Rewriting someone else's song

Subject: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Bullfrog Jones (on the road)
Date: 26 May 02 - 04:22 PM

The idea for this thread came to me me whilst reading through the 'Swimming To The Other Side' thread, in which various contributors casually discussed ways in which they might 'improve' the composer's lyric to an already published and recorded song. I've always taken the stance adopted (allegedly) by Cole Porter when Frank Sinatra bowdlerized the 'cocaine' references out of 'I Get A Kick Out Of You' -- 'If you don't like my lyrics, don't sing my song'. If I want to cover someone else's work I wouldn't dream of messing with it. Interpretation is one thing, but rewriting a lyric just isn't on. Equally, if someone likes one of my songs enough to want to sing it, I'll happily provide them with the lyrics -- but I'd expect them to stick to the lyrics I provide. When I eventually release a song upon the world, it's only after much honing and crafting. I would like to think that there isn't a single word in a song that I didn't intend to use. That's not to say that I don't occasionally come up with something better after I've been singing the song for a while, but -- hey, it's my song! So am I just being precious or do other songwriters feel the same way. Or is rewriting someone else's song just part of the 'folk tradition'? And do you put yourself down as co-composer when you righteously fill in those PRS forms?!?!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 May 02 - 04:54 PM

I would say that Puccini would have a legitimate right to scream like hell if someone were to rewrite portions of La Boheme. Same with Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Bruce Springsteen, or anyone else for that matter—with the option of taking legal action.

BUT:— Without getting into the "what is a folk song" can of worms, some singer/songwriters insist that the songs they write are "folk songs." In my opinion, when they do that, they're just begging for anyone who wants to come along and folk process their stuff. What recourse does the writer of "folk songs" have when singers modifying folk songs to their own taste is traditional? I wonder what the legal opinion would be then.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: khandu
Date: 26 May 02 - 04:59 PM

Hey Bullfrog,

When I write a song, it is my song! Every word in it is the one I chose to be there. Sometimes I intentionally leave in what many consider a lousy line or rhyme. (I recently rhymed "whore" with "her" and every time I play the song, someone complains!)

But what the hell! Should I put a big wide grin on Mona Lisa's face because I think Leonardo gave her a silly smile? Hell, no! That is his painting and I shall not touch it!

If someone does one of my songs and changes it a bit, I grimace, however I don't gripe. I am honored that they like my song well enough to sing it, and it is their interpretation of it.

khandu

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Bullfrog Jones (on the road)
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:04 PM

Don, I guess I'm a 'folk singer' when I play one of my songs with an acoustic guitar at a session, but then by night -- Shazam! I stand up in front of an electric band and sing the same song. Is it still folk? (Who shouted Judas?) But seriously (while not equating myself with him) the same rules apply to Bruce.. or Bob -- they're 'folk' singers until the songs move out of the 'folk' arena. In my opinion (be it ever so humble) a songwriter is a songwriter is a songwriter. Never mind whether it's folk or bel canto. One of my songs would sound great sung by Boyzone. Another would suit Status Quo. Both of them are frequently played acoustic at a session, accompanied by 'folk' musicians. But they ain't 'folk' songs.

BJ

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:04 PM

I think that if you make every effort to contact the author to gain permission, there is nothing wrong with it. From my own experience, many such folks are wonderfully gracious. Tom Lewis liked our version of "A Sailor aint a Sailor" and allowed us to record "Sailors Prayer", Janie Manealy was very gracious and kind when we tweeked "Twiddles", and Meg Davis sent us a wonderful e-mail after hearing our take on "Swing the Cat". Had anyone expressed concern or anger when we first approached them, we'd have left their stuff alone. Conversely, when people have approached us to do a piece we wrote/arranged and copyrighted, we are far more likely to say yes than to those who don't bother with showing us that respect.

I realize that there is a fine line these days between the "folk process" and "copyright infringement". So, my thoughts are, so long as you are respectful and considerate before you step on toes, these two issues can co-exist fairly peacefully.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:19 PM

Anyone wants to sing one of my songs, that's fine by me. And if they fancy changing it round a bit, that's fine too. If I like the changes I'll likely take them over. If I don't I won't. It's not like drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa - even if I were the Leonardo of songwriting, at most it'd be like drawing a moustache on a print of the Mona Lisa, and I can't see that Leonardo would have worried too much about that. The original is still there untouched whatever anyone else might do with the copy.

I change songs all the time anyway, whether they are mine or someone else's, or traditional - faulty memory is the way the folk process works, and that's the way all kind of improvements come. And sometimes there's a song a I like, but there's bits where I feel that's not how I'd say it.

I can't imagine why I'd object to someone singing a song I'd written a bit different. To imagine that the way I'd got it shaped meant that it couldn't possibly be better - I can't see it that way. Maybe if they changed it round so that it was saying something I disagreed with, it'd be different, I can't see that as too likely. If I know a songwriter I'd likely run my version past them, and I've never had one object to what I've done.

If I hear a joke from someone and pass it on, I'd be most unlikely to tell it exactly the same. Songs aren't that different.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Amergin
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:27 PM

what mcgrath said....even to the point of finding a different tune for them...who knows might fit better...

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:28 PM

Guilty...

I changed John Gorkas lyrics... simply because I didn't really know what scrapple was, and once I found out, there was no way in hell I woulda eaten it... So when I sing his song "People my age have stared looking gross", instead of singing..

Back in Colorado, I'd eat scrapple on toast

I sing

In North Ontario, I ate my poutin on toast...

Makes the song a little more personal, and give the locals something they can relate to...

If John ever reads this, or hears me play it and hates it, he can tell me... maybe I'll stop... maybe I won't....

I also added a verse to Danny Carnahans "Dram To Warm The Piper", for the simple reason that there were simply not enough verses in such a great song to play for me... Danny's read 'em... never said if he minded or not... Silence implies consent...

On the other hand I know of at least a couple of different bands who fancy themselves "Scottish" and when they sing "Barrettes Privateers", they sing "How I wish I was in Edenbourough (sp?) now", and for what it's worth, it sounds really lame and tosser-esque to me... Hard to say if Stan woulda really cared one way or the other...

The trad crap... hell I change that stuff willy-nilly... rewrote The Black Velvet Band... rewrote Whiskey In The Jar.. added a verse to The Wild Rover... songs that lousy need all the help they can get...

So, there's my muddy 2 cents for what they're worth...

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:32 PM

Hey Clinton!

You have me curious now...I know what scrapple is, but what *is* "poutin"???

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 May 02 - 05:34 PM

I have a great deal of respect for traditional songs and ballads, and I don't make changes in them indiscriminately, nor do I make them without giving the change some very serious consideration. But if there is a bad rhyme when I know of a better one that won't alter the meaning, or if a line sings awkwardly and switching a couple words around will clean it up, then more often that not I go ahead and do it. Also (not necessarily germane to this discussion) from time to time I have taken a couple of different versions of the same song and cobbled together a sort of composite version. I find that if I don't do this sort of thing when I'm learning the song, I wind up doing it later, unconsciously, and sometimes not as well.

