Help: July Wakes

Subject: July Wakes
From: GUEST,Old Snap
Date: 02 Dec 00 - 06:05 AM

Maybe 20 years ago I heard Mike Harding sing a song called July Wakes (Wakes Week being the annual holiday for the textile mill workers in the North of England). I have never been able to discover who wrote it, which has never bothered me before, but now I'd like to record it with my 3-part group.

It begins: "From looms of sweat our brass is drawn..." Ring any bells with anyone out there?

One more thing: we also sing an American hymn called "Holy Quietness" (Joys are flowing like a river etc). I can't find it in Sacred Harp or Southern Harmony. Any ideas on the source?

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: Zebedee
Date: 02 Dec 00 - 07:04 AM

Old Snap,

The song's in Mike Harding's book 'Folk Songs of Lancashire' Words by Richard Pomfret, Music by Stan Ellison.

Ed

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: bill\sables
Date: 02 Dec 00 - 08:29 AM

Geoff the Duck sang it about a week ago send him a PM I'm sure he'll give you the words.
Bill

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: Snuffy
Date: 02 Dec 00 - 08:47 AM

Old Snap, Try looking for "Blessed Quietness", not "Holy Quietness". It's in the Digital Tradition database as BQ.

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 02 Dec 00 - 12:14 PM

I posted the first one here earlier in the year; click for  July Wakes

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 02 Dec 00 - 01:39 PM

If you haven't already got it Bill is right Geoff does a lovely rendering of it and will gladly give you words etc if you pm him.

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 03 Dec 00 - 05:05 PM

I learned it by listening to a Mike Harding recording where he accompanied on 5-string banjo in a minor tuning, and including a very strident chord, which I have never been able to match up to any "real" chord in books of chord fingerings.
If you intend to use a banjo, I can let you have the interpretation which evolved from what I originally heard and which altered over the years to the form my playing now takes it to.
It might also be possible to organise an ear-to-ear meeting in the Paltalk Room sometime.
GtD

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: GUEST,Old Snap
Date: 04 Dec 00 - 01:02 PM

Thanks for your help, everyone. Sorry I can't be any help with the banjo, Geoff - like you, I've been singing it for a few years, but we do it in unaccompanied 3-part harmony (though we too include a few chords from the dusty end of the shelf!) We'd like to ask permission to record the song, so does anyone know either Richard Pomfret or Stan Ellison, and how I might get in touch?

As for "Blessed Quietness", I've tracked it back to an American Seventh Day Adventist song book of about 1898, but that gives a different tune to the one known in England and beautifully recorded by Beggar's Velvet a few years back. Does anyone have any idea where the English version of the tune came from?

David Robertson

Subject: RE: Help: July Wakes
From: Zebedee
Date: 04 Dec 00 - 04:15 PM

David,

I've no idea who Richard Pomfret or Stan Ellison are. I'm sure Make Harding would though.

He currently works for the BBC and can be emailed at [e-mail].

Let us know if you find anything interesting out.

Ed