I agree with Diane Easby. For me it has always been about the great story told in the songs. If they had a great tune, it was just an extra added perk. Having great tunes available in the oral tradition made it acceptable and easy for Woody and Dylan to utilize those grand, and often beautifully emotional tunes. ---- On occasion I would take a tune from an old song and do a whole other "ballad" with it. And it made a song that others in these latter times would listen to with more open ears and minds.

I did that with my performance and recordings of "Robin Hood's Death." The tune I took and used was Frank Hamilton's tune that he used on "Geordy."

Also, I did that with the American lumber camp ballad "The Pinery Boys"---as collected by Franz Rickaby. The tune was the one Pat Foster had used for "The California Boy"----almost exactly the same song narrative. BOTH of those songs came from the older song, "The Sailor Boy" from Britain. You could track that song from East to West as it was transmitted, via the oral tradition, from England to Wisconsin to the California gold rush of 1849. Indeed, I created a folksong map of the USA that had no place names on it---just song titles that reflected the migration of the songs and/or the lives of the people in that geographical small part of America.

I did that for over 30 years in the schools and festival workshops, mainly in the six counties in and around the city of Chicago---and beyond.

Another song I truly loved where I took a tune from a Trad ballad: "The Shanty Boy On The Big Eau Clair" that I got from Paul Clayton in the back room of the Gate Of Horn folk (night)club in Chicago around 1960. The tune I used was from Joe Heaney's singing in Chicago of the grand ballad "Morrissey And The Russian Sailor."

This might wind up on a CD for Folk Legacy to possibly be called "On The River"----combined with a few live tracks from show I did in Winfield, Kansas.

That's all of 'em I think. At least it's all I can recall right now. ---- It was about the story for me--- the history and the herstory---as reflected in the folk songs.

'nuf said,

Art Thieme