of his era. This song was first published in 1826 and then migrated to the USA where it was “popularized by the celebrated Mme. Lucia ElizabethVestris” ( Mattfeld) who toured there in the 30s. It was obviously very popular throughout the century and regularly printed as sheet music, on broadsides and in songsters:

Meeting in the moonlight, in the night etc was very popular among songwriters and poets of that era. The background is of course that the poor guys simply couldn't meet their girl at home but had to do what they wanted somewhere outside in the dark to avoid the presence of parents and chaperons. Typical songs of that time - and some of them seem to have been inspired by Wade's “Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone” - were for example “Meet Me At The Lane”, “Meet Me To-night”, “Meet Me, Josie, At The Gate” or “Meet Me At Twilight”:

Meet me just at twilight,
In the mystic shadows dim,
When the nightengale is singing
And the beetle opes her hymn;
When the zephyrs float so lightly
In the gray arcade above,
Whispering to the fragrant flowers
The melodies of love.

Meet me just at twilight,
In that hour of fairy spell,
When the roving fire-fly sparkles
Through the meadows and the dell;
When the tinselings of fancy
All around our hearts are cast,
Dreaming of the misty future,
Sorrowing over all the past.

Meetme just at twilight,
In the stilly hour of e'en,
Ere the dew is on the flowers,
Ere the lamps are lit in heav'n;
For I've something I would tell you
And I'll tell it only then,
When the shadows chase each other
Through the green and mossy glen.

There's not much information available about Mr. Wade, I only found a couple of lines in a "History of Irish Music":

"John Augustine Wade, born in Thomas-street, Dublin, in 1796, was clerk in the Irish Record Office in 1820, and studied the violin under O'Rourke. He married Miss Kelly, of Garnavilla (Athlone), studied medicine, and removed to London in 1822. His oratorio,The Prphecy , was produced at Drury-lane in 1824, and then followed an opera, The Two Houses Of Granada (1826), in which occurs the time-honoured ballad, "Long, long ago." In the following year (1827) he published Songs Of The Flowers , in two books, and, some years later, Select Airs and Polish Melodies . Early in 1831 he negotiated with James Power (Moore's publisher) for the publication of a History Of Music, and in 1833 he collaborated with Hawes in Convent Belles . His song, "Meet me by moonlight alone," had an extraordinary popularity, and in October, 1834, the inimitable "Father Prout" published a French version of it in Fraser’s Magazine .A duet of his, "I've wandered in dreams," is still to be heard at concerts. Alas! from 1837 till his death he was the victim of intemperance, and he died in London, September 29th, 1845"
[From: W. H. G. Flood, A History Of Irish Music (1905)]

This is a slightly revised edition of a text first written as a part of discussion of Bob Dylan's "Moonlight", posted first in July 2007 on morerootsofbob.com

Irving Berlin's 121th Birthday

2009-05-11T14:34:00.006+02:00

Today on May 11th it's 121 years since Irving Berlin was born. "How Deep Is The Ocean" is one of his most beautiful ballads and it's one of my favourite songs at the moment.

YouTube: Leslie Hutchinson (1933)

John McCormack, "Eileen Aroon" (1912)

2009-05-03T15:19:00.009+02:00

Some time ago I did some research about the Irish song "Eileen Aroon" (see justanothertune.com). In fact it's not so much a song but a family of songs with different melodies and lyrics. The best known variant today is the one with words (written in the 1830s) by the poet Gerald Griffin. The Clancy Brothers recorded it in 1961 on their LP Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem (Tradition TLP 1042) and I first heard it from Bob Dylan who performed some tremendous versions in 1988/89.

The first one to make a phonograph record of "Eileen Aroon" was to my knowledge the great John McCormack in 1909 and 1912. But he used another variant with lyrics by Thomas Osborne Davis (1814-1845) and new music by Dermot MacMurrough.

mp3: John McCormack, Eileen Aroon (1912)

When I am far away
Be gayest of the gay
Too dear your happiness
For me to wish it less
Love has no selfishness,
Eileen Aroon.

And it must be our pride,
Our trusting hearts to hide,
They wish our love to blight,
We’ll wait for Fortune’s light
The flowers close up at night
Eileen Aroon

And when we meet alone
Upon my bosom from
The dawn with light be day
[?]
I'll be come to the rest [?]

Fortune thus sought will come,
We’ll win a happy home,
And as it slowly rose ’twill tranquilly repose
A rock ’mid melting snows
Eileen Aroon.