I'm not sure that any song, including original compositions, is immune from being "folk processed." Not that I'm recommending it. I think it just happens.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 May 02 - 06:00 PM

poutin

Fries and gravy, covered in whey... or cheese, depending where ya get it...

;-)

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 May 02 - 06:50 PM

Sounds even less appealing than scrapple. But then that's the point of ths kind of cookery. And if the ingredients don't put off the outsiders, the name should - fancy some toad-in-a-hole, anyone?

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 May 02 - 06:55 PM

Well... I like fries... and I like gravy... and cheese is one of the staples of my diet, so the 3 together is just fine by me...

*sorry fo the thread drift*

LOL!!!

Rewrites?? What of them?

;-)

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: harvey andrews
Date: 26 May 02 - 07:06 PM

As a writer I think you sing the lyric or you leave it alone. However...how about translation. One of my favourite songwriters is Dave Mallet and I sing his songs for my own pleasure but being English I find great difficulty singing "There ain't no mansion on no hill" so I sing "There is no mansion on a hill"..but the road goes on forever! Now is that changing a lyric or is it singing it in my own language/dialect? p.s. I hate it when anyone changes a word of mine, but I'm sure my lyrics could be Americanised and not suffer at all.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,ADG
Date: 26 May 02 - 07:16 PM

Pete Seeger says that "If I Had A Hammer" is a better song thanks to the changes that Peter, Paul and Mary made.

Woody changed tons of songs.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: curmudgeon
Date: 26 May 02 - 07:39 PM

What did Lee Hays have to say about it?

-- Tom

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 May 02 - 07:40 PM

I'd call that changing the lyric to fit the way you feel comfortable singing; for a lot of people in England I'd probably feel more natural to sing "ain't no mansion on no hill".

As I said up the thread, that is fine by my way of thinking. But when you know songwriter has a strong objection to changes, it's only right to back off from making them. And chansonnier type songs like Harvey's are a different animal in a way from a lot of other types of songs written in the past few decades.

A lot of times you know a song from hearing it before you have any idea who might have written it. And when people learn a song orally from other people singing it, as happens a lot of time, it's inevitable that changes will creep in.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 May 02 - 09:24 PM

Maybe it's because I write songs, but I make a point of learning the correct words when I sing someone else's song. That is, if they are living. I take more freedom with "traditional" songs, because the recording I'm likely to learn it from is one variation that an individual has probably changed to his or her liking. How can I get nervous about changing the lyrics to a traditional song that has almost as many versions as recordings. But, unless I find a line awkward to sing, I still sing traditional songs the way that I've heard them by an individual. Even exceptions there, as someone said. I'll sometimes take one version and insert a verse of to from another version that I really like. Sometimes (although rarely) I'll write an additional verse to a traditional song if I have a "good" reason... it's just a fragment of what was undoubtedly a longer song and another verse might make the whole song make more sense. As for my own songs, I don't write folk songs. I write songs. I one or two of them over many, many years slowly evolve into something a little different, I'd just be pleased that people enjoyed them enough to carry them on. The dead don't know. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 26 May 02 - 11:09 PM

If you write a song, and don't want the lyrics or music changed, don't sing it in public. Shakespeare gets changed every time a play is produced; so does Bach. So what?

If it's good, it will last. If it's not, it will die.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Bert
Date: 27 May 02 - 01:15 AM

Oops, I change just about everything I sing. Usually because the original doesn't fit my style of singing.

I changed katlaughing's song "That's not my Colorado" right from the start, She sings it in a beautiful modal folky style which is way beyond my singing ability. So I westernized/countryfied it so that it I didn't murder the song by trying to sing it in a way that would kill the feeling.

And NO, I couldn't NOT sing it.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: georgeward
Date: 27 May 02 - 01:30 AM

There's excess of ego, and there's want of taste.

Excess of ego is what I'm guilty of if I imagine none of my songs can ever be improved or adapted to someone else's style - even though, as Bullfrog does, I labor over them and usually mean exactly what I write.

It is what you are guilty of if you don't make a reasonable effort to figure out why I wrote something as I did (or why a traditional song has taken whatever form it has). Just because you didn't get it on first reading or hearing doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Want of taste is mine when I imagine that I can successfully translate any song into my voice or my idiom. Music is not a universal language, as the sappy phrase would have it. Knowing what you can't do is as important as knowing what you can do. Some people have a real genius for cross-idiom or cross-cultural larceny. More of us (I plead guilty to this) only fancy that we do.

Want of taste is yours when (metaphorically speaking) you bellow a request from the back of the room for something that is clearly out of the performer's idiom . Some people really do only want to hear "Freebird", no matter by whom.[Some, of course,don't really want to hear it, but want to feel they've got the dynamics and/or to show off for their friends.]

Sure, Dick. It is open season on anything any of us put out in public. But each of us ought to take responsibility for being sure of our target before we blaze away.

Of course we only learn by trying.

And Pete can say what he graciously wants to say, but I don't think PP&M did improve the Hammer Song. Popularize it ? Sure. And their alterations were part of that. That's one kind of good, maybe. But I found the original more musically compelling, and that sharpened the focus on the content. Knock enough of the edges off, push it far enough toward elevator music, and it won't matter any more what the lyrics say. It will no longer work as a call to conscience. It'll just become part of the incessant background racket that numbs us all out.

There's a fine and invisible line there someplace.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Hrothgar
Date: 27 May 02 - 04:30 AM

I know a couple of songwriters who might not sing their own songs the same twice in a row.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Dita (at work)
Date: 27 May 02 - 06:43 AM

As a writer I would be sad if anyone tried to copy my version exactly. When I send songs out into the world, I want them to change and grow, and come back to me with new angle that perhaps I'd never thought of.
Example - I have heard my "Where are you now , my son", a song about a mother who gave up a child for adoption, sung as if by a father who had lost touch with his children.

As a performer I find, when I go back to my original source of a song that I have learned, and been performing for some time, that I have made changes and that is how the song now is for me.

When I sing I think I recreate the song each time, be it mine or someone else's, and that is why it is different. It is not forgetfullness, or lazyness, but I believe part of the folk process.

By the same token I am happy to put a new, or differnt tune to an old song or ballad, or rewrite another song to make it more relevent and performable. I know that some will not agree with this, but I think that this is what traditional singers have always done.
Example I wrote additional verses to Ian Campbell's "Old Man's Song", to include the Thatcher era.

Once the song is out there it is up to everyone to make of it what they will. The improvements will get incorparated by good singers of the future, and those changes which are detrimental will quickly be lost.

love, John (McCreadie)

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 02 - 06:55 AM

Dick Greenhaus,

Whilst I entirely agree with your first comment, to say:

If it's good, it will last. If it's not, it will die

is entirely questionable. But then we'd get into 'what is good' Even Robert Pirsig couldn't answer that one...

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 May 02 - 12:45 PM

George- I never suggested that someone changing a sone and singing it (or even not changing a song and singing it should be immune from some forn or retaliation. But that comes from the audience, not the composer. Personally, I like to know the basis for what I sing. Others may not.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Crane Driver
Date: 27 May 02 - 06:32 PM

When I write a song, some words are important to me - I spend a long time deciding on the right one, or maybe the right one comes and nothing I can do will convince me to change it. Other words are just links, joining up the important words. I don't always sing those the same myself. We were singing a song of mine for about the third time in public, and got in a real tangle in the chorus - half of us were singing "that" and half sang "which" - either could be right in context and I couldn't remember what I'd written at that point. It wasn't important enough for me to have noticed. (It was "which", I finally found, when I went back to my notes). So I'd never expect anyone to get one of my songs word-perfect without the notes!

