What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 11:33 AM

Michael, Paddy is very much still around, and still performing regularly. He's still doing solo stuff and plays hurdy gurdy with French dance band 'Bof'

I'll certainly give him your best wishes when I next see him.

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 12:23 PM

"You are simply missing the point, deliberately I think,"
No I am not - I was fully aware of the misuse of the term and if I had any doubts, these arguments would be more than enough to dispel them
The misuse of what the term folk songs is is so diffuse and contradictory that it cannot, as far as I can see, be regarded as a definition.
What are you suggesting - that I agree to accept "opera arias or what ever else floats the boat" as folk song because somebody has decided what they are - how does this fir under your "folk umbrella"?
When this comes with some of the antagonism and open aggression shown towards folk song and the people who gave it to us, I really don't hold out too much hope for the real thing.
Bryan has attempted to put ths down to Muskett and Big Al yet, even without leaving this thread, there is adequate indication that this aggressive takeover is a fact of life in many areas of Britain now.
He says nobody has supported it - nobody has contradicted it - including himself.
His contribution seems to be "everything in the garden's lovely (if you happen to live in Lewes) and I'm "out-of-touch" if I take any of it seriously.
He did have the good grace to admit that I no longer have the right to expect folk song when I go into a 'folk club' and that I should check first.
It appears you need to be 'street-wise' if you wish to find out about folk song on today's scene
We've just been told that the handing back of folk to the music industry is "inevitable"
Even you have used the term "dim and distant past" in relation to a desire for policy clubs.
I've trawled about a little and listened to some of the people who have come up here - loud cacophonous third-rate rock and mid-Atlantic caricature accents seem to be on offer in plenty - thought that went with 'Baby Blue'.
Yes - there are "other usages of the word "folk"" mainly deliberate misuses - no reason why we should accept them, unless we want to, of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 12:44 PM

Spooky. Many years ago when working in Portslade, I did visit a folk club in Lewes and at the time, it would be rare for me not to knock out an Al Stewart number (Pussy cat or Nostradamus) and one of many Richard Thompson songs in my folk repertoire. When "down south" a song from a radio ballad usually gets thrown in too, just to get all Northern at southern softies.

I said you couldn't afford me Bryan. Looks like you don't need to, the tribute acts are abound since I sold up my business interests in Sussex by the Sea.



Jim Jim Jim
Aggressive takeover... Dozy old sod. I refer to the folk world I entered in the '70s. As revolutions go, we cant be very good at it then!

🎸🎸🎸🎤🎤🎤

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 01:00 PM

all my youtubes are crap. Istopped doing when I realised I was Alfred Hitchcock. Though the the results I came up with had a horrific quality. I don't know how to remove them.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 01:12 PM

Less than 50% trad, Bryan. The horror! the horror!

Out of interest, what was the Kipling/Bellamy?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 01:25 PM

The beauty of a stage name when I was in rock Al. Plenty out there on youtube, some I like, some bloody awful, but not linked to the common or garden folkie who likes doing the odd floor turn, charity concert etc.

The thought of some of the weird buggers on here commenting about my past... Mind you, sadly, the synicated folk shows that went to over 200 hospital radio stations in a dozen countries with interviews, studio sessions, live recordings at The Boundary in Worksop etc have all been wiped so far as I can tell. They were Ian, but unless anyone knows differently, Ward Folk has no archive since a "clearout" when new studios were built.

Funnily enough, in all that time, including interviewing old men with trousers up to their tits, nobody mentioned 1954, nobody got precious over genre....

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 01:28 PM

Spleenster:

I think that amongst the permitted faux-traditional songsmithery, there's an awful lot of maudlin codswallop and cringe-making fakery. I also think that when you have a traditional-music night, there is as little chance of quality control as there is at an anything-goes night

Agreed with the first part. I used to do a temperance song (Father Dear Father Come Home). I did it for laughs, but actually it's not a million miles away from the heart-on-sleeve sentimentality (even, dare I say it, right-on heart-on-sleeve sentimentality) of a lot of contemporary folkie songwriting. Not wanting to be preached at or have my heartstrings plucked kept me out of folk clubs for years. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Sheath and Knife, Two Pretty Boys, The Cruel Ship's Carpenter, Little Musgrave, On Board a 98, One Night As I Lay On My Bed, The Trees They Do Grow High, Sweet Lemady and so on and on and on - nothing preachy or sentimental about that lot.

