Songs about getting really old? - 1

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Frank Phillips
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 05:46 PM

The chorus posted by Harald sounds like the Eric Bogle song about the Australian farmer called "Now I'm Easy" which is in the DT.

Might there be another song by this name?

Frank

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 05:05 PM

Oh!! Another great one,,,it's in the database.."Didn't I Dance"

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 05:01 PM

Many of the songs in the "Time & Changes" chapter of the "Rise Up Singing" songbook have to do with aging, but I don't have time today to type any. One I like especially is "The Activity Room (Mrs. Abrams)," by Ruth Pelham. Ronnie Gilbert did a great job with this song on the "Lifeline" album she recorded live with Holly Near in 1983.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Peter T.
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 04:57 PM

Great Songs. (the real Buck Mulligan? We are honoured) Another Jacques Brel (his best) "Chanson des Vieux Amants".

Harold, any lyrics to "Now I'm Easy"?

I guess "Angel From Montgomery" is also an old person's song.

An e-mail from a friend who notes (while recommending "I'm So Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" from Gigi) that Sophocles is reputed to have said, "At last I do not feel those terrible fires." He was 90. Yours, Peter

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 04:49 PM

Steve Goodman and Jerry Jeff Walker both wrote wonderful songs with the same title, "My Old Man."
Not folk songs, but "The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics is worth a close listen. "Leader of the Band" by Dan Fogelberg always makes me think of my dad, who nowadays doesn't sing as much as he used to.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Coralena
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 03:36 PM

"That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" by Gene Autry

A very touching song, if you love your Daddy this one may make you cry.

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Alice
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 02:30 PM

There are "Silver Threads Among the Gold" (in the DT) and "Darling Nellie Gray", "The Picture on the Wall", "Long, Long, Ago", "Grandfather's Clock", "You're As Welcome As The Flowers in May" (I saw my daddy old and grey, I heard my dear old mother say,), "Are You Tired of Me Darling", "After The Ball" (A little maiden climbed on an old man's knee, begged for a story...), "Bring Back to Me My Wandering Boy" (tell him that his mother with faded cheeks and hair, at the old home is waiting him there...).
I didn't check the first thread on aging to see if I am repeating here, guess I should have done that before typing all of this in. Interesting topic. Alice in Montana

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 02:13 PM

"Over the Hills to the Poor House"..old country/bluegrass number and "The Black Sheep"...(in the database)...songs about what is done with the old...

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: Harold
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 01:19 PM

Peter, the Beatles sung "When I get older.." and not "When I get really old" ! Then you would be right.
I remember parts of the Dubliners´ "Now I´m Easy", about a man who IS really old, or at least feels really old. "It´s nearly over now, and now I´m easy...". It´s a very haunting song of hard times in Ireland in former times.

Subject: RE: Songs about getting really old?
From: S.P. Buck Mulligan
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 12:39 PM

Peter: I have a few for you: "Hello In There" by John Prine, "The Dutchman" by Mike Smith, and "The Old Folks" by, I think, Jacques Brel (not 100% sure on this attribution). The prine has been recorded by Bette Midler of course, but Prine's own rendition is far superior. The Mike Smith tune was sort of a signature of Steve Goodman's, appearing on one of his earliest albums. The only recording of "The Old Folks" I've heard is by HJ Dutschendorf on none of his "pre-Country Boy" LPs.

Subject: Songs about getting really old?
From: Peter T.
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 11:44 AM

This is a companion ("cf. Old Friends, Simon and Garfunkel") to the other thread "Songs About Getting Older" asking about songs relating to those who are getting somewhat older. Does anyone have any good songs -- uplifting, depressing, gruesome, sweet -- about the really aged? It is scary to think that the Beatles "When I'm Sixty-Four" might be in this category, but they were in their twenties, what did they know? Yours, Peter T.