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Tune Req: captain pugwash (Trumpet Hornpipe)

27 May 00 - 08:34 PM (#234909)
Subject: captain pugwash
From: rusty mahone

Does anyone remember the tv show Captain Pugwash? If so do you know the name of the song that is played during the intro credits? I once saw the Dubliners perform it live in Doncaster. If you can help i would be gratefull. Many thanx, rusty


27 May 00 - 08:39 PM (#234910)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Mbo

Hello Rusty! You can get the music for this right here! The theme for the show is actually a Scottish tune called "The Trumpet Hornpipe." This tune is a lot of fun to play, it's one of my favs, at least to play on violin! Enjoy!

--Mbo


28 May 00 - 12:11 AM (#234988)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Margo

Mbo, what site is that? There was no link to any other pages. Margo


28 May 00 - 12:29 AM (#234992)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Pene Azul

Margo,

Mbo got that through JC's ABC Finder. (Nice goin' Mbo)

PA


28 May 00 - 11:46 AM (#235080)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Brendy

I used to wonder how the BBC could get away with showing that show to kids.
The characters' names made it so obvious, but the pun seemed to go over broadcasting bosses heads at the time.
I thought it was a hilarious show.

I am reminded of the stunt pulled on the RTÉ TV (Network 2) show 'Dempsey's Den', by 'Zig and Zag' (two alien hand puppets with an increasing sense of the zany).
Zog asked Zig to "show all the children how to do an impersonation of a pig"
Zig 'looked' at Zog for a moment and went off screen left.

After a pregnant pause Zig came back on screen with a miniature RUC uniform, complete with peaked cap and sunglasses, put on his best NOI accent and shouted into the face of Zog:
"Get out of that car, you!!!"

Camera panned back to a 'brave looking' Ian Dempsey, as he told the 'all the kids' (but in reality was pleading with his producer), "We'll be back after this short break"

B.


28 May 00 - 05:13 PM (#235182)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Jon Freeman

Brendy, the famous Pugwash one involved names that never existed in the program. Master Bates and Seaman Staines were invented and a newspaper (I think the Guardian) was successfully sued over the story.

Jon


28 May 00 - 08:12 PM (#235245)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,art

yes!!!

but roger the cabin boy did!


28 May 00 - 09:12 PM (#235259)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Malcolm Douglas

Tom the cabin boy.  As Jon said, it's just one of those myths.

Malcolm


28 May 00 - 09:31 PM (#235266)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,Seaman Staines

Not totally a myth

Don't forget to click on the Cap'n's picture to see what the fuss was all about


15 Mar 03 - 09:28 AM (#910633)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Mr Red

That link is now a myth

Last night Angus Deighton was doing a spoof University Challenge and he reckoned (and he was in know-it-all smart arse mode)

Mister Bates was never referred to as Master
Roger the Cabin Boy was Tom the cabin boy
and the Seaman was never covered in Stainnes though there was a ......

Seaman Willy.......


15 Mar 03 - 12:15 PM (#910728)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: harpmaker

One of my fav's on the mandolin! You can download it from "KaZaA". Just type in "captain pugwash" (It comes up by Fairport Convention)
Only short though, but you get the drift of it.


15 Mar 03 - 12:26 PM (#910733)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: harpmaker

kazaa


16 Mar 03 - 07:59 AM (#911168)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Mr Red

http://www.beebfun.com/pw.htm states the case about the suggestive characters' names and hints at a new series soon.


16 Mar 03 - 12:06 PM (#911272)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: fiddler

But then the kids never noticed the double entendre

And why not

Did anyone ever come accorss Ed Pigford North East UK 70s

Why must Robert my rabbit be gay!

Not pc now

and many others I know kids who just loved the lyrics and adults who roared with laghter.

We all get a bit hypersensitive.


16 Mar 03 - 02:59 PM (#911379)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: greg stephens

The Trumpet Hornpipe aka Lascelles Hornpipe. Undoubtedly popular in Scotland as in England and elsewhere, but to refer to it as "a Scottish tune" as in a previous post might imply something rather more than the writer intended. Yes, it is a Scottish tune, but only in the sense that it is also a Welsh tune, an Australian tune, an American tune and an English tune.


17 Mar 03 - 06:50 AM (#911775)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,MCP

The Folk Music Journal did and article (by Wilf Darlington) on this tune (1992 Vol 6 No3), complete with a Captain Pugwash sketch on the front cover. The article covers the harmony of the tune in detail and investigates the descending chromatic part, which seems only to have come into the tune in the early part of the 20th century and to have been introduced via the popular commercial bands (like Jimmy Shand's).

