Worst Folk Song Ever?

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 09:03 PM

"I nominate The Zombie Jamboree" -

I'll wager you've never heard it done by Lord Jellicoe and his Calypso Monarchs, then.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Captain Colin.
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 09:21 PM

You're right meself- good I presume- I'll look out for it- and if I change my mind I'll substitute My Old Man's A Dustman- and yes, that really is a folk song, albeit adapted.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 09:40 PM

Among traditional songs I know and know of, I can't really put any into a "worst folk song" category. There are songs that I think I've heard enough lately, thank you.

But even then, a lot depends on the individual performance.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Scoville
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 10:08 PM

"Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", if that counts. Childish, simplistic, uninteresting, waste of time.

And if I ever hear "the Sick Note" again, I'll have to strangle the singer. Give it up, already.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: kendall
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 10:15 PM

Willy McBride is a damn good song, and The band played waltzing Matilda is even better.

What was that one about the Lion sleeps tonight? In the jungle..the Lion sleeps tonight etc. The thing is, Lions don't sleep in the jungle at all. In fact, that don't do anything in the jungle.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 10:35 PM

I'm undoubtedly going to offend someone with the following, but I think it should be said:

It depends on the audience. In my repertoire, I have some "old standards" like—yes—Greensleeves (three carefully selected verses thereof), and what might be called the "standard" versions of Barbara Allen, Lord Randal, and a bunch of others. These are some of the first songs I learned starting in 1951, and that was well before there were all that many people involved with folk music—and before they all got so bloody damned sophisticated.

There are a lot of darn good songs out there that nobody sings anymore. Why? Because when someone started to sing one of them, there would be a klatch of jaded, world-weary folkies out there in the audience who would loudly sigh, roll their eyes, and sometimes sneer and snicker through the whole song. Lots of people were intimidated into not singing these songs, and many of them I haven't heard anyone sing—for decades. The super-sophisticated, ultra-cool folkies killed them.

They're good songs.

I don't do them for audiences composed primarily of folkies. I save these songs for general non-folkie audiences. They like them!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 10:41 PM

Well, case in point:   it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I first heard Fields of Athenry. "Hey, good song!" I said to myself, and hauled off and learned it.

Then I find out here on Mudcat that it's been sung a lot, and large numbers of folkies just don't want to hear it anymore.

So I save it for other audiences. It goes over well. Lots of people like it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Songster Bob
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 11:03 PM

Most of the ones mentioned here aren't bad songs, just over-bloody-done, particularly by poor singers, so shouldn't be called "the worst." I don't know the category, but "worst" isn't in it.

That aside, I have heard dreadful songs, usually some kind of broadsheet that only exists because it was so dreadful that no one bought it from the street vendor selling the broadsheet, and the unsold copies were set aside to sell as toilet paper but were so bad they didn't even sell for that, and ended up in some upper-crust would-be collector's attic, where they were rediscovered and published by one of these twits whose taste is only in his mouth, but who needed one more old broadsheet song to add to his book. Add to it that the broadsheet says, "to a new and delightful tune" but the scan fits no known tune other than "To Anacreon in Heaven," and you have a candidate for the worst-ever folksong.

And, of course, you KNOW the kind of singer who would fasten on such a turgid piece of crap to learn and perform it!

THAT would be the world's worst folksong.

Unless it would be that some poor-singing, attention-getting schmuck decides to write his own turgid, repetitive, polemic song -- about something truly "controversial," like South Africa, years after apartheid has ended -- and insist on singing it at song-circles. With a vocal range of 20 notes (per octave).

THAT would be the world's worst folksong. Or two.

Needless to say, I have heard both of these, in my life. And the singers in question are NOT the same person, making it that much more excruciating.

Bob

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: PeadarOfPortsmouth
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 11:33 PM

I think there's some confusion in this thread between songs that are intrinsicly bad and songs we're just tired of. For example:

I love The Streets of London...and it's safe to say I haven't heard anyone play it in a session for two years.

