The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #36236 Message #500542
Posted By: RoyH (Burl)
07-Jul-01 - 10:10 AM
Thread Name: D.Behan, Dylan, Ives, and JO STAFFORD!?
Subject: RE: D.Behan, Dylan, Ives, and JO STAFFORD!?
This has been a most interesting thread for me, not least because of the musical memories from Art and Rick. Art, you are quite right - I had that album and it was GOOD. Technically speaking few popular singers were ever as good as Jo Stafford. I remember some joke records she made as an off-key country singer. Wonderful. Can anybody recall the name she used for that character? And Rick; my God, I never thought I'd hear the names of Rusty Draper and Julius La Rosa again. They were part of my youth. Didn't Julius La Rosa sing 'From the Vine came the Grape'? But to get to the Dominic Behan story; in the early '60s I was running a folk club and had booked Dominic as guest singer. The building the club was housed in had a small restaurant as well as a concert room. Dominic arrived in time for us to have a meal before the club started. We had a pleasant conversation until I mentioned that I'd just bought a Burl Ives album called 'In The Quiet of the Night' on which he (Ives) sang 'The Nightingale'. I asked him if that song was the tune for 'Patriot Game'. His smile never wavered but his eyes bored right through me and he said, in a voice that brooked no contradiction, "I wrote that tune". I put the reaction down to my naivety and said no more. That night Dominic treated a capacity audience to a great show during which he announced "Here is a song that your club organiser thinks I didn't write' and proceeded to sing 'The Patriot Game'. He said it with a grin and our subsequent meetings were always amicable. But I never forgot the first time I met Dominic Behan.