Old Allegheny and Monongahela

Subject: Allegheny and Monongahela
From: GUEST,Josh
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 09:22 AM

I've written lyrics for our church that go with the music to this folk ballad: "Where the Old Allegheny and Monongahela Flow".

Now the church is thinking of using it as its theme song and I'm a bit nervous. Does anyone know the history to this song? Is it old enough that I'm not infringing on any copyright with the music?

Help.

Best, Josh.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: JedMarum
Date: 25 Mar 00 - 08:25 AM

I believe there are search engines for such things, but I don't know where they are. if you church wil use it (print it in its songbook or something) it may be considered published, depending upon number of copies, number of users of the books, etc. And of course if it's recorded for CD, tape or other means of distribution - again, it could be considered published. If you are concerned, ask a music publisher. I would send these folks and Email and ask them the same question you posed here. It won't cost anything to ask, and they'll point you in the right direction (I know the guy who owns the business - he's a good guy, and he does do work with spiritual music).

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 25 Mar 00 - 08:37 AM

You can copyright an adaptation of an existing song. Your adaptation is protected as long as it's sufficiently different from the original. The Lib of Cong. has a form that lists this category.

Frank

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 25 Mar 00 - 01:25 PM

This is the only recording of the song listed in Jane Keefer's index (see Mudcat "links"):

Where the Old Allegheny and Monongahela Flow
1.Seeger, Pete. American Favorite Ballads. Volume 4.
Tunes and Songs, Folkways FA 2323, LP (1963), cut#A.04

Sandy

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Mar 00 - 01:35 PM

Hmmmm. I've checked a lot of sources, including ASCAP and BMI and the Levy Sheet Music Collection and the Library of Congress American Memories Collection, and couldn't find it. Considering the reference Sandy posted, could it be in Pete Seeger's "American Favorite Ballads" book? That's one book I don't have. Trouble song titles can be deceiving. If we had the lyrics, we'd have an easier time searching. Josh did provide a good chunk of the lyrics in another thread (but this thread has a much better and more specific title), and I used those in my search. I was sure the steamboat reference would bring Sandy out.
-Joe Offer-

Here's the fragment of the song that Josh quoted:

this song is about a city amongst the hills with rolling mills and steamboats on the river towing to and fro where the old Allegheny and the Monongahela flow.

Subject: ADD:Where the Old Allegheny and Monongahela Flow
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Nov 03 - 02:28 AM

I now have Seeger's American Favorite Ballads book, but it doesn't include this song. I did find it in another book, George Korson's Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (1949)

Where the Old Allegheny and Monongahela Flow
(Sung by J. J. Manners at Pittsburgh, 1947, and used by his permission. Notated by Jacob A. Evanson.)

I want to go back once more
To those hills I roamed before
To gaze upon those hills and mills
Where those mighty rivers flow

CHORUS:
I live in that city that is built among the hills
Where smoke is always pouring from the big rolling mills
And steamboats on the rivers go towing to and fro
Where the old Allegheny and Monongahela flow.

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Click to play

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Notes from Korson's chapter editor Jacob Evanson:

The source of this song has been only partially identified, but there is no question of its popularity. Manners said he wrote the verse, but learned the chorus from the Smoky City Quartet in the 1900's. Fred Schmidt, who wrote down the chorus for me in 1942, said, "I've sung it all my life. I can sing all four parts just the way they are always sung. A lot of people here on the South Side sing it. I've heard gangs sing it in beer places on corners down Sarah Street."
George J. Schwartz, an elderly steelworker, added, "I don't know where the song came from, but I learned it about 1910 when I was top tenor of the old Montouth Quartet before Montouth Borough became part of Pittsburgh. Boy, the smoke really rolled over the hills in those days from a hundred puddling mills down on the river!"
Peter Diebold, only surviving member of the Smoky City Quartet, recollected that "Where the Old Allegheny and Monongahela Flow" was a favorite number in its repertoire.
The Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet at the Point in downtown Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: cetmst
Date: 19 Nov 03 - 08:48 AM

I have it on tape transcribed from 'Prairie Home Companion'show and sung by Garrison Keillor probably ten years ago or so. He sings it in his more soulful and nostalgic fashion than the clip Joe sent. Korson's book has only the melody line. I also recall starting off from home sixty miles away on a shopping trip with my family in bright sunshine and having to turn the lights on under a black sky in Pittsburgh in midafternoon sometime in the midthirties. The city is much cleaner now but I'm not so sure of the Allegheny where the bass tasted like oil even when I was growing up farther up the river.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Nov 03 - 01:51 PM

Hi, CETMST - The book says the verse is to be sung "very free"; and the chorus "with sentiment." It's hard to figure out how to make a MIDI work "with sentiment" - oboes and strings, perhaps? [grin]

It also says a dotted quarter note is supposed to equal a quarter note in the chorus. there are no dotted quarters, but there are lots of dotted eighths - I suppose it means that a dotted eighth note should be drawn out to sound like a quarter.