Anyway, it seems that both sentimentality and right-onnery were abroad in the land when the Revival was raging, and new songs in traditional forms aren't immune. All in all you probably do hear more of it, and less laid-back irony & flippancy, in a more trad-oriented session.

Quality control, though, is always higher in trad sessions in my experience; I think in the mindset of a lot of performers "anything goes" really means "anything".

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 01:46 PM

I really must get out more. In the last 5 years I can't remember a single occasion when I heard any rock music or opera at an advertised folk event.

Come to think of it I heard more false American accents in the 60s than I have heard in the last 10 years.

Even though many of the big names on the folk scene are not my cup of tea, nearly all of them at least use traditional music in some way and/or acknowledge their debt to traditional music. I see a very healthy folk scene. The only regret I have is that it it is not as healthy yet in my home city for various reasons, but we're working on it, not shouting the odds from a distance!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 02:06 PM

Musket
I said you couldn't afford me Bryan. Looks like you don't need to, the tribute acts are abound since I sold up my business interests in Sussex by the Sea.

Surprised they let you have a visa. Damien and Mike aren't actually from Sussex, Musket. I think they probably learnt Nostradamus from Peter Bellamy and Down Where The Drunkards Roll from Richard Thompson.

Phil Edwards
Less than 50% trad, Bryan.
Yeah, not much more than Ewan Maccoll. I think the proper title of the Kipling/Bellamy poem/song is A Pilgrim's Way. It's the one with the refrain line "The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!".

Jim, do you want people to take you seriously or not?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 03:30 PM

for godsake - don't take anything seriously...certainly no one here. music is much more important than the merely serious.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 03:47 PM

god, please give me strength.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:01 PM

I'm afraid Jim takes you seriously, Big Al.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 04:52 PM

Presumably Bellamy learned it from Al Stewart...

Thinking on, I used to sing a couple of his takes on barrack room ballads. Danny Dever as I recall. Possibly another? I forgot more than I learned.

Drunkards? Yer're all shandy drinkers! Mind you, your attitude towards the Pope is commendable.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 06:31 PM

What makes you look so pale, so pale, said Musket on parade
I'm dreading what I've got hear, Big Al, the ruffian said.
Cos they're murderin' The House Carpenter,
An' Black Waterside was poor
Now he's taking out a ringbinder with seventy million more
we could sneak out for a slash, he said, karaoke night next door!
but as you're the guest tonight -
perhaps we ought to give these chaps a little some warning.

(apologies to Kipling)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 14 - 07:06 PM

As Steve says, once you look around a bit you realise that things are not that bad. What gives me hope is that there are people a generation younger than me - and, increasingly, a generation younger than that - who play traditional tunes and do it well, sing traditional songs and do it beautifully, and do these things anywhere that will have them.

If you look at the scene and all you see is ugly people doing bad performances of boring songs, then frankly you're not looking or listening properly. This goes for Al and Musket as much as - or more than - Jim.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 03:21 AM

You've earned your beer today

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 04:04 AM

After singin' Danny Deever in the morning? Bit early for that.

Still intrigued by Howard's network of house concerts. Never heard of any such thing, even though it sounds like something big enough for somebody on the fringes of the scene - like say for instance a regular and fairly reliable floor-spot/singaround performer - to have heard of. I'm assuming a HC is a concert in a house, i.e. a very very small concert (or else an ordinary-sized concert in a very very big house). You'd have to limit the numbers, so presumably attending would be by invitation only; and you wouldn't want to shout about it afterwards, so people who weren't getting invited might never even hear about...

Oh.

Well, cheers, everyone. Remind me not to invite you to my parties. Legendary, they are. We have famous people over all the time.

