BS: How has this music touched you?

Subject: How has this music touched you?
From: Naemanson
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:22 AM

Sure, we all feel something special about folk and blues that touches us deeply enough that we have to pursue it. That is not necessarily what I am talking about here. Let me tell you a story.

My sister and her kids and my father paid a visit to Mystic Seaport last year. While standing on the deck of the Charles W. Morgan my father explained to the rest of the family members present that our great-great-grandfather, old Joe Spencer, was the first captain of the great clipper ship Davy Crocket. This is an old family story and one which I think of every time I sing The Leavin' of Liverpool.

One of the Seaport employees was standing nearby and turned around when that story was told, looked at them and said, "That's my great great grandfather too!"

As it turns out Joe Spencer's daughter married a man named Keene and led a rather interesting life of her own. After she had raised her children she went to medical school in Philadelphia and became one of Connecticut's first female doctors. That's another story but it is the point at which the family branched out.

My point is that my family has a connection to that song, The Leavin' of Liverpool, or to be more accurate the ship in that song. How many of you have a similar connection? What is it? Surely there are immigrant songs or local ballads which have mentioned places in your family histories or events at which your family members were present. There can be more than a emotional connection to folk music. What is yours?

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Jock Morris
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:32 AM

Through my mother's side of the family we can trace back to the MacPhersons of Huntly, a family that includes the infamous John MacPherson of MacPhersons Farewell fame.

Scott

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Mbo
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:41 AM

Sorry, not ALL of us come from the British Isles.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: GUEST,celticblues5
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:55 AM

What a wonderful way to feel linked, Nae! I love those spooky coincidences that pop up once in awhile. The far ancestors whose employment I do know about were apprentices in the Bristol textile trades, so if I ever come across a song about that.......

Um, well, my great-aunt used to date Harpo Marx, so whenever I hear harp music.....or a bicycle horn.....damn, I guess that's just not the same..........;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Naemanson
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:29 AM

Mbo, The Leaving of Liverpool is an English or Irish song but the Davy Crocket was built in Connecticut and had an American Captain until she was sold to the Black Ball Line. My connection is distinctly American. Joe Spencer was from Connecticut.

You know, guys, a lot of the connections will be fairly recent. How many of you are descendents of dust bowl refugees, migrant workers, union organizers, etc. These will be connections to songs in this century. Even more recently songs of coal mine disasters or Cyril Tawney's songs about the British submarine service may come into play.

C'mon guys, spill your guts! (Good grief! There's a term for that other thread about curious expressions)

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:43 AM

Meebo, when are you going to pick up on concepts and not play these sillyass little word games and deal with minute details? Virtually everyone may have emotional ties to songs, but most of us have some physical ties to some as well. That's all Naes is asking here. As I recall, didn't your Mom or somebody have a connection to Croce? don't you have some relative or something tied to the Civil War?

Stop looking at pissant, unrelevant details and try to comment on the concept....or not at all.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:50 AM

Aw! don't get so fierce with him, Spaw. The poor lad was just bewailing his misfortune;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 11:57 AM

Yeah, you're right Bert. But if he did have English roots, it could be worse..........He could be related to you!(:<))

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:11 PM

I wouldn't wish THAT on anyone, 'cept my two sisters maybe!

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Lox
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:12 PM

"It is better to be talked about than to not be talked about" - Oscar Wilde.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Robby
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 01:34 PM

Family legend has it that we are somehow related to a Father John Meehan, who supposedly was a Fenian rebel in Dublin. However, to the best of my memory, he never made it into a song.

The closest I come to anything close to Naemanson's story is that my mother's family name, Donnelly, is mentioned in the song Dear Old Donegal. Does that count?

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 02:03 PM

My lot turn up in Border Ballads rather often, both as heroes and as villains.  I once met a bloke whose surname was Percy; he was actually a little worried that I might have some kind of hereditary grudge against him!  (cf Chevy Chase)  Strange...

Malcolm

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Ringer
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 02:27 PM

My mother's family claim descendency from John Bunyan, but from no folk-song hero as far as I'm aware. But the music touches my soul deeply.

(Did Oscar Wilde really split infinitives?)

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: campfire
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:18 PM

My mother's maiden name is Goodwin, and growing up I was led to believe "Cap'n Good'in" from Yankee Doodle Dandy is a great-(I don't know how many greats) grand-something. I never traced the geneology and I'm not sure if I believe it or not, but my grandmother sure did!

campfire

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Amergin
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:29 PM

Well, let's see there's a song about a couple of brothers that I love....one wore blue and one wore grey....my fathers wore grey....