I'd sure like to hear an arrangement of this. The bare MIDI doesn't do the trick for me.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: LadyJean
Date: 20 Nov 03 - 12:57 AM

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has a Pennsylvania Room. Try them. You could also try Calliope House, Pittsburgh's folk music society.
Pittsburgh being where the old Allegheny and Monongahela flow. I've lived here all my life, and never heard the song. Shame on me!

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Nov 03 - 03:03 AM

yeah, maybe it could sound good on a calliope....
[grin]
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: GUEST,Music2462
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:00 PM

I also have a copy of the song performed slowly and in close harmony, during Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion concert in Pittsburgh, March 1992. In fact he reprised it 2-3 times more during the concert to tie in the Pittsburgh rivers theme. I'm currently arranging it for barbershop harmony, putting in more seventh and diminished chords than I heard in the PHC broadcast. Click back if you're interested in the PHC version or whatever.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: GUEST,NewLander
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 12:01 PM

The Pittsburgh Band the NewLanders has recorded the song for our new CD Born of Fire.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 12:24 PM

Hey, Guest Newlander? Are you also from Pittsburgh area?

Along with LadyJean, and me that makes [at least] three Pittsburghers who post on this forum!

**

NewLander, if you have a website [or even if you don't] you may want to post information about your CD on this Mudcat thread:

thread.cfm?threadid=98041&messages=86 SHAMELESS PROMOTION

**

Also, if you're not a member of Mudcat, why not consider joining? Membership is free and easy. Click on the word Membership in the far right hand corner on the top of this page.

**

And for those who still think that Pittsburgh, PA is still the Smoky City {meaning steel mill smoke and not cigarette smoke}, these photos show what this city of hills & rivers & bridges is like now:

http://www.virtourist.com/america/pittsburgh/index.html


**

Btw, I've lived in this Pittsburgh for 35 years, and, like LadyJean, I've never heard this song.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Feb 07 - 03:42 PM

I spent two years in Pittsburgh, so maybe I sort of count.
I've never heard it before either.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: JJ
Date: 04 Feb 07 - 09:10 AM

I lived on the North Side until late 1953, then moved south to Elizabeth, right on the Monongahela, where my mother still resides.

Count me among those who have never heard this song.

My idea of a Pittsburgh folk song is, "Oh, the Bucs are goin' all the way, all the way, all the way..." as sung during the 1960 season to the tune of "Buffalo Gals."

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 04 Feb 07 - 09:43 AM

Your Pittsburghers (Pittsburghites?) have lots of regional songs and tunes to draw from. Robert Schmertz (I think I spelled that correctly) put out at least a few albums of really catchy new folk songs full of historical content for the city's Bicentennial in the 1950s, I think on the Folkways label. Some of those have even entered the tradition. Then there is the song collection of Jacob Evanson, documented in Korson's book and also on the Folkways LP "Folk Songs of Western Pennsylvania" sung by Vivian Richman. Add to that the fiddle tunes of Sarah Armstrong and others collected in southwestern PA by Bayard. I think Bayard got some ballads down that way as well.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: iancarterb
Date: 04 Feb 07 - 10:25 AM

This is 90 degrees away from the thread, but I remember a funny ballad that must have been written in the fifties that I heard on a Pete Seeger album in 1963 or '64 called Monongahela Sal. It was written. as I recall the notes, in response to the writer's experience of never having heard a song with 'Monongahela' in it. Clearly he or she hadn't heard this one. Any leads back to Monogahela Sal out there?

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 04 Feb 07 - 05:11 PM

iancarterb - I believe Monongahela Sal is by the same Robert Schmertz mentioned above.

Subject: RE: Old Allegheny and Monongahela
From: GUEST,Warren Davidson
Date: 25 May 08 - 06:25 PM

Monongahela Sal was most definitely written by Robert Schmertz! I grew up in the folk-singing circle of friends that orbited around Bob Schmertz; my grandfather and father both recorded with him. My father also edited the Robert Schmertz Songbook which included Monongahela Sal.

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Robert Schmertz discussion moved here (click).