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Subject: Cock of the Morning/North From: GUEST,Joe Flood Date: 04 Sep 02 - 07:56 AM I note a thread relating to this song in 1998. The poem was originally written by my mother Dorothy Hewett and appeared in her first book of poetry, "What about the people" in 1960. It was put to music by Bill Berry in Brisbane in the following year, to a brilliant tune that I and my wife Adele have been singing ever since. In 1963 a second tune was written by Chris Kempster in Sydney and recorded by Gary Shearston. I have not heard Martin Wyndham Read's version but suspect it may be the same tune. It's a great surprise to hear that the Fureys recorded it in modified form in 1965 (I'll bet they did not pay royalties) and that the folk process can still be so active. Dorothy Hewett died on 22 August after a long battle with cancer and I am putting together a bibliography/discography of her works. If anyone knows of unusual recordings of her songs "Weevils in the Flour", "Norman Brown", "Sweet Song for Katie" or any other songs, or songs by her husband Merv Lilley "The Pickup Shed", "Birchgrove Park", "Cane killed Abel" I would appreciate a reply. |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Wolfgang Date: 04 Sep 02 - 08:11 AM I'm sorry to hear about the death of your mother. 'Weevils in the flour' was sung by E. Bogle on the LP 'Down Under' (1981), produced in Germany. On the LP it is titled 'Island in the river'. Wolfgang |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Dave Bryant Date: 04 Sep 02 - 08:20 AM Martin Wyndham Read refers to the song as "Sailor home from the sea" - possibly to avoid confusion with the tune "Cock of the North". He always credits the words to Dorothy Hewett. |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Bruce from Bathurst Date: 04 Sep 02 - 08:26 AM Please accept my condolences, Joe. Your mother was a great Australian author with an uncompromising passion for our country and the gift to express it in remarkable poetry. Her passing is a significant loss. I've always thought the late Declan Affley's recording of 'Weevils In The Flour' was stunning. (I know you asked for "unusual" recordings, but I hope "stunning" is OK) The venerable Bob Bolton will be able to make a more meaningful contribution to this thread than this one, but I'm sure the other Australian 'Catters would be pleased to hear from anyone 'offshore' who has been touched by Dorothy Hewett's poetry. Your bibliography/discography project is a worthy one and I wish you well. Please keep us informed about its progress. Bruce |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Bob Bolton Date: 05 Sep 02 - 01:39 AM G'day (again) Joe, I mentioned in my post to the other thread that Martyn's tune is definitely neither Bill Berry's of Chris Kempster's. The tune is quite typical of the sort of tunes Martyn writes ... and works quite well. I imagine it is the source for all the UK and Irish variants cited in the other thread. I just found my copy of Bill Berry's home-made CD and listen to Bill singing his tune ... I have to say that, of the four tunes I know for The Sailor Home From The Sea, this is the one I like least ... but it is only an unmanipulated home recording - and I confess to a long-standing preference for Chris's tune! The fourth tune is a recent setting: credited to Kim Poole of the (now-defunct) Sydney Celtic/Australian group Taliesin, sung by Stephanie Osfield on their eponymous 1994 CD. Without transcribing the tunes and comparing them note-by-note or as an overlay, I would have to say that it most resembles Martyn's tune ... but sung in a much more complex way. I have also heard this version done by Margaret Walters of Walters & Warner and Margaret prefers it as being more feminine and I don't know that I agree! I have heard Sweet Song for Katie on some old LP - possibly one of Gary Shearston's ... I need to dig through the layers of vinyl! Regards, Bob Bolton |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Bob Bolton Date: 05 Sep 02 - 01:49 AM G'day, yet again, Joe, Hmmm ... I'll have to stop reformatting sentences on the fly ... or proofread better! The first sentence in the above post should have said " ... neither Bill Berry's nor Chris Kempster's ... ". I should also have mentioned that a Queensland family group "Poms from Oz" (not English ... Dad's a Pomeroy ... and Mother and daughter descend from 'First Fleeters'!) do a lovely version of Sailor Home From The Sea on their (also)eponymous CD. The Pomeroys love song for its own sake and are prepared to stand or fall by their singing, with minimal instrumental backing (one guitar and occasional harmonica ... South American "frog" effects scraper in Hey Rain). I will be interested to see what far-flung versions of your mother's works turn up. She was a fine, spirited poet and good songs have come from her works. Regards, Bob Bolton |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: GUEST,Joe Flood Date: 05 Sep 02 - 02:50 AM Bob and others, thanks for all the helpful recording notes. WRT the Berry tune, well I think you might change your mind if you heard Adele Flood or Margaret Fagan sing it, it's a knockout. I'm biased of course, since it's an upbeat, guitarist's tune; I learned to fingerpick off it in fact when I was 14. I got Margaret Roadnight to agree to sing it with a sort of hornpipe accompaniment on a record project I tried to organize in 1983, until the funding fell through. Adele and I multitracked a demo tape of most of the Berry songs at that time. I've only heard the Kempster tune done unaccompanied by Gary Shearston, and there it is pretty depressive, slow and droney, the sort of track you skip past, though I could imagine it being done well by someone like June Tabor. I now recall that I ran into Martin WR at a Fagan's gig in Brunswick last year; it was late and we were somewhat in our cups but he did sheepishly admit he'd been singing a third tune round the traps. I've been an admirer of Martin since the early 1960s and would like to hear it. Margaret Fagan is close friends with Margaret Walters so I guess I can track down that version too. I suppose what is really worth noting here is that one lyric was so strong that it inspired four different composers to have a crack at it - really what the folk process is all about. I have a bad feeling that Shearston's "Sweet Song for Katie" is also not the tune I like, which is by Mike Leydon (modified by several subsequent singers). I'll post where I am so far with the discography separately.