Amergin

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 10:34 PM

My mother named me Barbara Ellen. I don't think she'd heard of the song at all, just liked the way it sounded. Cold hearted sort of fits me, though

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: hesperis
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 12:04 AM

Great subject for a thread!

Nice to have family history. I haven't much at all.

My nickname is Che, so I was very interested in the songs about Che Guevara that came up on the "major protest songwriters" thread. I was actually named after him.

Any songs with the surname "Morgan" mentioned?

Any songs about Chagall, or Impressionist painters?

That's pretty much the rest of my history.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: mg
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 02:22 AM

my name is morgan but it's not j.p.

mg

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Metchosin
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 03:43 AM

I love sea shanties and songs of the sea. When I was small one of the songs that my Grandfather taught us was Down by The Royal Albion (or Streets of Laredo to others, although it would be years before I heard that version) Other than that song, he never talked much about his life as an orphan ward of the the British Navy or his time as a merchant seaman shipping out of San Francisco before the earthquake, but he was a member of the Thermopolae Club, so we knew he had sailed under canvas, as that was a requirement for membership at one time.

Years after his death, we were invited aboard one of the Tall Ships one evening, during a boat festival here in Victoria Harbour and ended up in the galley/lounge singing sea songs and shanties. The ship (I wish I could remember the name) was not one of the spit and polished ones, but had been a lumber transporter on the West Coast and little had been changed below deck, on this true worker, in the last 100 years. It had two, huge smoke blackened beams that ran 110 feet through the length and we sang, nestled in the glow of kerosene lanterns, as the kettle boiled on the old woodstove.

It was one of those chicken skin evenings, where you felt truly transported to another time and I felt a wonderful tangible connection to the missing portions of my concertina playing/banjo picking Grandfather's life again and remembered the evenings as a child, when we sat around him in the glow of the fireplace entranced by his songs.

Then there's the Scot and Hungarian side of the family and they sang too.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 05:06 AM

Hesperis, there's a song - ballad - about the Morgans of Dolau Cothi (an estate here in the Tywi Valley), probably early 19th century, perhaps earlier. Damn - I need a duplicate library at work! It's an unfulfilled love, obstacles, wasting away, etc. kinda thing if memory serves - the short version is around 14 verses, the full version has about 70 zillion. (Tegwyn would know all about it.)

Of course, the Morgans from this area are Morgans as in the Pirate ... possibly the same family as Dolau Cothi...

sian

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Naemanson
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 06:25 AM

Campfire, for the purposes of this thread the actual connection isn't as important as the connection felt through the family stories. There is no way to know anything about some of these connections. There was a Burnham got spitted on a lance at Agincourt. We have always claimed him as an ancestor. During the years leading up to the American Revolution another Burnham was once recommended by the Connecticut Committee Of Safety for immediate execution. We claim him too. We also lay claim to Frederick Russell Burnham who fought in both Matabele wars and the Boer War in Africa and was decorated and had dinner with Queen Victoria. And then there is the Angel Gabriel (a ship not and angel) but that is too long a story for this post. None of these is documented.

There are others we have nevr tried to claim. Admiral Nelson was born and raised in Burnahm Thorpe. I imagine there is some way a progenitor in our family could have warped reality enough to claim a connection but if any tried it never came floating down through the family.

It may have been a mistake to use a documented relative to start this thread rolling. Joe Spencer is a documented member of the family. Benjamin Graham is another documented relative. He wore blue (sorry Amergin) at Gettysburg and was decorated for his action there.

My point is that it is the connection you feel from your families' points of view that are important for this thread to work. What family stories connect you to these songs?

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Robby
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 07:13 AM

My paternal grandmother used to talk about one of her uncles who, she told us, fought at Gettysburg--also wearing blue. I have looked through the records of the PA troops, though, and can find no listing for either a James (Jim) or Francis (Frank) Giblin in the rosters. So, if one or them was there, he must have been from someother Northern state.

Incidently, My grandmother's father, Patrick Giblin, lived next door to his brother James, in Carbondale, PA, after the Civil War. There apparently was some feud between them because they never spoke and refused to let the cousins play with each other. It was years later that my father, one of Patrick's grandchildren, and a cousin, one of James' grandchildren, became very good friends. Families are strange.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: GUEST,Mbo_at_ECU
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 08:48 AM

The pirate Henry Morgan was a devil incarnate butcher. I hope he died in as much pain as those he spent his life torturing and murdering.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 08:58 AM

Yeh. Well. Don't remember anyone specifying *good guys* in this thread.

sian

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: sian, west wales
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 08:59 AM

Yeh. Well. Don't remember anyone specifying *good guys* in this thread.

sian

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Naemanson
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 12:52 PM

There must have been some reason the Connecticut Committee Of Safety recommended my ancestor's immediate execution. I'm glad he got away.