A New Proper Box-Set: Roots Of Bob Dylan

2009-05-03T14:55:00.009+02:00

Proper Records in Britain (I have a lot of their excellent 4-CD-sets) have announced a new box-set to be released on May 4th: "Roots of Bob Dylan", 3 CDs + a DVD including interviews with some of the great heroes of Dylanology.

"This CD set represents Dylan's personal journey through blues, country and folk music and feature some of the most famous artists of all time.
Includes tracks by Johnny Cash, Leadbelly, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Elvis Presley and Muddy Waters.
DVD "Talkin' Dylan" features interviews with Joe Boyd, Michael Gray, Sid Griffin and Mike Marqusee"

For more info see the website of Proper Records :

The tracklist from amazon:

Disk: 1
1. Don't Let Your Deal Go Down - Charlie Poole
2. Worried Blues - Frank Hutchison
3. Backwater Blues - Bessie Smith
4. Honey Won't You Allow Me One More Chance - Henry Thomas
5. Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed - Willie Johnson
6. Cocaine Blues - Luke Jordan
7. Omie Wise - Grayson & Whitter
8. My Name Is John Johannah - Kelly Harrell
9. James Alley Blues - Richard Brown
10. See That My Grave Is Kept Clean - Blind Lemon Jefferson
11. You Gonna Quit Me Baby - Blind Blake
12. Minglewood Blues - Gus Cannon
13. The Butcher's Boy - Buell Kazee
14. Stealin' Stealin' - Memphis Jug Band
15. Corrina, Corrine - Bo Carter
16. Frankie - John Hurt
17. Down On Penny's Farm - The Bently Boys
18. When The Levee Breaks - Memphis Minnie
19. Pony Blues - Charley Patton
20. Henry Lee - Dick Justice

Disk: 2
1. House Carpenter - Clarence Ashley
2. My Blue Eyed Jane - Jimmie Rodgers
3. Sitting On Top Of The World - Mississippi Sheiks
4. Someday Baby Blues - Sleepy John Estes
5. When The Sun Goes Down - Leroy Carr
6. Deep Elem Blues - Prairie Ramblers
7. The Wayworn Traveller - Carter Family
8. Mama Let Me Lay It On You - Blind Boy Fuller
9. Come On In My Kitchen - Robert Johnson
10. Freight Train Blues - Roy Acuff
11. Delia - Willie McTell
12. New Highway No. 51 - Tommy McClennan
13. Fixin' To Die - Bukka White
14. It Hurts Me Too - Tampa Red
15. Ranger's Command - Woody Guthrie
16. Gypsy Davey - Woody Guthrie
17. To Each His Own - The Ink Spots
18. Blue Moon Of Kentucky - Bill Monroe
19. Black Girl - Leadbelly
20. Dark As A Dungeon - Merle Travis

Disk: 3
1. Tomorrow Night - Lonnie Johnson
2. Automobile Blues - Lightnin' Hopkins
3. Lost Highway - Hank Williams
4. That Lucky Old Sun - Frankie Laine
5. Blues Stay Away From Me - Delmore Brothers
6. Rollin & Tumblin' - Muddy Waters
7. Man Of Constant Sorrow - Stanley Brothers
8. Nine Below Zero - Sonny Boy Williamson
9. I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know - Davis Sisters
10. That's Alright Mama - Elvis Presley
11. Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash
12. Tutti Frutti - Little Richard
13. Mary Of The Wild Moor - Louvin Brothers
14. Jack O' Diamonds - Odetta
15. I Walk The Line - Johnny Cash
16. Too Much Monkey Business - Chuck Berry
17. Baby Blue - Gene Vincent
18. All I Have To Do Is Dream - Everly Brothers
19. Lonesome Town - Ricky Nelson
20. Rock 'n' Roll Is Here To Stay - Danny & The Juniors

This is a decent tracklist including a lot of great music. But as usual this collection downplays Dylan's debt to mainstream popular music and I wish they would have included songs like "Say It Isn't So" (the blueprint for the lyrics of "Tell Me that It Isn't True"), "How Deep Is The Ocean" (surely the source of the opening chords of the verses of "Ballad Of A Thin Man"), "I'm In The Mood For Love" (most likely the song behind "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") or "Chimes Of Trinity" (a song from 1895 that was used by Dylan as the starting point for his "Chimes Of Freedom") or maybe something by Sinatra (a singer always admired by Dylan) simply to show Dylan's wide-ranging musical influences.