Also, I just rolled out the Fields of Athenry at a small informal session last weekend. There were a few musicians who have been going to sessions here for a looooong time...and they had never heard it before. I just assumed that if they've been playing Irish music they would have been familiar with it...who knew.

Neither song is poorly constructed or has bad lyrics...but they ABSOLUTELY could get lame from being over-played.

At the risk of being shouted down by people whose opinions I value, I'd like to echo Don's point: I still think The Wild Rover has a place in the set list. We are talking (broadly) about folk music, and the folks in the pub always join in when it's played. The only people who don't like it seem to be folk musicians...which smacks a bit of snobbery, IMO.

...but for some reason, no one ever requests Kum-by-ya

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: johnross
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 11:49 PM

It might be fun to write -- and not sing except in jest -- a "worst folk song." Seems to me it could have all the faults described in "And I'd Like You Join in the Chorus" or the things that the "Ramblin' Syd Rumpo" character on "Round the Horne" used to do (now heard each Wednesday on BBC Radio 7).

For example:

A spoken introduction that takes longer than it takes to sing the damn song, and that spoils the surprise ending

A long repetitive ballad with a plot that makes absolutely no sense

A gibberish chorus

A crucial character introduced in Verse 2 and then never mentioned until Verse 19

Any song that shifts between two or more languages without warning (such as English and either Gaelic, Welsh, or Coast Salish dialect)

A meter and/or instrumental break that sounds like a dance written by a composer with one leg shorter than the other (apologies to PDQ Bach)

Multiple strained rhymes (like "...her men are all like Abelard, her women like Heloise/All honest virtuous people, for they live in Illinois)

==
Any other suggestions?

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 05:51 AM

Hello,

Worst folk song ever...that's a tough one. I agree with Don Firth's point...different songs fair differently in different situations.

Every song is sung by a singer for a reason...none of us sing songs that don't resonate for us in some way or other. The same is true of the writers of songs...sometimes it is only the writer who can put it over well...sometimes their songs only come to life when someone else sings them.

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 06:31 AM

We'll have to be careful or we'll find we've nominated every song in the folk genre and discovered that,actually,we hate folk music when it comes down to it ;-)
I perform some of the songs noted here,including a "300 verse ballad about Margaret" altho its Maggie Boyle who sings it,I accompany on guitar - but Maggie could sing the phone book and it would still be sublime.
There's no excuse for singing a tedious song - and Well Below The Valley is awful,lets face it,and was lauded for ages because it was a rare discovery.I also dont like The Bitter Withy and The Cruel Mother both of which are noble songs in a way,but which preach vindictiveness,and try to give it a religious justification.The cruel mother burns in hell,but if a british naval vessel drowns a shipload of turks, they just get an extra barrel of grog.Dont want to be pc here but I wonder if it was a man or a woman wrote The Cruel Mother(I dont really)?

---

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Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 07:02 AM

What's that one about Monday morning, by Cyril Tawney I think? Grim, depressing and unsingable just about.   Nowt to redeem it.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 07:10 AM

Point taken about them being well dodgy on some levels, but I love 'Well Below the Valley' and 'The Cruel Mother' - if only for their weird, creepy otherworldliness. What I can't stand is the jolly, jaunty stuff like the aforementioned 'Day Trip to Bangor' ... and does anyone remember Maddy Prior's truly cringe-making 'Wake Up England'? Much as I now love a lot of what Ms Prior has been involved in, when this came out it nearly put me off folk music for life... 'If you're a truly blue Tory or a liberal in the middle of the road, or a little to the left of Chairman Mao we're all in England here and now... So wake up England!' I've not heard it in years and still those lyrics and that ever-so-chirpy tune is lodged like a bloody limpet in my poor old brain.