H'mph.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 04:17 AM

I really do hope I am wrong about the state of the clubs, but little that has taken place here indicates that I am.
Plenty of argument on re-defining the term to justify what happens in many clubs - little on the importance of the music itself and its importance, beyond keeping the (apparently) dwindling number of bums on seats.
Nothing about getting the music taken seriously beyond the confines of the few clubs which still cater for folk music, so it can take its place as the art form it is.
Lots and lots of antipathy, even contempt, for the music that brought me and thousands like me onto the scene all those years ago.   
"Jim, do you want people to take you seriously or not?"
I don't care one way or the other Bryan, it's not about me.
Our collection is archived and freely accessible to all, as far as it can be - so the singers and storytellers and what they sang and had to say will be taken seriously long after we're gone.
By the end of the year, over 400 local (Clare) songs will go up on line in the Country the singers belonged to.
We are talking to a local man about getting together all the hundred or so locally composed songs we have found and putting them out in book form to draw attention to a song-making practice we were unaware of until we re-visited our collection.
We've now embarked on two, hour-long radio programmes on Ewan, in time for the hundredth anniversary of his birth next January.
I've found somewhere to sing regularly again (without being deafened by electric soup)
I can turn on the radio or T.V. or ramble down to a session any night of the week to hear top class traditional music played by musicians ranging from being just old enough to be in a pub to those just about fit enough to hoist their waistbands up under their armpits!   
And to top it all, we've found a few elderly people with songs who are prepared to sing for us.
You can only take so much seriousness at my age.
The only thing we have to worry about is whether Castle really did die at the end of the last series - but then again, that does leave Beckett free to.....!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:06 AM

Bellamy covered Al Stewart's Nostradamus to not very great effect - or maybe I'm biased against the song itself, much less the subject? It's cringe-making (apologies) to hear him sing the line about Hister with such earnestness.

*

there is no "folk music of England" any more. First there were pianolas, then there were wireless sets, then there was the telly, and by the mid-1960s basically nobody had to make their own music any more.

I bet you a pint, Phil, that there are more Ordinary People making, playing, creating & experiencing music in 'England' right now that at any other point in its history. The Tradition of Vernacular music making is thriving undaunted across a myriad of idioms in a glorious abundance unprecedented even in my young day when to use things like synthesisers we had to book into the local arts centre on a Saturday morning. These days, you can buy a top-class Moog (the Sub Phatty comes to mind) for a fraction of the price you'd have to pay for a half-decent concertina (but then again Folk Revival was seldom concerned with Popular tastes or pockets). For a fraction of that, you can have all three of Korg's amazing new Volca range and plug directly into the heart and soul of pop hauntology, dance and sonic possibilities as yet undreamed of. And for a fraction of THAT, you can buy a Korg Monotron Delay and have access in your palm to a sonic palette defined by 100 years of analogue tradition. The possibilities are as endless as they are vast, and, for the most part, unexplored. The beauty of it is - the best it ALWAYS yet to come; and it's coming, thick and fast, the more democratised music making becomes.

All recorded music does is INSPIRE people to create, cover, invent, and transfigure. Spend a few months exploring YouTube or Soundcloud or go into any music shop on a Saturday afternoon (careful to avoid the ukuleles) and just listen - you'll hear it right there in abundance. As for the Folk Process, I was showing a Japanese kid in Dawson's Liverpool the other week how to play a workable approximation of Pink Floyd's On the Run on a Korg Monotribe having seen someone do it on YouTube. It's worth noting that you can buy a Monotribe for the price of a half decent tin whistle; I know which one is more relevant to a sense of cultural continuity, process, identity and tradition even if the former is less reliably with respect of tuning, which just adds to the - er - authenticity of the thing.

If, as Richard Bridge is forever telling us, the last thing Folk Music is about is IDIOM, then the notion of FOLKS playing any sort of MUSIC at all - much less one that springs from the vitality of their own culture, community, history and soul - is cause for objective rejoicing, surely? Even if (especially if) precious little of it will be of any interest to your common-or-garden Folk Enthusiast.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:37 AM

jim Carroll. complains about fifties pops songs being supposedly sung in folk clubs, what he is forgetting is that some fifties pop songs were folk songs, examples... Tom dooley, freight train,"Rock Island Line" / "John Henry". WORRIED MAN BLUES.
ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE SONGS THAT ARE AMERICAN FOLK SONGS THAT BECAME FIFTIES POPSONGS. I expect the silence will be deafening from jim carroll, just as it was from howard jones when questioned about paddy butcher who is a fine singer of traditional songs.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:42 AM

Most use braces in my experience Jim..