Also missing are recordings from the Folk Revival era that were very important for him, for example Martin Carthy's version of "Scarborough Fair" ("Girl From The North Country" & "Boots Of Spanish Leather"), Ewan McColl's "I Once Loved A Lass" ("Ballad In Plain D"), A.L. Lloyd's "Farewell To Tarwathie" ("Farewell Angelina") or Pete Seeger's versions of "Cumberland Gap" ("Oxford Town") and "No More Auction Block" ("Blowin' In The Wind").

"Maceo's 32-20" (1945)

2009-04-18T21:09:00.012+02:00

Among my favourite Blues recordings is "Maceo's 32-20", recorded by Big Maceo Merriwether for Bluebird in July 1945 with Tampa Red on electric guitar and Tyrell "Little T" Dixon on drums:

I walked all night long with my 32-20 in my hand.
I walked all night long with my 32-20 in my hand.
Lookin' for my woman, while I found her with another man.

While I found that woman, they were walking hand in hand.
While I found that woman, they were walking hand in hand.
While she didn't surprise me, while I found her with another man.

She started screamin' murder, and I had never raised my hand.
She started screamin' murder, Baby, and I had never raised my hand.
Tampa, she know I had him covered ' cause I had the [???] in my hand.

I ain't no bully and I ain't the baddest man in town.
I ain't no bully and I ain't the baddest man in town.
When I catch a man with my woman I [???] to tear this playhouse down.

Major "Big Maceo" Merriweather (1905 - 1953) was one of the most beloved Blues artists of his era, "[...] very much liked by all musicians and Blues singers all over the States [...] one of the greatest Blues singers" as Big Bill Broonzy wrote in his autobiography. He had one of the great voices of the Blues and he was also an influential and impressive piano player. For example both Otis Spann and Johnny Jones owe him a lot. Big Maceo had a "left hand so powerful it could seemingly summon up the dead. His brief solos, generally rolling funereal bass lines and simple percussive treble trills, effectively bracketed the irony and disillusionment of his lyrics and fatigued smoky vocals" (Don Palmer).

As a songwriter he was one of the most gifted "compilers" and "collagists" of the Blues. Most of his songs are based on other artists works but he gave all of them an impressive personal stamp. In 1941 at his first session in Chicago for Bluebird with Tampa Red (his partner for most of his dates) on guitar he recorded "Worried Life Blues", one of the great Blues classics. After a stroke in 1946 he was only a shadow of himself and needed a piano player for his last sessions where he was only able to sing. In 1953 he died much too early from an heart attack.

Big Maceo's "32-20 Blues" is part of a popular song family: a man with the gun threatens to kill his untrue or mistreating girl and/or her lover. Related songs are for example Skip James' "22-20 Blues" (1931) and Robert Johnson's "32-20 Blues" (1936). But Maceo's source surely was Roosevelt Sykes' "44 Blues", first recorded in 1929 and revived 10 years later in 1939. Both songs share the same opening verse that - to my knowledge - can't be found anywhere else:

mp3: Roosevelt Sykes, '44' Blues (1929)

Lord, I walked all night long with my forty-four in my hand.
Lord, I walked all night long, my forty-four in my hand.
I was lookin' for my woman, found her with another man.

Lord, I wore my forty-four so long, it made my shoulder sore.
Lord, I wore my forty-four so long, it made my shoulder sore.
After I do what I wants to, I ain't gonna wear my forty-four no more.

Lord, my baby say she heard the Forty Four whistle blow.
Lord, and my baby say she heard that Forty Four whistle blow.
Lord, it sound just like, ain't gonna blow that whistle no more.

Lord, I got a little cabin, lord, it's number Forty-Four.
Lord, I've got a little cabin, lord, it's number Forty-Four.
Lord, I wake up every mornin', the wolves be scratchin' on my door.

According to Paul Oliver's research this song type has an interesting and complex prehistory. It's part of a greater family of songs and musically related to "Vicksburg Blues" and "Rollin' And Tumblin'". Obviously the "44 Blues" was originally an instrumental "piano piece for dancing [...] the shimmy" (Paul Oliver). At first the "44" referred to a train. It was still a train in Lee Green's "Number Forty-four Blues" recorded in 1929 (some months after Sykes' session):

mp3: Lee Green, Number Forty-four Blues (1929)

Roosevelt Sykes (also most likely the source for Skip James, and - via James - for Robert Johnson) was the first one to turn the train into a pistol although in his original version he still played with the meaning and identified it also as a train as well as an address. Later variants by Sykes use a more consistent story line, for example the "32-20 Blues" (1930):

Lord, I've got a 32-20, shoots like a .45.
Lord, I got a 32-20, shoot just like a .45.
Lord, if I happen to go at my woman, I'm gonna bring her dead or alive.

