The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155631   Message #3668008
Posted By: GUEST,henryp
11-Oct-14 - 03:27 AM
Thread Name: fifties popsongs that started as folk
Subject: RE: fifties popsongs that started as folk
"The Rambling Gambler" is a traditional folk song of the American West. It was first recorded in print by John and Alan Lomax in the 1938 edition of Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.

Like many folk songs, it is known by a variety of titles, such as "Rambler, Gambler," "I'm a Rambler, I'm a Gambler," "The Moonshiner," and "Rose of Aberdeen." It begins with the lines "I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler, I'm a long way from home / And the people who don't like me, they can leave me alone." (Wikipedia)

Ewan MacColl wrote the Manchester Hiker's Song, also known as The Manchester Rambler, a little time after the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout. Roy Palmer (History 29) writes that it is sung to a tune from Haydn's 94th Symphony.
I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way
I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way.
I may be a wage slave on Monday,
But I am a free man on Sunday.

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem sang The Moonshiner, adapted and arranged by Tom Clancy 1961 with the chorus;
I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler, I'm a long way from home,
And if you don't like me, Well leave me alone.
I'll eat when I'm hungry And I'll drink when I'm dry,
And if moonshine don't kill me, I'll live till I die.