And yes, I'm one of those who instinctively change almost everything I learn - if I can't remember a line, something usually comes into my head to fill the gap before I can get back to the written copy, and then it's too late - I don't notice the change until I've learned it. Apologies to anyone I've offended down the years!

Andrew

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: InOBU
Date: 27 May 02 - 06:56 PM

POUTIN!!!! Och McGrath, some day, when it is cold and wet and you find yourself in Quebec... OH BROTHER! That's the ticket, stick to your ribs and stop your heart good!!!
As to the mater at hand... Hmmmm... McGrath has done great stuff to one of my songs, and as long as the intent of the piece is conveyed, I am all for it... however, in a thread titled "Rape", about one of my songs about the public gang rape of Hindu women in Bangladesh, some of the suggestions seemed to suggest taking the sting out of the subject, well, hell you put the songs out there and hope they are understood, and sometimes you just have to tighten your grip around your pint of Diet Coke... but I do wish my friends would consider as carefully as McGrath does, the intention behind the music.
BUT HEY! Have a poutin and some Frute de Mere! Knock back a Labat for me up dere in da frozen nord!
Ah toot aloor! (an ave a funny dey... as my pal Serge Luzon would say!)
Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Áine
Date: 27 May 02 - 08:14 PM

As to poudin. ya'll add a little boudin on the side, and Clinton, you and Larry can invite me to supper anytime! ;-) Oooohhh, just thinking about that combination makes me hungry...

As to the subject of this thread -- whatever McGrath said is what I think, too. The man changed the lyrics to a song of my own, and he made it better. Once you let a song go, like a butterfly, it will flit here and there, landing in places you never imagined.

All the best, Áine

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 May 02 - 08:24 PM

Thanks, InOBU and Áine. (On the net no one can see you blush.)

Here's a song I wrote in a previous thread in the what-is-folk traditional cycle of threads. (The thread being What is Folk? IN SONG.)

Just because you made it
doesn't mean you own it.
Once a song has come to life,
it's everybody's song.
Just be glad you did your thing,
and made a song that people sing,
now that song is on the wing,
it's everybody's song.

It's as true for a song
as it is for a child,
there's a time to let go,
when it's time for running wild.
You can't hold it down,
you've done the best you could -
there's a song in the air,
and there's singing in the wood.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Bert
Date: 27 May 02 - 11:48 PM

If it's good, it will last! Ah Dick, If only that were so. So many good songs have been chewed up and discarded by Tin Pan Alley and will never be heard of again.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Al
Date: 28 May 02 - 01:11 AM

I change Steven Foster songs without a twinge of regret. You almost have to. Al

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 28 May 02 - 02:44 AM

It seems that some people can't bear the words to be changed, others can't bear the music to be changed - but then if that's the case why not just play a CD?
I have a long-running disagreement with friends who always want to listen to the record and "get it right" - but I genuinely can't sing that way (or can't sing genuinely that way might be the right way round).
Could be similar to the "notation" vs "by ear" thing in another thread. Is "getting it right" sometimes a bit of a constraint?
I suppose its two ways of approaching the beauty of a song or piece - one way is to get it right & thereby experience and feel the thing as it was crafted, whereas the other is to use it as an inspiration and a vehicle for your own creativity. So then, perhaps the latter is a little cheeky.
Its like some people appreciate the engineering & design that goes into a wonderful gadget-thing, and others would like to take it apart to see how it works & then see what they could make with the bits.

KRis

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: InOBU
Date: 28 May 02 - 07:31 AM

Well, I've made a few changes... I hope it does not change the spirit of the song...

Just because I made it I own the copywrite on it. Now MY! song has come to life, it's everybody's song. I'm so glad you did your thing, and gave me song a little sing, now that song is on the wing, My solisitor will be 'round in the morn.

VERY MUCH kidding... lots of laughing... cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: InOBU
Date: 28 May 02 - 07:33 AM

PS I'd change the tune to the above as well,... I sing it to the wee tenor part of Bethoven's 9th.... Cheers again, Larry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Jim Krause who didn't log in properly
Date: 28 May 02 - 08:46 AM

I sense two things going on here in this thread. First there is this bit about taking a song, any song, and fitting it to the performer and the moment. That is what I call interpretation.

Second is taking a Steve Goodman song for example, and without even a by-your-leave changing the words around to make it more palatable, or politically correct, or add something to it that wasn't there, or wasn't intended to be there, making the song a tool of propaganda. This is not the same as parody. That is something else.

As to changing Stephen Foster songs, ummmmmmm, there I have real mixed feelings. Mostly I sing them when the audience and I have an understanding about the historical context of the song. The most offensive verses I leave out all together. Same with some of Henry Work's songs. Some audiences will accept them, some won't.

But Bill Staines' songs, now those my friends, I would never change the lyrics of at all. The chords, yes. The lyrics, never. That's arranging.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,MC Fat
Date: 28 May 02 - 11:24 AM

Not quite the same but re-writing a song that you've written to bring it up to date. I know Harvey Andrews sometimes posts his thoughts, indeed he's on this very thread so this question is for him . Am i right that you changed some words in Unnaccompanied to bring it up to date. I seem to recall you changing the lines to ' Fridays pay day etc' to ' Friday's dole day etc' or have I just dreamt that ?

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,chipinder
Date: 28 May 02 - 11:43 AM

I can perhaps understand performing a song with a different approach but I recently heard a group who admitted writing a whole new verse to a song by a well known contemporary songwriter. If I had been that songwriter I think I would have been slightly offended that the not so well known group thought my song incomplete and worthy of improvement. How does copyright work in these situations? Chip

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 May 02 - 11:54 AM

Guest:Chipinder:

Sally Rogers wrote another verse to a song that I wrote, thinking that the guy who wrote it was dead (a traditional song.) She was very embarassed when she found out that I wrote it. I wasn't offended. I told her that if she wanted to add the verse, all I'd ask is that she mention in her introduction that she'd added the last verse. I didn't add the verse, myself because I didn't think it improved the song. I've written an additional verse to songs on occasion to try to clarify the message of the song. I always mention that I've added the verse.