Nigel

---

Please note that anonymous posting is no longer allowed at Mudcat. Use a consistent name [in the "from" box] when you post, or your messages risk being deleted.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 07:22 AM

Songs that go on forever, such as ...what will you give to your brother John...your uncle Pete...your third cousin's left handed barber, his mother in laws ex wife..etc. BORING, and so tedious.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Irish
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 11:49 AM

Worst song ever has got to be Nobodies Child especially sung by out of tune Jocks

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Bee
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 01:49 PM

I've a friend who likes having me sing 'Nobody's Child' with him, and it's all I can do not to have fits of giggles halfway through. I refuse to learn to play it myself.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 02:16 PM

Exactly so, Kendall. This is why, when I learn a song like Greensleeves or Lord Randal or Barbara Allen or Edward, I do some judicious editing. All of these songs can run on for what seems like hours, repeating the same verse format with only minor variations ("mother . . . father . . . sister . . . brother . . . Uncle Fred . . . the dog . . . .").

In days gone by, songs like this were regarded as an evening's entertainment, but modern audiences find this sort of repetition tedious or worse. So I take a verse or two of this sort of thing to get the gist of it and just drop the rest. Now, some tight-lipped folklorist may take issue with this sort of editing, but I fall back on a couple of words spoken to my by Prof. David C. Fowler (A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, Duke University Press 1968), from whom I took an excellent class on "The Popular Ballad" when I was at the University of Washington. There were several singers in this class and sometimes the class wound up being a song-fest. When I did a somewhat truncated version of a ballad, Dr. Fowler asked me where I had learned that version. I confessed that I had edited a version I had learned from John and Sylvia Kolbs, A Treasury of Folk Songs (Bantam Books, 1948), and threw myself on his mercy. He assured me that there was nothing wrong with editing a song they way I had done. "The academician, the folk song collector," he said, "is obligated to write down all that he hears. But the singer, such as yourself, is primarily an entertainer. You need to be judicious in what you feel will be entertaining and not bore your audience. If you can do that and still be true to the spirit of the song, I would say you have succeeded. I would call this "a minstrel's prerogative."

A minstrel's prerogative. I like that!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Captain Colin
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 02:16 PM

Well, it ought to be a clear winner- but I don't think it's folk song- surely it's a post-war Country song, written by Cy Coben?

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Captain Colin
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 02:22 PM

.."Nobody's Child", that is.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Gulliver
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 03:40 PM

I agree with Don above. Most of the songs mentioned here are good songs--they've stood the test of time--and many are requested at sessions and parties where we are paid to play, so it's good to know them. It's just a matter of personal preference.

We don't know what the worst folk songs were, because they were quickly forgotten and consigned to the dustbin of history.

So I tried to think of some song I don't like--the Grey Funnel Line comes to mind.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Woods
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 09:07 PM

Of course this is all very subjective, and there probably is a difference between over-used songs (that probably got that way because they are good) and those that you wonder how they ever made it out their first door, but somehow survived (and shouldn't?).

My personal peeve is Bile Dem Cabbage Down (or one of many other varieties of spellings). Don't know why this one ever existed, let alone why it still does.
Woods

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 05 Jun 07 - 09:42 PM

Nobody's Child ... yeah ... except that any time I hear it, I find myself singing along with gusto. (That's my friend - Gusto. He's Italian. Maybe he's the same guy Bee sings along with.)

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 02:56 AM

Nobody's Child is a folk song? In that case, I don't like folk music.


My own nomination - Auld Lang Syne.


DC

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 04:19 AM

Back in touch with my cousin after a 40-year gap, I eagerly asked him what he remembered about growing up in a well-known Suffolk singing pub in the 1950's and 1960's. His one abiding memory was at chucking-out time, when the old boys reeled down the road singing the first line of 'Distant Drums', then repeating it over and over again as they couldn't remember any more. The context surely makes it an honorary folk song, and therefore it must be a contender in this forum.......