Mind you, I am beginning to see why they do it. One's beer gut means one's jeans tend to slip under it, causing one to continually pull them up. Give it thirty years and I will be wearing them, singing Harvey Andrews songs with my finger in my ear, saying it has been sung in our village since Cromwell shagged a wench behind the hayloft.

Jack. Obliged. I never knew Peter Bellamy covered it, despite seeing him umpteen times at festivals till his untimely death. He was more into his folk opera and Kipling when I saw him most.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:52 AM

Brilliant post Jack. I was beginning to think I was the only person on the planet who grew up wanting - but never owning a playable guitar. to lust after creating music, but to be denied it was the fate of poor English people for centuries. Coleridgein Frost at Midnight calls the church bells, the poor man's only music.

if there is any hope it is with the proles, as Orwell wrote. And for the first time in history the tools for great music making are within the pockets of nearly everyone. not mention the availability of musical instruction.

god knows what the next load of folk music the people of these islands will produce. or what style of presentation will inspire them. but there is much to look forward to....quite as much as there is to look back on.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 06:36 AM

"I expect the silence will be deafening from jim carroll, j"
I've made a point of trying not to encourage you in your vendetta - am willing to make an exception on this occasion.
I have always been well aware of the AMERICAN folk influence on 1950s pop songs - these are not the ones that are being presented as 'folk' in the clubs that are putting them on - I know this to be true from a banjo playing friend in the South of England who turned up hopefully to participate at one and left when they burst into 'Rock Around the Clock' - (old enough to be a folk song, I suppose).
Is it insecurity that causes you to deliberately target other members of this forum, are or is it simply that you are the unpleasant individual you appear to be?
Lay off
If English clubs are now back to relying on American material as well as phony American accents (yes Steve, they are, like the poor, always with us - seems to be the Vox Pop of many singer songwriters), then the revival has taken a giant step backward to where we all came in over half a century ago
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 07:51 AM

"Ugly people doing bad performances of boring songs"

I bet if you put that on a poster you'd not get a bad turnout...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 07:54 AM

There are of course still many excellent folk clubs about. However the days have passed when there was one, and often more, in every town which regularly booked professional guests. The majority of clubs these days seem to fall mainly into the singaround category, or book a guest only occasionally. On the whole I don't believe these are proving all that successful in attracting younger audiences, although again of course there will be exceptions.

A house concert is, unsurprisingly, a concert in a house. This does limit the size of audience, but many conventional folk clubs draw no larger audiences. They tend to be publicised on social media, which might exclude older audiences. However this isn't much different from the pre-internet days when often the only way to find out about events was by word-of-mouth.

Dick, I don't know who you've confused me with but I haven't mentioned Paddy Butcher. I always post under my own name.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 08:06 AM

"Ugly people doing bad performances of boring songs"
I think it's a misrepresentation of what i actually said.
Didn't once comment on their appearance - some of them are quite attractive, especially the women.
I said that many of them were third-rate performances - standards in the revival have always been a contentious issue on this forum.
I have stressed that my own opinions of the songs is not an issue - I would object to Joan Sutherland or Benjamino Gigli being booked for a folk club, though I am quite fond of their singing and what they sing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 09:11 AM

Michael, hope you're still keeping an eye on this thread, Just to let you know that I ran into Paddy at the Martin Carthy/Dave Swarbrick concert in town last night, and passed on your good wishes, he did indeed remember you from Sawston, and sends you all the best in return.

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 09:44 AM

Many thanks, John. Delighted to have been put back, though somewhat tenuously, in touch with an old acquaintance.

≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 10:01 AM

Here's a question then.

When AL Lloyd and Steve Benbow recorded "Skewball" in 1957 (Topic records) was it folk or skiffle?

Just asking like....

😇

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 10:38 AM

Don't think either of them were into skiffle
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 10:45 AM

Anyway, isn't [or wasn't] skiffle one of the recognisable and identifiable forms of folk? I should v certainly urge so. Why, I actually, tho you might not believe it to look at me now, played washboard & rhythm guitar + vocals at the Nancy Whiskey Club at the Princess Louise, in the Easy Riders Skiffle Group in 1956. Our lead guitar, John Brunner [look him up on Wikipedia] went on to become a Hugo Award winning SF writer... (tho not quite sure what that proves re skiffle=folk, at that).