Rewriting someone else's song isn't so bothersome to me, although I don't record or sing rough drafts of songs I've written. What bothers me (and I'll accuse myself of this first) is when someone (like me) doesn't sing the words of the song as it was written or recorded because I'm too LAZY to pull out the record and get it right. I think most songs that get "rewritten" are not because of some deep soul searching that requires rewriting the song in order to make it personal to the performer. I think that the folk tradition is fueled by bad memory and laziness... not seriously deliberated rewrites. Having both a bad memory and being lazy, I can say that with some direct experience. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 May 02 - 01:40 PM

Well, I wrote an extra verse for a song Seamus Heaney wrote, and he's got a Nobel prize.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: harvey andrews
Date: 28 May 02 - 05:07 PM

MC fat..no I didn't rewrite that one. One I did was "Gift of a brand new day" which had the verse; "We can take the baby out" which became "Now that the kids are grown" Time sometimes forces adjustments. Personally I don't mind if people change the tune a little to suit their voice or add chords I can't play but the WORDS are the product of my life's work and to change them is like adding to another painter's picture to me. If I don't like the words of a song I don't sing it, although, as I said earlier I might Anglicise it if it's American, but tthat's only changing the grammer as I don't sing in an American or Mid Atlantic accent.As will every British singer at the Queen's Jubilee Concert!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 May 02 - 05:45 PM

"I think that the folk tradition is fueled by bad memory and laziness... not seriously deliberated rewrites."

And that's the way the great songs got knocked into shape over the years. And knocked out of shape too,because it works both ways.

But the happy accidents probably have more staying power. If you search out an 18th or 19th century broadsheet version of a song that survived into the oral tradition, it seems to me that the version collected in some workhouse in Edwardian times always seems to turn out to be far improved.

And that process continues.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 May 02 - 05:59 PM

Basic question: If none of us are writing folk songs (as I believe we aren't) what's the folk process got to do with the songs? I don't hear anyone rewriting Lennon and McCartney.. Just asking.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Cappuccino
Date: 28 May 02 - 06:48 PM

There was a vast great debate on this a few months back, but I can't find the thing now to make a link.

What really puzzled me a few years ago was interviewing a lady songwriter for a magazine. She said that she didn't like it if someone even altered the key of a song she'd written, because it altered the whole dynamic.

I thought that was going too far... to try and pitch some songs in their original key would do my dynamics irreparable damage!

- Ian B

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 May 02 - 06:51 PM

I've heard Beatles songs sung with words and tunes a little bit changed. Come back in a couple of generations and they'll have changed some more.

But it happens a lot more with the kind of songs that you only hear in folk circles, and that people mostly learn from hearing them without knowing particularly who wrote them. Maybe that happens more back in the Old World?

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Bullfrog Jones (on the road)
Date: 28 May 02 - 07:30 PM

I think Jerry has it right about laziness. Yes McG, we hear songs, even Beatles songs, sung with the wrong words and it really grates! And not just Lennon & McCartney ----there's a whole generation who, thanks to Mick Hucknall, think the line in 'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye' is 'I can hear a lark somewhere WAITING to sing about it'. If I hear anyone sing that I slap them about the head and ask them exactly what a lark sounds like while it's waiting to sing? (Clearing its throat? Practicing its scales?) Then I tell them to go away and listen to Ella sing it.Sometimes the message gets through, but I worry that it will eventually become common currency, even though it's patently wrong.
However, the point, when I started the thread, was that some people seem to feel that they have the right to decide that certain lyrics need to be changed, and they're just the person to change 'em by God! (Changing the chords is part of the interpretation and arrangement, but surely for any songwriter the lyrics are the meat of the thing.)If they feel that they have something to say on that particular subject why don't they go off and write their own song? The poor schmuck who wrote it was probably reasonably happy about what he'd written. I don't and I'm sure Harvey, Jerry, McGrath and others above don't put out a song until they're satisfied that it's finished; that it says what they want to say in the best way possible. I could name a dozen popular songs that have lines that make me cringe, that sound sloppily written, and could be revised very easily. But I don't want to sing them. When I hear a song that moves me enough to want to cover it I go to as much trouble as possible to make sure that I have the lyrics exactly right, and the melody as close as I can get given the limitations of my voice and guitar technique, but I pay the writer of the song due respect by singing it as he or she wrote it.

BJ

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 May 02 - 07:33 PM

I dunno, Kevin:

I don't ever remember hearing someone do a Bill Staines sang, having changed the words. Or Bob Franke. Of course, when the words are slightly different, you never know whether someone consciously "rewrote" them, or just forgot them. In a way, the whole idea of rewriting songs seems foreign (but not Old Country) to me because I hardly think of myself as "writing" a song. As often as not, the song "writes" me. I don't think I've set out to write more than five or six songs in my life. The others have flown naturally out of a conversation, a phrase, a memory, good times with friends or a dream. Now, if someone was singing one of my songs in a dream, and they "rewrote" it, that would seem perfectly natural. :-)

Over here, in the 60's, everyone was abuzz because Steve Gilette wrote Darcy Farell, and people thought it was traditional. There was a little bit of Fool The Folkies" after that, with people consciously trying to write faux folk songs. I suppose that it was an interesting excercise. I'm not sure that was what Steve consciously did, but he didn't make a habit of it. First of all, folk music doesn't sell all that well, so it seems like a misguided venture.

As for the good songs lasting, that remains to be seen. I don't know many songs written in the folk idiom that I thought were better than Here's To You Rounders, and it's already slipped below the screen. The irony to me of folk music and folk singers is that most of us bring a top 40, pop mentality to songs. I've seen so many musicians who are constantly trying to come up with new songs because they think that people will get sick of listening to the old ones. Man, if that was the case, there wouldn't be any old songs. I'll probably sing Old Dan Tucker and Down on Penny's Farm until I can't let out a squeak. And, I won't "rewrite" them to make them more relevant to me. One of the GREAT joys of folk music for me (and Art Thieme would give a rousing, "I second that!" is that they are a portal to the past and other cultures. That's why I wouldn't want to rewrite them. The choice of words and phrases is precious to me, and a major part of my pleasure in singing them.

As an old friend of mine used to say when he was upset about something someone had done, "They need a sound thrashing about the head and ears!" If that was changed to "They need a smack on the side of the head." it would have the same meaning but lose all of it's humor to me. Maybe that's another thread. We could take beloved old traditional songs and rewrite them into more contemporary, proper English. I think I'd be tempted to give anyone who did that a Whup on the side of the head, if not an actual sound thrashing ABOUT the head and ears. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 May 02 - 08:02 PM

Maybe the word "rewrite" is the joker. When you sing a song you heard someone else sing, and you sing it a little different, either because you can't quite remember a line, or the line you remember doesn't seem top sound quite right to you, you probably don't go writing it down.

That example of Jerry gave just now - you can point that the other way round. Changing "They need a sound thrashing about the head and ears!" to "They need a smack on the side of the head" wouldn't be an improvement. But changing "They need a smack on the side of the head" to "They need a sound thrashing about the head and ears!" might well be.

For me, I work on getting my songs right - but as for not putting it out "until (I'm) satisfied that it's finished; that it says what (I) want to say in the best way possible" - well I don't think most songs are ever necessarily finished. I keep on changing them for years, and as I've said, I'm content for anyone else to do the same. That doesn't mean I'm not proud when I think I've got it right, and hope that any changes other people made are for the better, and probably think more often than not that they aren't...But I don't own a song I've written, except in a legal sense.

But of course I quite accept the right of other people to see it differently. And once again, there are some kinds of songs where this kind of thinking is less appropriate, and some where it's not appropriate at all.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 29 May 02 - 08:39 AM

It always surprises me how quick so many folkies are to impose rules; if there is any form of music that should be free of these types of restrictions, it is surely folk music.