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Mark H.
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 04:28 AM

John Barleycorn is tedious, so rather than complain I re-wrote it, leaving out the metaphors:
"They planted some barley, and when it grew
It was harvested, malted and brewed."
That saves a lot of time, so some wet blanket can sing Coal 'ole Cavalry or Fields of Athenry while you go to the bar.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive)
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 05:24 AM

That's two anti John Barleycorn posts in this thread now. You only have to listen to the magnificent version opening Tim Van Eyken's last album to hear there's still plenty of life in the song yet...

Nigel

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Ythanside
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 08:23 AM

Irish,   '...especially sung by out of tune Jocks.'??????

Come outside an' say that, Paddy!

LOL

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,wordy
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 08:49 AM

Anything like "The grey funnel Line" with a chorusy tag on the end of each verse that gets slower, and longer and more drawn out everytime it comes along and the room joins in with corny harmony notes held endlessly.
Wrist slittingly awful.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Young Buchan
Date: 06 Jun 07 - 10:00 AM

A confession.
There is a 19th century broadside ballad called Fanny Adams. Sample verse:
When the neighbours came home without my Fanny
The neighbours searched the country all aroud
They found the head with both the eyes out
And the left arm cut off upon the ground.
In my callow youth I once sang this, hammed it up for all it wa worth and got a barrel of laughs for it. Shortly afterwards I went back and listened to the recording of the old gypsy singer Vashti Vincent singing it - and singing it without a trace of parody or detachment, but a total commitment to a song about a paedophilic murder which clearly deeply affected her. I have often since sung songs which are parodies of other songs, but I have never again parioded a song by taking the piss out of the original, however bad. The old singers thought they were worth passing on to us. If we don't like them we should leave them alone, not make fun of them.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: dholland
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 12:08 AM

It had something to do with a dead skunk in the middle of the road....song stunk!

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: dholland
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 12:09 AM

Hey Nick! Interesting thread.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 03:54 AM

All the really shite songs are contemporary songs, not trad ones.

Stan Rogers should be dug up and feckin shot for inflicting us with ' The Lockeeper ' what a pretentious load of crap, the last time I was at Whitby Folk Week I must have heard it twenty times every day, in fact just thinking about it I've lost the will to live.

But the dreariest song of all is ' Killkelly Ireland ' we could use this song instead of our nuclear deterrent.

eric

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Young Hunting
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 04:06 AM

The songs that annoy me most are those that have really forced lines/rhymes in, and those do indeed tend to be contemporary because the folk process generally digests and evacuates the bad bits.

I genuinely believe that the worst line of the lot is 'Judge's fine and private daughter' in Palaces of Gold. Noone would ever use that as a phrase. There again I've never heard anyone describe Mr Logie Baird's invention as a Telly V - but it didn't stop Ron Angel using it in his song about the decline of Christmas.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 06:50 AM

Quite right, no-one would ever use that phrase in real life but Leon Rosselson used it in his song as an expression of contempt.

eric

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 01:04 PM

I can think of a lot of songs that might fit. But, in reality, it has a lot more to do with repetition and quality of performance than any other factor. "Kumbaya" gets nominated a lot simply because it's been done to death, and by some horrifically bad performers. The same can be said for some other pretty good, and historically interesting and significant material. It's the "dead horse" syndrome. Also, most performers are likely to be a lot more critical than ordinary audiences when it comes to overused songs. I don't know how it is elsewherein the world, but it was once said, possibly by H.L. Mencken, that "no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 03:16 PM

What rotten taste I must have. I think I have enjoyed most of the songs mentioned here at some time or other.

I hate it when someone tries to do something they should have stayed home and practised. Things with tricky rhythms like Martin Carthy uses so well. Things where guitarists play all the chords instead of a passing note, like the C Em Am rundown, and you get this horrible jumpy effect. Another pet hate is when the PA man goes out for a wee or a drink, and leaves the guitar, or the voice at the wrong volume.

part of the joy of folk clubs is seeing new singers start to put together their technique, and drink deep from what to us old hands are the empties and dregs of the repertoire.