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 11:34 AM

Any info on 'The Nancy Whiskey Club Mike - never heard of it?
I know The Ballads and Blues were at The Louise - even got a recording of a BBC broadcast from there.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 11:49 AM

"god knows what the next load of folk music the people of these islands will produce. or what style of presentation will inspire them. but there is much to look forward to....quite as much as there is to look back on."


Bristolian 'folkie' [???] Kid Carpet....

Bristol new wave of folk


and another one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wOmi-atyNk

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 11:52 AM

Skewball's a classic Bertsong, IMO - check out the broadsheet versions sometime.

Jim:
"Ugly people doing bad performances of boring songs"
I think it's a misrepresentation of what i actually said.

That part was aimed at Al & Musket, who never seem to have heard a traditional song (or seen a singer of traditional songs) that they liked. But I do think you may be overstating how bad things were on the English FC scene, or else ignoring the signs that they're not quite so bad now.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 11:54 AM

Nancy [Anne Wilson from Glasgow - check wiki] - niceish voice & very basic guitar, never quite made out why they loved her so - was a popular solo act at the club at the Princess Louise which preceded the one she named after herself. IIRC Russ Quaye & Hylda Syms ran it, with a skiffle group led by Hyam [aka Henry] Morris. Russ & Hylda later started the skiffle/folk club at the Cellar in Greek St - originally called the Skiffle Cellar, at which the Steve Benbow Folk Four were resident [see ongoing threads on Steve]*. At some point they moved on, and Nancy Whiskey, who had not yet made her Freight Train record with Chas McDevitt**, reopened the venue as The Nancy Whiskey Skiffle Club. Still with Hyam's group opening each half, iirc, & various guests (I remember Ottillie Patterson a couple of times) & floor singers -- incl as I have said the shortish-lived group Easy Riders Skiffle Group which I graced with my talents[!].

All this from nearly 60 years back, but think I have it mostly remembered correctly.

Hope that helps, Jim.

≈M≈



*trivia: Russ & Hylda gave me my first paid gig there some time in 1956-7 - 10 shillings! I remember Jimmie McGregor was in the audience and spoke kindly of my performance.

** which of course went into the charts. I remember some time in 1956 her assuring John Brunner & me that if she ever made a record it would get into the top 10.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 11:58 AM

Ewan & Peggy's clubs came a bit later at the Louise - early 1957 iirc - at the same venue. Other guests I remember at Nancy's club were Peggy, & Ewan & Bert [on separate occasions] -- both with Peggy as accompanist.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 12:24 PM

Thanks for that Mike - another piece of the jigsaw
Pat remembered the Soho club, but thought it might have been the 'ii' (of Tommy Steel fame).
I know Peggy was always pissed off with the failure to credit Elizabeth Cotton (she worked for the Seegers in Washington) with Freight Train.
Interesting days - need writing up
Where you at the MacColl, Davenport, Campbell, Lloyd dust-up at 'The John Snow', I wonder?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 12:42 PM

No. After my time, I think. I rather dropped out of the folk scene when I married Valerie in 1959, & she was working for the mature scholarship which brought us to Cambridge in 1963. I had previously studied at Cambridge early-50s. I didn't really get back into folk till I started my freelance reviewing career in October 1969, as Cambridge/East Anglia Theatre Critic for The Guardian & Folk record & book critic for the TES, which I ran for years in tandem with teaching; which was my day job till 1985. I would come out of school at 4 pm, go into the nearest phnoe booth, & shazzam! out came Supercritic! But after 1969 I got back into the Cambridge Folk Clubs, would review concerts at CSH &c, festivals at Camb, Norwich London CSH & City Univ &c. Even ran my own folk club for 3 years, in Sawston, a Cambs village where I was head of English at the Village College.