I write a lot of songs, and I'm generally pretty proud of them. Some come very easily ("out of thin air," seemingly), others require a lot more labor on my part. If someone improves on them, great; if someone takes them in a less positive direction, that's unfortunate, but I will just hope that the higher quality version (mine, perhaps) will ultimately prove to be more durable. I think people should feel free to exercise their creativity in music, including reworking music and lyrics as they see fit. From a legal perspective, I want control, credit, royalties, and anything else that is my due for having written the song. But beyond that, I don't want to hamper someone else's creative vision, whether he is a songwriter or interpreter. There's plenty of room for alternative versions of any and all songs.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 29 May 02 - 05:56 PM

Whenever this issue comes up, I think of the first line: "Tho my sails be torn and tattered and my mast be turned about." Is there anyone who knows boats that this line does not grate upon? Some things call out for improvement, some should be left alone. When someone tells me that they wishto sing my song but they want to personalize it for their own use, I am thrilled that they like my song. Perhaps I need another decade or two to become jaded and crusty in my attitude. I am not writing the bible. If I were perfect, I would be upset when someone pays me the compliment but feels it needs a little tweak. I'm not either. When I have a Senior Moment" in the middle of a song, often I just throw a word into the breach in order to keep going. Anyone who has looked in Child knows that there is no one definitive version of most of the traditional ballads. Which one is right? Sometimes it is even possible to 'reconstruct' a more complete [and therefore more perfect?] version from the existing fragments. What is right?

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 May 02 - 06:36 PM

"Tho my sails be torn and tattered and my mast be turned about." What's that from? Sounds a lively enough start. (I assume that the problem is that masts don't get turned about, unlike craft? So sing "craft" instead?)

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 29 May 02 - 06:46 PM

I don't know boats...but it sounds like a nice line...what is the nautical problem with it? mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Bert
Date: 30 May 02 - 05:01 AM

Elliot Kenin asked me if he could sing "Size Doesn't Matter", and would it be alright if he added a few verses of his own. I was delighted and would love to hear how he's singing it now.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:35 AM

I've read this entire thread. I am a singer and a writer. I am fairly rabid on the subject of original songs and "the folk process." As a writer I do not release songs to the public until I have formed them and polished them, or received them word for word from the muse. There are "reasons" for every word choice I make, whether conscious or unconscious. When someone wants to know why I used this word or why not that I'm happy to explain my choices. When someone wants to question the order of verses I can explain that, too.

It seems to me that often people who talk about "the folk process" like to use the idea as a justification for changing what they don't like about a composition. I say, if you don't like it as written, don't sing it. If you think it would be "so much better," "easier to understand," "really brilliant if" etc., borrow the theme and make the effort to write your own song.

I have, so far, had the fortune or misfortune to write two songs that are liked in folk music circles. One of them, "Morning Shanty" seems to inspire people to write new verses, sometimes because "it sounds traditional" and because "it is too short." It happens to be a song about time together coming to an end, and is intentionally brief, the form reflecting the subject matter. The other one, "Wallflower Waltz," inspires revisions because "It needs a chorus." No, it doesn't. And when I hear it sung with a chorus created out of the B-part of the tune it makes me livid. Why? Because the verses as written embody an emotional progression from one state to another and the interpolation of a chorus mucks this up entirely.

Anyone who thinks that "the folk process" always improves songs needs to look at a few songs like "Siul A Run" where people's inability to understand Irish has created many versions with choruses of babble. Some of them have lovely tunes, but the loss of the original text and sentiment is regrettable.

One thing I fear as a songwriter is that some bastardized, inept version of one of my songs will hit the bigtime and become the default "standard version" -- the one that "everyone hears" or "everyone knows." I have, in fact, already heard someone who learned a song from my one recording of it tell me "That's not the way it goes." Ah, but it is the way it goes -- and I should know -- I wrote it.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Don
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 10:09 AM

It's very simple - If a song is in copyright (and it is for 70 years after the death of the composer) then to alter or change the lyric or melody (and I'm not talking about the interpretation of the melody here), is breaking the law. This could only be done if permission has been granted by the composer and publisher.

Real Folk Airs is a different thing. The great composers very often wrote works based on folk melodies. These melodies were just there. They had grown out of the people themselves over many years, and nobody knows where they first came from, there are no official writers credited with the writing of them.

Don

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 10:35 AM

Thanks for adding your thoughts, Don: I have really enjoyed re-reading this whole thread. Anybody who wants to rewrite my songs, just be patient. Consdidering my family history, I probably just have another thirty years around here, and another seventy years after that, they're all yours. Not that anyone will even remember me or the songs by then. If we are leaving footprints on the sands of time, we're walking the beach at low tide.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 12:54 PM

Don- "It's very simple" in a legal sense if someone is rewriting a song and using it commercially, without getting permission from the composer. If the song is being used in a less commercial sense, at music swaps or parties, then I doubt if copyright provides much, if any, protection. Still it would be nice if "recomposers" and "decomposers" would make a good faith attempt to communicate with the original composers, to at least get a better sense of what their "changes" are doing to the song. In fact, it would be nice if people remember to at least credit the source for the songs they sing.

Of course no two people are going to, or should, sing a song exactly the same. However, when one is rearranging a poem for singing, some word changes might be justified in terms of "sounding" better.

The moral solution for me is if the original composer is unhappy with whatever changes I have done, I'm not going to sing that version in any commercial situation. There are more pretty songs than one.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 01:08 PM

Re: Charley's comment about "crediting the source" -- one of the things I DO NOT WANT is for someone to sing an altered version of my work and then to say "Oh, Sharyn Dimmick wrote that." No, in fact, she didn't -- not if you have changed it by adding words, subtracting them, repeating them, singing them out of order, creating choruses that didn't exist, etc. I am interested in the song as I wrote it, not in permutations of it, and I want people to have the benefit of hearing the original work.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: harvey andrews
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 07:53 PM

Now this Turner painting could just do with a bit more blue here, and a touch of red there, and this Shakespeare sonnet...not quite right in my opinion...and Dickens...never convinced by Micawber...Orson Welles...let's re-light some of those scenes..too many shadows!
Or maybe just write your own.
And I know this may be against the idea many hold of the folk process but I could take a couple of pages to show how any changes in my lyrics have always been for the worse, whereas the melody, chords, style etc I'm happy to put up for grabs. Muisicians can undoubtedly improve a song's presentation, impact, etc but I've yet to find them improving the words....oh yes...that poem..what was it,.."not waving but drowning"?..surely I can put that better..."you don't see my misery" hmm..."this is just a front"....er..."not smiling but crying"....er..?

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:16 PM

I always find, when I check up on the words I settled on for a song I wrote some time ago, that the way I sing them has changed over the years, in all kinds of ways. And most times it's for the best.

Memory does that kind of thing, and so does oral transmission, combined with memory. Sometimes not for the best, that's true enough.
However I don't think it's realistic to expect to avoid it, in the informal context. When it comes to putting out records maybe it's a different thing.

