The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #31006   Message #403631
Posted By: GUEST,Landlady's Daughter
22-Feb-01 - 09:07 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Housing Songs
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Housing Songs
I should confess that I haven't worked on this housing songbook for years, after the usual discouragement from songbook publishers. Nor am I actively organizing tenants, other than the ones who share this building. However, my contacts with Mudcat has rekindled my interest, and I do still think the concept has great potential.

Kat/Kat/Laughing contributed one of the first songs in my collection which is in Digital Archieves as "Landlord's Lullaby;" I wonder how she got it? Did she live in East Lansing, Michigan?

Stevie, "WPA" is a keeper already, a great blues song which I've ascribed to William Waldon (Big Bill Broonzy) who is probably the same as Casey Bill Weldon depending on whose spelling is correct. I'm not familiar with Josh White's "Bad Housing Blues" – any clues for me to follow-up?

Amos, nice verse! I may find a use for it in the chapter on tenant farming, along with "Down on Penny's Farm."

Liz, keep looking! I seldom sing these songs any more but I do need releases for possible publication.

My verse for the day from Ewan MacColl:

It's illegal to kill off a landlord,
Or to trespass upon his estate;
But to charge a high rent for a slum is OK,
To condemn two adults and three children to stay,
In a hovel that's rotten with damp and decay,
Is a thing that is perfectly legal.