The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #46131   Message #683213
Posted By: Abby Sale
04-Apr-02 - 06:30 PM
Thread Name: 'Unprintable Songs' (Randolph/Legman)
Subject: RE: 'Unprintable Songs'
I have it. Had wanted it for decades. (But it only was printed posthumously, in the 90's) It's TWO books, actually, Roll Me in Your Arms and (naturally) Blow the Candles Out. They were called The unprintable collection loosely, since Randolph was not permitted to print them. It is a tragic fact that Randolph was castigated, impoverished and driven out of academe for his insistance that this 10% of legitimately collected material should not be censored out of the rest of the material. (This is controversial, though.)

If you buy it, be sure to get both volumes. Index is in vol. 2. You might be able to beat the price a bit on the online used book or auction market.

Randolph's work is brilliant as is Legman's notation.

I'm not likely to start typing the whole thing up but if there is anything in particular you're interested in... Often you can "score" simply asking if there is a bawdy version of almost any trad song.

:-)