As for Shakespeare, while it's true that nobody would rewrite a sonnet (though they might quote it wrong), people who are putting on his plays consciously rewrite and chop and amend the text all the time. Very few of us have seen a full version of Hamlet for example.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mg
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:51 PM

I think if you don't want people to alter your songs, you should only sing them in private, and get a pre-rendition agreement in writing if it is all that important to you. I think otherwise that you have released the song to the world to do with it as it may...and the best songs come from the world and will go back to the world. On the other hand, and I never have trouble speaking out of both sides of my mouth, I think the best policy is to sing the song as close to what you learned as possible, with some exceptions, the most serious being racist language. I think the gender should never be changed..and I think that most people who add on words to some of the best writers' songs are seriously deluded that they have improved them.

mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mmb
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:56 PM

I can't recall who it was, but back in the 60's or 70's, someone who recorded "Eleanor Rigby" placed a disclaimer on the album notes, giving a reason for changing one word in the song. Can anyone help me - Joan Baez, Simon & Garfunkel???

The reason I think of that example is related directly to the "Swimming to the Other Side" reference in the posting that started this thread. I recall a teacher who really loved the song and wanted to teach it to her class. Except her children's parents were of a particularly conservative religious stance, and would have had fits at the lyric "We can worship the ground we walk on." She never did use that song with that class - at least not that year.   M.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Merritt
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:06 PM

Many perspectives here.

I often change everything about a song. Lyrics, rhythm, chords, melody..so it suits me. And then I change it again.

I can play stuff "just like it sounds," but have zero interest in replicating material. This does not mean that I don't love the original; I often do. But someone else already does the original. If the author of a tune I was playing in some pub came up to me and told me I was doing wrong, that person would have the stage in a heartbeat to present the original.

The crux of the biscuit, for me, is that my relationship with a song is not linear.

Anybody's free to interpret my original stuff altho', picking up on someone's comment above, >I< rarely play/perform it the same way twice anyway.

And, really, at the end of day, nobody gives a rat's *ss what I play in my living room, or some little bar in rural Wisconsin.

- Merritt

"It's all one big note." – F. Zappa

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jeri
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:52 PM

Harvey, your analogies don't quite work. Paintings, literary works and specific films are done once. Songs are usually done over and over by a variety of folks. If I had to re-write a Tennyson poem exactly as Tennyson wrote it, I'd just slap it on a copy machine. Why bother? If you think of your songs as poems, then the analogies might work - except they leave out the flexibility in interpretation. I'd think you'd believe the flexibility would be acceptable if it involved just the performance and not what was being performed.

If a song has bits that feel awkward, I just won't sing it. There's a song that many people love by a well-respected songwriter, and I just can't sing it because a line in the last verse is just plain bad. I couldn't sneak a change in because many people know it the way he wrote it, but I have to wonder how that line made it into the finished song!

From what I've heard of your songs, Harvey, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to change them. It does seem that some folks (not most) make changes just to leave their fingerprints on a song.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:25 PM

Jeri,

Part of the point is that you CAN copy a Tennyson poem on a copy machine because publication and copyright have allowed you to obtain Tennyson's exact words. You can read them. You can recite them. You can give them to others to read or discuss.

Why should a writer who writes songs not have the same copyright and publication rights as a poet or essayist or novelist? (We don't)

With songs it's a crapshoot: if you are Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell you have had the luck and power to establish your original work as the primary version -- the one that will get heard somehow. If you are unknown, obscure .... And if you are also a singer who sings traditional material and belong to a folk community of some kind you may have to put up with all kinds of nonsense about "the folk process"
misapplied to non-traditional songs by living writers.

As a singer, I am primarily an aural/oral learner: I learn most things by listening to recordings or live performances. I can, however, read
and forums like this one and others make it easier and easier to track down authors of particular songs, which means that I can do any writer the respect of listening to her or his original material. If I like it well enough, I can continue to sing it. If I find I am frequently changing something about it I can query a living author about this and discuss the change. I might even learn something.

The idea that if I like my own work well enough to insist that it is treated respectfully I should only sing it in private interferes with one of the great joys of writing, which is that of communicating experiences to others.

Whew!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mg
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:38 PM

well, then I would suggest that you preface each public singing of it with a description of your desires for it not to be altered and put that in writing and maybe put out copies of the sheet music and the exact words and put it on a web site with your preferences...you have stumbled into a tradition that doesn't share your point of view exactly, although some cultures within it are very careful to not change stuff...I personally actually don't change much and if I had to rewrite a song I just wouldn't bother probably but I think your preferences are your preferences and if I ever am exposed to any of your songs I will do as you say but if it is too much trouble I wouldn't bother frankly...

mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 12:17 AM

Getting a little warm in here, Catters...

Tonight, I went to hear Rick Fielding and had a wonderful time. He asked me to come up and do a couple of songs, with a particular request for Handful of Songs. He jokingly pointed out that he changed the melody, the words and the chords when he "arranged" it. But, I told him, "It's still the same song." And he does a beautiful job on it..

Seems like there's too much concern about covering our posterity. What's gonna be is gonna be. I'd prefer that people learn the words to songs that I've written, and use the same melody and chord progression, but I really can't ge that concerned if they feel the song another way. Who knows what's going to survive, and in what form it's going to survive? Maybe Smells Like Teen Spirit (by Nirvana) will last longer than all of our songs. I try not to sweat things that I don't have any control over. I had a friend who spent most of his life in a snit because he got mail addressed to William Pitt, and his actual name was Bill. Maybe he should havfe had his name changed legally to William, just to avoid being irritated so much.

I don't change recently written songs, myself, because I know the loving care that went into writing them... and I like the song to reflect that writer. But, songs that are already in the tradition in umptee billion versions are fair game, as far as I'm concerned. Even there, though, I don't want to lose the flavor of the time and circumstances in which strong originally came out of.

"Let it be, let it be.."

Or should that be "allow it to be, allow it to be..."

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 10:33 AM

"allow it to exist, allow it to exist"

It's not so much "should" and "shouldn't" as "will" and "won't."
If you do the definitive version of a song, the one everybody knows, then that's likely how people will learn it.
If someone else changes it and others hear both your version and theirs and they like the other version better, I don't know that there's anything that can be done about that short of publicising the fact you don't approve of the other version. In the case of "Wallflower Waltz," the first and only time I've heard it, it had a chorus. The singer was also pretty darned clear about the fact the original didn't have a chorus and the author (sharyn) strongly disapproved of the chorus. Using a chorus that retains but repeats your original words seems to me to be more a matter of arrangement than anything else.

You have a high level of control over paintings and literary works precicely because there isn't a whole lot of creativity involved in simply reproducing them. You'd have the same amount of control over a song if you were the only person allowed to sing it in front of people. Even songs sung in living rooms to only a few people can get changed and passed on with those changes.

I'm new to songwriting. I write the songs because I have things to say and I want to do a good job saying them. I share the songs because I want others to sing them. If I became known as someone who disapproved of any changes from my version, I don't think people would be as likely to sing my songs. Frankly, if they did go on to sing a song knowing I'd be mad at them, I'd know I'd written a pretty darned good song!

Again, I think I'm talking about my view of reality vs. the way things ought to be. It gets pretty frustrating when I tell folks how things ought to be because even though I'm always right they never listen to me.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 12:20 PM

This is one of the more interesting discussions in a while, and I'll need to re-read it. I feel myself on both extreme sides of it.