(This is from memory - I'd have to reread the article to be certain of the details)

Mick


17 Mar 03 - 09:11 AM (#911839)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,Mr Red (waving hand as he fades to.....)

Maybe you are talking about a pirate copy?


17 Mar 03 - 05:16 PM (#912087)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,MCP

I reread the article and (IIRC) the upshot was that what is now the usual descending chromatic run in the B part was, in printed versions up to the start of the 20th century, repeated tonic or decorated versions thereof. The band versions added a chromatic descending bass below that, so that by the 50s (the time it became the Captain Pugwash theme - 57) this was common, and it was so in the theme, but the chromatic bass was quite prominent. Post Pugwash the chromatic descending run more and more often moved into the tune, which is how you usually here it these days. ("The tradition of playing it as before persisted with recording artistes who had learned the tune 'pre-Pugwash' and who for reasons of either aesthetics or habit did not alter their playing of the tune...Recordings made towards the end of the 1970s tend to show the more general adoption of the 'post-Pugwash' chromatic figure in the tune").

(And his favoured harmony for the last four bars is (in G):

G / G7 /|C / Eb7 /|G / D7 /|G / /||

)

Mick


17 Mar 03 - 05:42 PM (#912099)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: greg stephens

Those chords are the only obvious ones you can use , to match the descending chromatic bass with the rising chromatic tune. "Jazzing-up" hornpipes became quite standard from the 20's on: the similarity of the rhythm of hornpipes to the "swing music" tempos mad the connection painless. The seeds had already been sown in the 19th century by hornpipe writers(particularly in Scotland) who were using more sophisticated chords than you would find in jigs and reels.(The precursor, obviously, bing the College/Sailors hornpipe of the 18th century, with its A7 chord chord in the B music(in the key of G). That sort of change was not the sort of thing you'd find in a traditional reel of the period.
   Personally, I find a little of that sort of thing goes a long way. It always seems a bit redolent of school music teachers jazzing up the classics, or writing pastiche musicals about biblical characters using daring hints of rumba and rock-and-roll.


17 Mar 03 - 06:12 PM (#912117)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Long Firm Freddie

Nice mp3 version here:

pugwashmp3

LFF


17 Mar 03 - 10:52 PM (#912252)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,Billy

I've always heard the tune by the name of "The Highland Hornpipe".


17 Mar 03 - 11:45 PM (#912268)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: greg stephens

Where is it called the HIghland Hornpipe? I have been compiling snippets of info about this tune for years and that's a new name to me. Very intriguing.Could you point me in the direction of sources for the tune under that name? Would be much obliged
greg


18 Mar 03 - 05:17 PM (#912917)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: Tig

When I very first started playing I was brave enough to join the festival orchestra at Cleethorpes (when it was still on the pier!!!!).

Robin Garside, who was running it said "We'll start with Trumpet Hornpipe - most of you know that." I paniced and thought "I don't!" - then they started playing Captain Pugwash.

It broke my heart to find out that it had a proper name, but I'll still always know it as Captain Pugwash :-)))


19 Mar 03 - 12:11 AM (#913145)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,Billy

Greg, I learned it from my uncle - a Perthshire fiddler. He called it "The Highland Hornpipe" long before "Captain Pugwash" came on TV. He is dead now, so there is no way I could find out where he picked up the tune.


19 Mar 03 - 12:22 AM (#913149)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: greg stephens

thanks, Billy.I'll have chase that up. The earliest name I've seen for the tune is Lascelles Hornpipe(I think miss-spelt Lasil's in the MS concerned). I must spend some time on this, it's interesting.


19 Mar 03 - 03:25 AM (#913201)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,MCP

Greg - as well as The Trumpet and Lascelle's the article above has one reference as The Baloon (none to The Highland).

Mick


19 Mar 03 - 06:21 AM (#913254)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: greg stephens

Thanks Mick.the only Highland Hornpipe I managed to track down in a quick flip through a few things was a different tune. Just to add to the list, the tune is called "The Clarinet hornpipe" in a 19th century Derbyshire fiffler's MS (as far as I remember).


19 Mar 03 - 11:27 PM (#914152)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: GUEST,Billy

I think fiddlers just put their own name on tunes if they don't know the real name. A tune collector (and old timey fiddler) I know told me of an old Southern Illinois fiddler who said to him, "This tune's called 'The Flowers of EdinBURG...'" then added, "that's in Germany, y'know!"


25 Jul 09 - 02:26 PM (#2686948)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: captain pugwash
From: HuwG

Update: John Ryan, the original creator of the cartoon, died yesterday (24 July 2009), aged 88.

Obituary in the Guardian