Where did I get all that bloody energy from? All I can do to cross the road to where my car's parked these days!.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 01:07 PM

Mike! any recordings of you doing skiffle? we should do a floorspot togther! a bit of skiffle - don't worry, I'll do the phoney American accent! I'm good at that! Lets drop in folk club near you!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 01:10 PM

Phil. I've probably shit more traditional singers than your have heard. If you want to quote me, quote Musket not your own imagination eh? You sum up the position perfectly. If you like folk in all its forms you must hate traditional music. My comments are over wider entertainment and how folk clubs used to embrace the concept. I possibly have over two hundred traditional ballads and Clapton knows how many tunes in my head, ready for performing. I doubt that is a sign of hating. I don't think I actually hate anything except bigotry.

Tom Brown used to refer to me as his roadie, but Bertha called me her groupie. Lots of his Norfolk songs in my head and in the right audience they come out. But if it is a room full of old blokes with guitars they always wanted and once they retired they bought, Out comes the contemporary and Blues. No point in pissing off your audience then wondering why the club folded.

If a song is awful, it is awful. Just because old tit trousers learned it at his mother's knee doesn't make it any better. It fits in Jim's catalogue but not in polite company. Too many on here confusing provenance with entertainment. Too many thinking the wistful romantic lyrics tell us about life in olden days. Too many looking for heritage of a political view they hold.

Al and I in different ways are just saying it's about the music too.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 01:18 PM

I can do as good a phony accent as anyone, Al. Listen to Longhorn Cows, Cotton Mill Girls, Engine 143, Santa Fe Trail, Jesse James, Little Brown Dog, Red Apple Juice, Signal Lights &c, on my YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/mgmyer

But I fear I don't think I have energy for gigs at this time of day!

Still, I appreciate the kind thought!

≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 01:21 PM

Musket -- One man's 'maintenance of standards' may be another's 'bigotry'.

Just a thought.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 02:56 PM

You mean, "don't bother getting your guitar out Bill, Ben is coming and he plays it better than you."

Maintenance of standards.. Mine was always two tits and a heartbeat.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 04:35 PM

Musket, I don't know you, & I don't think I've even encountered you on Mudcat before now. So all I've got to go on is what you've said in this thread. I can show you half a dozen jeering, derisive remarks about traditional songs and traditional singers with your handle above them; I don't think I've seen a single positive comment. You love traditional music? Great - but you could certainly have fooled me.

Too many on here confusing provenance with entertainment. Too many thinking the wistful romantic lyrics tell us about life in olden days. Too many looking for heritage of a political view they hold.

Anyone in particular in mind? Because it certainly ain't me - I've specifically said that one thing I like about traditional songs is that they're not sentimental & they don't preach a political message. If I want to be reminded that we're all in it together and that prejudice is bad, I can go to a folk club.

As for confusing provenance with entertainment, as I said above I got turned on to traditional songs when (quoting myself) I went to a traditional singaround and heard one amazing song after another, with stunning chorus singing from 15-20 complete amateurs all of whom (unlike me) knew every single song. Entertainment? It was pure, intense pleasure - as intense as anything I'd experienced down the club & much more sustained.

As far as I can make out, you're saying the problem with traditional songs is that they're often boring and they're often badly performed. All I can say is that this has never been my experience - whereas it very definitely has been my experience, all too often, at mostly-contemporary folk clubs (ever been to a Dylan night?).

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:22 PM

Why would it be you? Who are you?

whoever you are, you seem to be a little selective when you dictate what traditional songs are and aren't.

Odd

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:46 PM

Why would it be me? Because I've been disagreeing with you on this thread?

I'm sure you can find sentimentality and radical politics in traditional songs if you look, but you'll find an awful lot of songs devoid of either - which is more than you could say of the contemporary folk repertoire. As Peter Bellamy said, for every song saying "we're the workers and we're miserable and oppressed" there are ten that say "we're the workers and we're having a fine old time".

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 05:59 PM

'It was pure, intense pleasure - as intense as anything I'd experienced down the club & much more sustained.'

ah yes! but it was it pure aesthetic like Matthew Arnold experienced when watching young girls perform gymnastics?

I'm sure you are quite sincere {hil, but take it from a couple of wily old birds like Musky and myself - all is not quite what it seems.

There are some quite wonderful interpreters of trad song, try brian Peters, and John Kelly, Dave Fetcher, Tim Laycock. people who look for fresh ways to tell the old stories.