   The analogy to painting isn't quite so off-target. There's a legend about Turner adding a small, devastating accent of color to a painting in the so-called "varnishing period" before it was displayed. Artists used to touch up works for the occasion--I recently refused to let a client see my painting in sunlight, since it was painted for interior light. I couldn't stand to look at it. As Picasso said, a painting is never finished, but the painter is not always around to tweak it.

   When I worked in an art museum they always doing cute, horrible, "relationships" (visual puns, co-incidences of color schemes, William Bailey still-life with eggs beside Gregory Gillespie Turtle eggs--uhg!) which had no respect for the artist's vision. The mindset is that the curator is the real artist, and uses these odd artist's notion's and knick-knacks as material in their theme-show production. It's really awful, most of the time. Galleries do the same thing.

   I often like songs that have lines or lyrics I can't commit to, and my defense is that I'm an unimportant songster, play for myself and for kids, mostly, and in a vein--well, one doesn't really object to the Smothers Brothers' bits and liberties because they didn't project themselves seriously.

   I'm re-writing Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me as a Thankgiving song to do next week, and have no qualms about it. But still, if I were more serious, it would bother me that such a great little tune had it's lyric--which seems to reduce the sense the tune makes to a bit of a complaint, or a public service announcement.

I think one objects to tampering with real artistry, but not with what seems trivial. The problem is drawing a line there--because great work has it's details and imagery, and stubborn residue of odds and ends, without which it would not breath life. It's part of the nervous system, and changing it changes the whole for people who really love it. Deep thread--great posts.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mg
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 02:19 PM

One thing I really hate is parodies of great songs. One rule that one song circle has, I think, and I wish it were followed everywhere, is that at least you can't follow the original song with the parody. And I am always hazy on the definition of parodies...one song that I think stands on its own is the Rolling Mills of New Jersey...good song...lots of people don't know the original song.. mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 07:14 PM

What about just plain old errors? I know someone - a good songcrafter and not illiterate who recorded 'the tempetuous sea', meaning, evidently, 'tempestuous'. And what about those who sing 'calvary' for 'cavalry'(and vice versa)?

And what about presentation? I have a friend who wrote a 5-verse song and varying chorus who sings it in a certain order because of the harmonies. But she's WRONG! She sings the last chorus, and invites the audience to sing along, as 'Did YOU do what you came to do'?- It's MUCH more effective singing 'Did I do what I came to do'?, etc. :)

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Snuffy
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 07:43 PM

Many parodies are excellent, when they take an idea from the original song to another plane (see Les BArker, the Kippers). What I can't abide is the parodies that just say "Isn't this song crap?" (No, not the Fields of Athenry, I never will sing the Wild Rover no more, etc)

WassaiL! V

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 02:33 AM

Jeri, Re: using a chorus that retains the original words is "arrangement." Not so. The original "Wallflower Waltz" has six verses in the order 1,2,3,4,5,6, as you would expect. The Lani Herrmann chorus version goes 1,3,4,2,3,4,5,3,4,6,3,4. Without even seeing the words, you can see that the end of the song -- the climactic line -- is now out of place. The way I wrote it, the whole song builds toward the imperative statement:

Put down your fiddle, put down your bow --
I am still here on Wallflower Row:
We'll make it sweet, we'll take it slow.
Teach me to waltz.

To repeat verses three and four ad nauseum undercuts the drama and tension of the song, even if it does supply a chorus part for those who like them. Futhermore, the verses were written in pairs to be sung together, so that another way to look at the song's structure is an A-part of 1,2 (sung to one tune), a B-part 3,4 (sung to a different tune)
and a repeat of the A tune. Lani's version subverts this, too, breaking the musical structure in half.

Experienced writers will know (and readers if they think about it -- and singers) that repetition of words (and the opposite, "not repeating" them) are powerful devices.

I'm getting off my soapbox for now, but I'm not promising not to return.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Bullfrog Jones
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 04:58 AM

As the original and onlie begetter of this thread I was interested to see it reappear thanks to Sharyn's passionate and well-argued intervention. I'm glad that it has aroused such interest from both sides of the debate, and glad that I'm not alone in not wanting my songs tampered with. What the thread has aroused in me is a desire to hear some of Sharyn's songs(particularly Wallflower Waltz). Sharyn, could you let me know where I can find them, please?

BJ

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 05:53 AM

My songs are like my children: I can only influence their early stages. Once they are out in the world, they receive more and more external influences, and they become who they become. I retain the honour and pride (or shame) of being the father. But if I try to continue shaping them when they are already too old, that just makes me a bad father, a control freak.

Breezy has amended the words to two of my songs, when he sings them, and good luck to him, if that's how they best express his feelings as a performer. I am more finicky about chord progressions, but even there I would support the performer who makes his/her own variation, as long as it is not simply laziness that causes them to drop chords.

And the old trick of changing a word here and there to evade copyright is starting to get knocked on the head in courts too - it will no longer work in the future. So let's not get too control-oriented, unless it is our livelihood that depends on it (and for most of us I venture to suggest that we do it for the fun, not for the money).

As for parodies, Snuffy said it all for me.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Grab
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 08:34 AM

Hands up all those who play the guitar part to their songs exactly the same as the recording, note for note, every time around? What, so few? Then why are variations in the words to fit your preferences not also permissible?

As I see it, there's three main categories of changes to lyrics: deliberate planned changes, spontaneous "riffing" on the text (extra words like and/but/so/well/yeah/hey injected "to taste"), and actual errors. Errors like Davey Graham's version of "Nobody's fault but mine" where he's misheard "If I don't read and my soul be lost" as "Fire in my soul oh Lord". Just make sure you know which category your changes fall into! ;-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:17 AM

Sharyn-

Hmmm. How about adding a chorus to someone's song? If we can ignore the legal rights of the song's composer for the moment, it seems to me that it's really a "group" value judgment on whether that is an "improvement" and we'll only know if it's really an improvement if the change is adopted by those who sing it. Folk process as the survival of the fittest is hardly a novel theory but it's probably the bottom line for me.

To be specific, I wrote a chorus to Trevor Crozier's fine drinking song "Dead Dog Scrumpy"("Dead Dog Cider'), which you kindly sang along on when I was visiting San Francisco. Unfortunately Trevor died a few years ago so I was unable to consult with him but I'd like to think he'd approve the change in spirit:

G-----------------------D7-G----C--------D7--G
Now, here's to Dead Dog Cid-er, the best there is by far;
-------------------D7-C----A-------------D7
Here's to Dead Dog Cid-er, no moaning at the bar;
--------C--------------------G--------------C-G----D7
You can search this wide world over, find many a beer or ale;
---------G-----------D7-------G—C-------G---------D7---A
But, when you've tried Dead Dog Cid-er – your search will be cur-tailed!