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Kim C
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 01:16 PM

Well, I don't have any family connections to folk music. I have had to write my own songs for that. I did write one about my cousin John B. Feather who fought for the Union and died at Andersonville in 1864, just a few months after his 19th birthday.

I have a friend in the Army who I think about everytime I sing Johnny Is Gone For a Soldier; and now that my father and grandmother have both died, I can't help but think about them whenever I sing Poor Wayfaring Stranger.

I guess the way music really touches me, though, is when somebody comes up to me after a performance and says, "I really loved it when you sang (insert song title here)."

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Naemanson
Date: 07 Oct 00 - 09:22 PM

Refresh

Subject: Legend of Sleepy Hollow
From: GUEST,DocJohn
Date: 09 Oct 00 - 07:46 AM

I don't know of any folk songs but I am related to Katrina Van Tassel from the legend of sleepy hollow. Her father Jan n Texel was the first Van TAssel in America and actually was indentured, as I understand it. He ended up having two wives, his firs a Dutch lafy from the community and his second an Indian lady from the Manhattan indians. From his offspring the family spread across the world. The town Van Tassel Wyoming was named for a family member. Van Tassels have fought in every war since the late 1600's, served in government and law enforcement, medicine and research. There have been some notable VT's and some others also. There ae athletes and men of science. There is a lady in Hollywood whose name I see on movies sometimes named Van Tassel.

The recent movie about the legend of sleepy hollow, as my Uncle says, didn't do the family justice.

there you have it

John

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: GUEST,McCoy maiden
Date: 09 Oct 00 - 10:57 AM

Song, "The Martins and the 'Coys", and here I am and p roud to be the offspring of such well known hillbillies!! M. McCoy

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: hesperis
Date: 09 Oct 00 - 11:37 AM

Thanks sian. My great-grandmother's maiden name was Morgan, and she was from Wales. I was hoping for some history. Will look for the pirate song, and if you find that other song, please send it to me.

~*sirepseh*~

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Catrin
Date: 09 Oct 00 - 11:55 AM

Not music this, but i am related to Eric Gill - a sculptor, printer, mural artist and all sorts. He made a lot of money, had some strange sexual habits (which I don't want to go into) and his daughter's second husband spent the 'family fortune' on drink and bad living.

Lots of people i would rather be related to!

Some history!

Cheers,

Catrin

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: JennieG
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 02:23 AM

There are some songs here in Oz about a miner whose name was Norman Brown - he was killed by police in 1929 but has become a martyr and hero to mining communities in New South Wales. He was my mother's first cousin; she was a small child at the time. It's quite a strange feeling to know that what was always thought in our family to be a sad happening, actually is felt quite strongly by the wider community. I have actually heard Norman referred to as "Australia's Joe Hill".
Cheers

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: GospelPicker (inactive)
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 01:11 PM

I have Grace O'Malley (famous Irish pirate woman) as a great-great-however many greats-either aunt or granny...

I am also related to Chief Joseph and Black Elk, who were Hunkpapa and Oglala Sioux, respectively... My maternal great-grandparents were Hunkpapa and my paternal grandfather was Oglala...

There are many songs in my peoples' history dealing with their struggles and their pride... I love my heritage (which includes the above by blood and my adopted Polish/Romanian/Hungarian family tree) and I am glad so many others are being led to discover theirs... it's a beautiful thing.

GospelPicker

@:()>[+]

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 02:05 PM

I am of Polish descent. And although I have no way to confirm it, I have always believed that the "Too Fat Polka" (I don't want her, you can have her, she's too fat for me) was written about one of my great aunts. You should see some of the pictures. . .

Subject: RE: BS: How has this music touched you?
From: Naemanson
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 10:31 AM

I have always loved the history of my family down through the ages. We trace back to Walter Le Veutre who was granted the Saxon village of Byrne Ham by William the Bastard in 1080. He changed his name to Walter de Byrnham and began a whole new family. We also lay claim to Walking Rolf the Viking who, they say, was too tall to ride a horse.

Who can say whether we come from them or not. It doesn't matter in this day and age but the fantasy connects us to the history and makes it live for each of us.