Lord, I carry my 32-20 in my right hand.
Lord, I carry my 32-20 in my right hand.
Lord, I'll shoot my woman 'bout wastin' time with a monkey man.
[...]

The "New 44 Blues" (1933) also had a more thematical approach:

[...]
Lord, listen, kind mama, you can just bid this big world farewell.
Just listen, kind mama, you can bid this big world farewell.
When this forty-four hits you, you know you is bound for hell.

I presume Big Maceo knew all these recordings. Other lines were lifted from different songs. Mary Butler's "Mary Blues" (1928, recorded with Charlie McCoy and Walter Vincson) includes this verse:

All these women screamin' murder, I swear I ain't raised my hand.
All these women screamin' murder, I swear I ain't raised my hand.
I'm just lookin' for the woman that's restin' with my man.

"[...] tear your playhouse down" is a variant of a standard Blues phrase. Michael Taft has nine related examples in different motivic contexts in his corpus of pre-war Blues. In fact Big Maceo rarely used a line of his own, really important and impressive is the way he personalized this song and made it completely his own, no matter who has written the melody or where individual lines are taken from.

The "32-20 Blues" and most of the related songs are aggressive fantasies about someone wishing to kill the untrue lover and/or the rival. This was a standard topic in prewar Blues, extremely popular with both singers and audiences but often enough turned into a tired cliché. Well-known examples are Blind Blake's "You Gonna Quit Me Blues" (1927):

The day you quit me, baby, that's the day you die

or John Hurt's "Nobody's Dirty Business" (1928):

Some of these mornings, going to wake up crazy.
Gonna grab my gun and kill my baby

Often enough this motif is turned into an exaggerated fantasy, as in Tampa Red's "Down In Spirit Blues" (1931):

Now, if I find her, I'm gonna beat her, gonna kick and bite her too.
Gonna take my German Luger, goin' to shoot her through and through

or in his "Georgia Hound Blues" (1931):

So if I find her, I'm gonna kill her, and then I'm going to hang myself.
If I find her, I'm gonna kill her, and then I'm going to hang myself.
And if she don't have me, she sure won't have nobody else.

I done bought myself a razor, a rifle and a Gatlin' gun.
I done bought myself a razor, a rifle and a Gatlin' gun.
Gonna cut her if she stands and I'm gonna shoot her if she run.

One of the most extreme variants is Lonnie Johnson' "She's Makin' Whopee In Hell Tonight" (1930):

Baby, you been gone all day, set to make whoopee tonight
You been gone all day, set to make whoopee tonight
I'm gonna take my razor and cut your late hours, I will be serving you right

The undertaker's been here and gone, I gave him your height and size
Undertaker's been here and gone, I gave him your height and size
You'll be making whoopee with the devil in hell tomorrow night

You made me love you, just got me for your slave
You made me love you, just got me for your slave
And from now on you'll be making whoopee in your lonesome grave

Devil got ninety thousand women, he just needs one more
Devil got ninety thousand women, he just needs one more
You're just the type of woman for him, mama, you're booked out and bound to go

I told you, next time you go out, please carry your black dress along
Told you, next time you go out, please carry your black dress along
'Cause a coffin will be your present and hell will be your brand new home

A lot of violent Blues were first written by or for women and only later adapted by men. Female aggressivity against men - the reversal of gender roles! - had originally been a major motif of the "coon" songs from the turn of the century, "comedy songs that drew upon minstrel show caricatures of blacks" (Furia, p. 32). But singers like Bessie Smith, Clara Smith and Victoria Spivey appropriated this motif and created the role model of the "vengeful woman who acted out her violence" because she had been abused (Harrison, p. 81).

Their records were often advertised in a very sensationalist way. "I Have Killed My Man - Bloodthirsty Woman Confesses - Never Seen So Much Blood" said the ad to Ms. Spivey's "Bloodthirsty Blues". "Bessie Smith spills fire and fury in Hateful Blues" or "Clara Smith has murder in her eyes when she sings [Mean Papa Turn Your Key]". The male singers since the late 20s then plundered the songs of their female precursors. The lines quoted from Tampa Red's "Down In Spirit Blues" were in fact lifted from "Hateful Blues", written by Edith Johnson and recorded by Bessie Smith:

If I see him I'm gon' beat him, gon' kick and bite him, too
Gonna take my weddin' butcher, gonna cut him two in two.