I look forward to presenting this chorus to Trevor's friends in the Bristol area where I first heard the song in the dark smoky back room of the tavern the folk club gathered at, but I won't be very surprised if the chorus makes it there first.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Davetnova
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:26 AM

I am not a writer, but I am a little bemused that an artists who so jealously guard the integrity of their words can so casually admit that they will happily change tunes. Many tunesmiths spend as much sweat getting their tunes as they should be as wordsmiths do. Why then is it right to tweak a tune to fit your personal needs when the same is not true for words. As song,or tune, is almost as much about the performer as the originator and many have taken life on their own to the extent the originator has been forgotten.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:48 AM

I don't remember the Smothers Brother's doing parodies of great songs, but a running parody of folk performers trying to do songs, including some great ones. I'll like a parody if it's good, and funny, not self-important. I'd rather hear even a lame parody than hear a great song earnestly sung by one of those singers who milk it to show off their voice--I'd rather hear somebody turn Sittin' on the dock of the bay into E-bay, or whatever, than hear that Bolton guy torture it. I liked Hamlet set to Carmen on Gilligan's Island, which is absurd, stupid, and funny, but hated everything about Shakespeare in Love, which was full of stale, stinky, jokey b.s. (the loan-shark producer was amusing, but that was a Shaw stock-character device).

   This question asks all the big questions about what art is and what's important about it. It's really interesting to see how people answer it, and what questions they attach to it.

Personally the survival of the fittest thing doesn't work for me in folk-songs or anywhere else. It's not a novel idea, but a circular idea. It's hard to evaluate fairly what hasn't survived, compared to what has, for whatever reasons.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:51 AM

Exxxxcellent point, Davetnova! I often spend more time on the melody than the words. I've even changed the whole melody and chord progression of songs that the first "working" melody didn't feel right. Sometimes, I've even changed the time of the song. I wrote a song recently that had a melody I found so predictable and boring that I felt like chucking the whole song. I just let it rest, which is probably one of the most important aspects of songwriting. If it doesn't feel right, walk away from it for awhile. And sure enough, after a few days, I started singing the song while I was driving in my car, and a completely different melody and rhythm came, with a chord progression for the key line in the chorus that sounded so fresh to my ears that when I got home and tried it on guitar, I had to make up the chords to play what I heard in my head. I still don't know what some of the chords are. But, I hear them in my head.

And Sharyn: I hate to stir you up even more (which may not be possible) but I have heard your song with a chorus, but not without it. I thought it was a wonderful song, but I must admit that I was busy trying to learn the words to the chorus so that I could sing along, and I don't even remember the verses. Now, don't turn all purple like that... I thought the singer did a wonderful job on the song, and clearly felt the words and emotions. But, that's a common experience with chorus songs. Everyone wants to learn the chorus, so that's where all the attention is going. For most chorus songs, that's fine, because the verses don't necessarily tell a story, or even have any particular order. But, there are songs where each verse builds on the previous one, and a chorus can disrupt the whole story. Kinda like having a "chorus" in a short story where you change the order of the paragraphs and insert the chorus paragraph
every few paragraphs. Some songs ARE short stories, where the economy of words is very restrictive. Some songs have a powerful last verse, which loses it's power if you sing the chorus after it.

One other point. I wonder if farmers in the south sat around on their front porch after a hard day's work and said, when someone changed the lines to a song, "Nice folk processing, Earl!" :-) I think us revivalists are WAY to self-conscious about being part of the process.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Ivan
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 10:01 AM

What can you do if someone changes your words (or tune for that matter)? Well if they do it commercially you can sue. There are plenty lawyers who'd be willing to take you money.
Otherwise, I don't see that you have any choice in the matter. Do you go round and listen at doors to make sure people are singing the right words while they're doing the dishes?
And have you ever been past a children's playground and heard what THEY do to songs? When my kids where younger Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" started "Uptown dolly, she been living in a Tesco trolley." I don't think he would appreciate that (well he might since the divorce).
The analogy with paintings and poetry is interesting but the argument is flawed. Once a work of art is "out there' the artist has no control over how it is interpreted. Many people completely "misunderstand" what a poet, painter or writer is trying to say. The difference we are talking about here is that a singer passes on his interpretation to someone else.
Personally I'm not too bothered if someone alters my songs, provided they say so and credit me as the original writer, though I might object if they change the whole meaning of it.
Worse things happen. There are some singers who could sing all the correct words and still ruin the song completely!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 10:19 AM

Jerry, I suspect it went more like

Al: "Earl, that song don't go like that. I've heard it all my life and it don't go like that."
Earl: "Al, it's just a different version."
Al: "A different WHAT?! The song don't go like that! You got the words wrong!"

Now if a guy showed up from out of town and sang it differently, they were probably more likely to forgive him because "That's how they sing it where I come from."

I think there might have been a whole lot more resistance to change in communities where everyone knew the song and knew how they thought it should go.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:21 PM

I imagine you're right, Jeri. Maybe a better approach would be to have a bumper sticker that says "The Folk Process Happens." Rather Than "I Am The Proud Father Of A Folk Song I Just Changed."

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: harvey andrews
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:23 PM

not being happy with changing the words or the music? I think it depends whether you're Rogers or Hart!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 01:30 PM

Some comments of recent posts:

BJ -- I sent you a personal message with information on how to obtain a recording of a half dozen of my songs, which I recorded on cassette in 1998, along with five traditional songs. In case anyone else is interested, I sell the recording for $11.50 ($10, plus postage) and I will also swap it for a recording if someone else wants to trade.

Jerry -- No fear. I am not turning purple.

Charley -- Re: "Dead Dog Cider." What I object to is people who make changes to the work of a living writer without permission. Since Trevor is no longer alive, what I would want to know is whether he expressed any wishes about his work in his last will and testament -- if he did, I would honor them: if Bob Dylan said "I don't want to hear any friggin' piccolos in arrangements of my work," I would not perform or record a Dylan song in an arrangement with a piccolo. For me, it's about respecting the wishes of the writer. Similarly, someone quoted someone else a while back in this thread who objected to key changes. I don't happen to care what key someone sings one of my songs in, but I do care about harmonization sometimes, so I understand that writer's wish that no one alter keys and I would respect it. If I were interested in singing "Dead Dog Cider," or performing it, I would seek out Trevor's original song and listen to it first. If Trevor has left no instructions for posterity, I would decide whether I preferred his song or your revision of it. If I preferred your version, I would contact you for permission. Do you see?

As a singer, I am fondest of traditional material, which can be messed with in a respectful manner since many versions legitimately exist. I make a strong distinction between traditional and original material.

As a writer, I have written songs with choruses and songs without choruses, songs with refrains and songs without refrains. I have "stolen" "Westron Wind," written a song around it and employed the famous quatrain as a chorus. I generally make quite conscious choices about what words or elements I will repeat. As we know from this thread, not all tastes are the same!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 02:09 PM

If any of my songs is around 100 years from now, it will be because someone liked it enough to sing it. If it has evolved into something else, it will be because someone was inspired to do something with it. Either something evolves or it becomes static. "Let it bleed, let it bleed, let it bleed, let it bleed."

The argument here is about the definition of folk music. In order to become folk music, a song has to be sung by someone other than the author.

The question about "mast be turned about" came about because Rod MacDonald wrote the song before he had ever set foot upon anything other than the Staten Island Ferry. On a vessel of the size that Rod was writing about the masts would be physically unable to turn.