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: GUEST,Joe Flood Date: 05 Sep 02 - 02:58 AM Here are the notes so far (without details). If anyone has more to add - most grateful. Weevils in the Flour. Music M Leydon, recorded by Declan Affley, Eric Bogle, Phyl Lobl, Gary Shearston, the Bushwackers, the Ragged Band, Dave Alexander; Jane Clifton. Norman Brown, recorded by the Larrikins Sailor home from the sea. Tune B Berry, recorded by the Fagans; tune C Kempster, recorded by Gary Shearston; Alex Hood; tune M Wyndham Read, recorded by Martin Wyndham-Read; the Fureys; tune K Poole, recorded by Taliesin; Walters and Warner. Sweet Song for Katie, recorded by Gary Shearston. On Moncur Street; The Mermaid. music R Archer, recorded by Robyn Archer. Plus about a hundred unrecorded songs from twelve musicals, in many genres, including folk, jazz, musical hall, rock and opera. Concerning Dorothy Hewett: Libel, recorded by Bob Hudson |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Bob Bolton Date: 05 Sep 02 - 09:59 AM G'day again Joe, I gues that what one needs to do is to transcribe all the different tunes (to Sailor Home from the Sea, at least) so they can be compared without bringing in the performer and performance factors. Actually, I have heard Margaret Fagan sing Sailor Home from the Sea just recently and I liked her performance much more than Bill Berry's rendition of the same tune! I have spent a lot of time over the years using Sailor Home from the Sea as a starting point in interesting singers - particularly females complaining of the lack of good Australian songs for women - in Dorothy Hewett's works. I guess that I really need to hear Adele sing that tune to really judge. I nearly called in last Sunday, as I was up at Clarence, somewhat west of Katoomba ... but I decided I ought not to, as I did not know your mother ... just admired her work. BTW: You skipped Poms from Oz (The Pomeroy Family, Queensland) from the Martyn Wyndham-Reade tune section above. Regards, Bob Bolton |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: GUEST,Joe Flood Date: 05 Sep 02 - 10:27 AM For those who are interested in Melbourne, there will be an event in honour of Dorothy Hewett at the Malthouse this Saturday 7 Sep at 1.30 pm, organized by "Overland". Jan Wozinsky will sing "Weevils in the Flour", a number of literary figures will talk about her work, and Adele and I will finish by repeating our reminiscences from the Sydney service. After some discussion we decided *not* to do "Sailor Home from the Sea", but instead the poignant "My Love on whom the Good Sun Shone" which Adele sang in the first performance of Dorothy's most famous play, "Chapel Perilous" in Perth, 1971 (Time sure flies). |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: bradfordian Date: 05 Sep 02 - 03:10 PM Joe, I have an MP3 of M W-Rs Cock of the "north". If you PM me with an e-mail address, I will try to send it to you (not transmitted an MP3 this way before, so we might have to suck it and see!). regards brad. |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Bob Bolton Date: 05 Sep 02 - 11:46 PM G'day bradfordian, Joe will need to "sign up" before he can access you via PM. (Joe: it's quick, simple and free ... we'd love to have your input on the 'Cat!) I could get a copy to him, via near neighbour Chris Kempster ... along with some other versions if he is interested. I might put on the 'transcribing' hat and see how the dots for all four versions compare. It seems to me that the innate rhythms of the poem itself suggest a lot of the tune (this happens with henry Lawson's poems too - probably with any good poem!) and I'd like to quantify the effect. Regards, Bob Bolton |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: bradfordian Date: 06 Sep 02 - 11:31 AM It would be interesting to see the results of that comparison Bob. I'm also interested in seeing how merely changing the tempo of a song affects it reception/perception. (remember for example Mona Lisa sung by Nat King Cole, and the rock n roll version by Shakin Stevens (UK)?) I'm used to hearing thr Last Leviathon performed at a reasonable pace, then at Whitby heard 'catter Willa sing it beatifully slowly and it has changed my whole perception of that grate Andy Burns song. |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: Bob Bolton Date: 07 Sep 02 - 08:15 AM G'day again bradfordian, It's interesting that the three older tunes to Dorothy Hewett's Sailor home from the sea words are all set to tunes that are: major key and 3/4. The more recent one (the last of the four, all of which I have transcribed) is quite different - it is in 4/4 and is distinctly minor. I think that Stephanie Oldfield, of Taliesin wanted a tune she could give more "jazz" manipulation - and Kim Poole came up with a minor (Bb minor ...!) tune that works well ... for Stephanie, anyway. I have all these tunes in dots (my transcriptions), MIDI files from the same, PDF (or TIFF) images from the music files and WAVs from the respective CDs or my older tapes. When i hear back from Joe Flood, I will see if he wants a CD of the comparative material. Regards, Bob Bolton |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: SlowAlan Date: 07 Sep 02 - 09:50 AM I have been singing Norman Brown for years, learnt from a tape which I guess was of the Larrikin record Joe mentions above. I did not know it was a Dorothy Hewett song, it rang so true to the times it concerns. A great piece of work indeed. When I think of it I recall the words someone scratched into the roof of the alleged Ben Hall's cave in the Weddin Mountains.."God rest your soul Ben, the coppers were murdering bastards..and they still are". |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: mg Date: 09 Nov 03 - 12:34 AM I do I do want that song..really bad now...I would love a c.d. with different versions on it..is your offer still available and how much would postage etc. be to USA? mg |
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Subject: RE: Cock of the Morning/North From: mg Date: 09 Nov 03 - 12:35 AM of course it wasn't a general offer...but I would promise to sing it at the next music camp I go to..which is very soon..maybe the next one after that...mg |
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