Also sometimes a singer can do a song that you think you don't like and completely re-invent it. John Kelly did just that for me a couple of weeks ago at Mansfield Folk Club. What a wonderful singer!

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 09:12 AM

I would have to say that my get up and go cue comes with the first notes of "Marie's Wedding". Same for "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream" and "The Wild Rover". But one of my worst nightmares is to be trapped in Pub with someone who knows ALL the words to "Mary Hamilton".

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: goatfell
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 10:07 AM

back home in Derry

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 11:37 AM

I once found myself falling quite madly for a winsome young lady who DID know all the words to "Mary Hamilton" and who performed the song beautifully. However, that WAS 45 years ago. I don't have any idea whether she still sings it.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Mike Rogers
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 04:45 AM

The worst song ever is undoubtedly 'Brennan On The Moor' which I had the misfortune to hear many years ago performed by a guy in the stereotypical garb of Arran sweater, pint pot in hand (actually one of the very few people I've seen so attired), with much enthusiasm and little talent. This geezer was so delighted with his own performance that he repeated the damn song.
It seemed like poetic justice when, many years later, Father Ted kicked Bishop Brennan up the arse.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: GUEST,Eleanor Roosevelt's Knickers
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 08:08 AM

1 The Wild Rover.

2 That song by Steve Knightley. Roots? I'm sick of it.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: john f weldon
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 09:08 AM

Hey dholland...
The Dead Skunk Song was a Huge pop hit around 1970-ish, and was written by Louden Wainwright, a truly minimalist songwriter. (father to Rufus & Martha among other things).

You can make big bucks writing songs like Dead Skunk. There may be a lesson here for all of us.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: DADGBE
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 01:22 PM

Let's see now, it was Pete Seeger who said something to the effect of - We don't need so many new songs, just the courage to sing the old ones again.

To be truely awful, a song must have a useless tune and stupid words. How about:

I've been to the desert on a horse with no name,
In the desert you can remember your name,
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain...

Yech!

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: john f weldon
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 02:17 PM

DADGBE...
wasn't that Neil Young? Blasphemy!
(tho I agree it sucks...)

Once a few yrs ago, there was a poll conducted in the US & Britain to pick worst song of all time & both came up with the same song, MacArthur Park. Not a Folk song, tho.

The trouble with folk songs; often the worse they are, the better they are, or at least they're kinda fun; like S-A-V-E-D, or (from Hi-Tone Gal):

Adam & Eve were down in the garden, hoein' a field of tomaters...
Eve run around a mulberry bush and hit him in the eye with a tater...

...a kind of Zen perfection to that...

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: HouseCat
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 02:27 PM

Dead Skunk is the official anthem of my church (folk) choir, sung with much enthusiasm at every party, bus trip, etc. We are a fun bunch, lemme tell ya. We just have very questionable tastes.

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Old Grizzly
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 03:16 PM

Absolutely any blues song performed by anyone OTHER than a half cut, 40 stone, 3 bellied blind, one legged, three fingered African American Nonogenarian, sitting in a rocker on a rotting verandah somewhere in the deep south.

So shoot me!!

D

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: EuGene
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 04:38 PM

". . . when a hearse goes by,
'cause you may be the next to die." (don't know the song name)

"On Top of Old Smokey"

"Quick, Quack, Quantie, Ahntie,
Montie, Montie, Doshnik" (tune ok, but stupid nonsense words - don't even know how they are spelled as I have never seen them written. The words were probably lifted from a background sign in a "Smokey Stover" comic strip)

Any song seems to glorify dangerous criminals who didn't die soon enough, like "Mack, The Knife", "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Ballad of Billy the Kid", etc.

"She'll Be Commin' 'Round the Mountain"

"99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"

"Goober Peas"

"The Mitch Mitchell rewrite of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"

Eu

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 05:24 PM

I'd give it to Goober Peas. End of discussion

Subject: RE: Worst Folk Song Ever?
From: Peace
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 05:26 PM

"Convoy" from the C and W persuasion.