But one's affinity with a particular brand of music doesn't excuse anyone from the obligations of being an artist. this isn't a football match where you go and support your team how ever crap they perform. there's a lot of snobbery and acceptance of not terribly entertaining work.....

anyway stick around a few years longer and you'll experience it yourself

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 06:35 PM

I've experienced plenty of boredom and irritation in what Jack B woudl call Designated Folk Settings, Al. I've even walked out a couple of times ("a tediously predictable song about the poor oppressed workers is one thing, but we're not having a tear-jerker about the poor oppressed white settlers in Africa", my legs said to me as they carried me to the door). And I won't say I've never heard a bad rendition of a traditional song - of course I have. (Although I've never yet heard a bad Blackwaterside.)

Here's what I don't like in a performance, in no particular order (I'm talking here about singarounds and floorspots; the rules for paid acts are a bit different). I don't like: mumbling into notebooks and songsheets; unengaging, phoned-in delivery; people singing who really don't have (or haven't developed) a singing voice; people grabbing the spotlight and prefacing their one song with a long story which isn't interesting or funny; songs in the form of "here's what I think and I'm right aren't I?" sermonising.

I've seen every one of those many more times at free-for-all folk clubs than at mostly-trad singarounds.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 07:01 PM

Phil, your experience (23 Sep 14 - 04:35 PM) sounds pretty similar to my own. My girlfriend at the time had inherited a nice old parlor guitar from her grandmother and she was busily learning songs from a paperback song book entitled "A Treasury of Folk Songs" and Lomax's "Best Loved American Folk Songs." She was having so much fun with it that I bought myself a cheap guitar and got her to show me some chords.

There was a local folk singer on television at the time (this was around 1952) named Walt Robertson, who gave an informal concert at a nearby restaurant. She and I went. That evening Walt sang for about two-and-a-half or three hours. All traditional folk songs. Some of them I had heard before (Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Susan Reed), others for the first time.

I was totally enthralled! As was everyone there.

I thought, "I want to do that!"

After a long think, I changed my major at the University of Washington to Music (fastest way to learn what I wanted to know), started seriously taking guitar lessons (classical), and took a course in the U. of W. English Department in "The English and Scottish Popular Ballad." And I read a lot. And collected books by the Lomaxes, Carl Sandberg, Cecil Sharp, Evelyn Kendrick Wells, others….

Since then, I've sung on educational television, commercial television, concerts both at large venues (once, an audience of over 6,000) and at house concerts, at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, several nights a week for many years in coffee houses (for decent pay), at folk festivals, at a Sail and Chantey Festivals…. Not just for "folkies," but for general audiences. And maybe thousands of "hootenannies" and "sing-arounds.")

I do sing a few songs that are not traditional folk songs, but the vast majority of my repertoire consists of traditional British and American folk songs and ballads. I know the histories and backgrounds of the songs and generally include brief verbal "background notes" in my programs.

I accompany my singing with an unamplified classical guitar and use a stage microphone only when the venue deems it necessary. I never, ever, before an audience of any kind, sing from songbooks, sheet music, or written notes.

I do not like Bob Dylan or much of his music. I take a very dim view of singers (and there are many of them) who work their asses off (and often ruin their voices) trying to sound "folk," and one write songs, sometimes very good songs, but insist that they are "folk songs" when the ink is still wet on the paper. Asinine! I do like Tom Paxton, Townes Van Zandt, and a number of others who write good songs, but don't try to claim they are "folk songs."

Urban born and raised, I am not, strictly speaking, a member of "the folk," as defined by Gottfried von Herder, the German philosopher who first used the term in relation to music and song ("volkslieder"—music of the rural, peasant class). I consider myself more in the tradition if a minstrel or troubadour.

Okay, gang. Start throwing those rotten vegetables….

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Sep 14 - 10:11 PM

nobody throws vegetables in England.

from the influences you mention I doubt if you would be ethnic sounding enough for the traddy crowd in England. basically you have to swallow the gospel as proposed by Ewan to propitiate them.

independent spirits such as your own Don, people who have striven creatively to find their own understanding - well you may be tolerated, but you'd never be part of the gang.

a very narrow pathway of conformity is the only way. the same songs delivered as much as possible in the same way. miserable sods really - you sound far too nice.