Her "Black Mountain Blues" was the source for one of the verses quoted from Tampa's "Georgia Hound Blues":

I'm bound for Black Mountain, me and my razor and my gun.
Lord, I'm bound for Black Mountain, me and my razor and my gun.
I'm gonna shoot him if he stands still, and cut him if he run.

In fact a lot of well known Blues phrases and motives were first sung by women and then appropriated by male performers. In this case they turned aggressive female self-confidence into helpless male chauvinism. It's not unreasonable to think that Roosevelt Sykes changed the train into a pistol because of the popularity of violent Blues songs at that time.

Literature

Philip Furia, Irving Berlin. A Life In Song, New York 1998
Big Bill Broonzy, Big Bill Blues. William Broonzy's Story As Told To Yannick Bruynoghe, New York 1992 (or. 1955; p. 112 – 116)
Daphne Duval Harrison, Black Pearls. Blues Queens Of The 1920s, New Brunswick 1988 (p. 81; the ads mentioned are printed on p. 83, 84, 146)
Paul Oliver, Screening The Blues. Aspects Of The Blues tradition, New York 1968 (p. 90 – 127: about the “44 Blues” - family of songs)
Don Palmer, liner notes to Big Maceo, The Bluebird Recordins 1941 – 1942, RCA 07863 66715 2 [The “32-20 Blues” can be found on Vol. 2 of the collection: Big Maceo, The Victor Bluebird Recordings 1945 – 1947. This excellent edition is obviously out of print. Maceo's complete recordings are available at the moment from Document]
Michael Taft, The Blues Lyric Formula, New York 2006 (excellent work for searching out parallels in Blues songs. His complete concordance: Michael Taft, Talkin' To Myself. Blues Lyrics, 1921 – 1942, New York 2005 (or. 1983))
Lyrics quotations from different vols. of Robert MacLeod's indispensable transcription books, Document Blues 1 – 5, Edinburgh 1994ff (Tampa Red, Roosevelt Sykes, Mississippi Sheiks et); Angela Davies, Blues Legacies And Black Feminism, New York 1998 (Bessie Smith; this book is indispensable for complete sets of transcribed lyrics to recordings by Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey)

About Big Maceo:

This is a slightly revised version of a text first posted in December 2006 on morerootsofbob.com as part of a dicussion of Bob Dylan's "Call Letter Blues"

"Prohibition Blues" - Ring Lardner & Nora Bayes (1919)

2009-04-13T18:42:00.012+02:00

January 1919 saw the ratification of the 18th Amendment that established Prohibition in the USA. This became of course an important topic in popular music and songwriters immediately offered their comments, for example the Alcoholic Blues (Laska/A. van Tilzer), At The Prohibition Ball (Gerber/Silver), No Beer - No Work (Edwards), John Barleycorn Good-bye (Stark), What'll We Do On Saturday Night (When The Town Goes Dry) (Ruby), How Are You Going To Wet Your Whistle (When The Twon Goes Dry) (Byrne/McIntyre/Wenrich).

Most interesting is the somehow ambiguous "Prohibition Blues" (1919) by the popular sports columnist and short story writer Ring Lardner - who occasionally tried his hand at songwriting but without much success - and Vaudeville star Nora Bayes. Jonathan Yardley in his biography of Ring Lardner claims that he also wrote the music for this song. It was common practice at that time to give writing credit to a popular performer who then introduced a song on stage and included it in his repertoire. "It is unlikely that he would have received $ 250 advance royalties for the song had not her well-known name been on the sheet music" (Yardley, p. 208/9). Ms. Bayes sang it in the show Ladies First, a "suffrage farce comedy" and she also made a recording of "Prohibition Blues" although it seems it wasn't that successful:

mp3: Nora Bayes, Prohibition Blues:

"What ails you brown man
What makes you frown man"
I ask'd my man so mis'rable
"You look so winnin' when you is grinnin'
With all them gold teeth visable
But now you's always threatnin'
To bust right out and cry
Does yo' dogs fret you?
What has upset you?"
Then he made his reply:

"I've had news that's bad news about my best pal
His name is old man Alcohol
But I call him Al
The doctors say he's dyin'
As sure as sure can be
And if that's so
Then oh oh oh
The difference to me
There won't be no sunshine
No stars no moon
No laughter no music 'cept this one sad tune
Goodbye forever to my old friend 'booze'
Doggone I've got the Prohibition Blues"

Literature & Sources:

- mp3 c/o The Internet Archive
- a review of the show Ladies First in the New York Times (25.10.1918, before the song was included)
- Jonathan Yardley, Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner (2001, as Google book )