Old Songs Newly Found

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 19 Sep 25 - 11:16 AM

Your welcome, Beer. It's been my pleasure.

Flipping through the vinyl the other day I came across a long-forgotten LP, a sampler from Greenhays called The Gathering. One of the tracks is Heather on the Moor sung by Paul Brady. According to the liner notes PB played the guitar, whistle and mandolin on the track with Andy Irvine on harmonica (I think he had a broken arm at the time). Heather on the Moor.
Brady and Irvine also collaborated on their monumental Andy Irvine Paul Brady LP (with Kevin Burke and Donal Lunny) and among the many wonderful cuts was Plains of Kildare, which recently showed up in a Mudcat thread regarding Stewball. Plains of Kildare

Another Scottish song, The Rambling Rover came from Andy M. Stewart of Silly Wizard. For some reason I'd always assumed that Stewart resurrected it from the "Ballad Boom" of the '60's but in tracking it down for this post found that he actually wrote it. I recently heard Siobhan Miller cover it and was charmed by her vocal and by the entire arrangement. The Rambling Rover.
She also covers some other older gems like Pound a Week Rise on her Strata CD.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 19 Sep 25 - 11:23 AM

I also wanted to mention that I've got a playlist on Spotify entitled, not surprisingly, Old Songs Newly Found. It doesn't exactly follow the goings on of this thread but it contains most of the songs mentioned here plus some that aren't, yet. I'll try to update it.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 19 Sep 25 - 11:29 AM

It's not your welcome, Beer. You are welcome. Jeeesh!

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: Beer
Date: 21 Sep 25 - 08:20 AM

No problem at all gillymor. B.T.W., absolutely love Paul Brady and the song you posted was a gem.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 22 Sep 25 - 08:37 AM

In case you haven't heard it, Beer, here's Paul Brady performing his arrangement of Arthur McBride https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGkhPx529g
that was also on the Irvine/Brady LP. I'd also recommend the Missing Liberty Tapes CD which includes live versions of Arthur McBride and other Brady arrangements of traditional songs like The Lakes of Pontchartrain and Mary and the Soldier. He's got a great backing band on it which includes most of the guys who played in Planxty at one time or another. Welcome Here Kind Stranger was also a lovely recording. You might say I'm a bit of a Brady fan.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: Beer
Date: 22 Sep 25 - 04:48 PM

This is a classic for sure. I never get tired of it.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 27 Sep 25 - 07:46 AM

The Parting Songs thread sparked a memory of Won't You Come and Sing For Me?, a song we used to close the proceedings with at a Bluegrass jam (after we burned out on Circle Be Unbroken) I was a part of until about 25 years ago. It was sung by 2 young ladies and everyone joined in on the chorus, even the banjo players. Our voices echoing off the roof of the pavilion would give me chills but we always left with a warm feeling. The chorus went like this:

Sing the hymns that we sang together,
In that plain little church with the benches all worn.
How dear to my heart, how precious the moment
We stood shaking hands and singing the songs.

Won't You Come and Sing for Me?

Hazel Dickens wrote the song and she had this to say about it:

“I’m really not religious, to tell the truth. However, when I was growing up, I was impressed by the love and kindness that was openly shared and displayed among the brothers and sisters of the old Primitive Baptist church. It was that and the singing of the old songs that stayed in my memories down through the years (not the preaching). Particularly at the end of the service after they sang the parting song, they go around and shake hands and greet each other, humbling themselves before each other with smiles and hugs and invitations to go home with them and share a meal. This kind of humility and harmonious spirit of a common people inspired me to write this song as a tribute to that place and time tucked away in the corner of my memory.”

I can relate to her words as a non-believer who regularly attended a local UU church back then. Hazel recorded the song with her musical partner Alice Gerrard on a Folkways album of the same name which was released in 1973. It featured other-worldly singing and the playing of budding mandolin genius David Grisman.

Among the reasons I'm drawn to songs like this and other Bluegrass and Old Time songs is that they don't shy away from uncomfortable topics like dying, death, grief and remembrance. I used to sing a song or two at the Jams and one was Larry Spark's Love of the Mountains, written by Allen Mills, which whenever I hear it makes me think of my folks with a bit of sadness and a lot of gratitude. Larry is flat out one of my favorite singers. Love of the Mountains.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 27 Sep 25 - 08:37 AM

I should have mentioned that the Won't You Come and Sing for Me? LP was recorded in 1965 but wasn't released until '73 for reasons I could not discover.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 02 Oct 25 - 11:14 AM

Back in the '70's I was way into Dave Van Ronk and even got a big J-50R Guild like the one he played. Later on I heard a couple of songs that I'd learned off his recordings featured in contemporary films. Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song) was collected by John Lomax in 1904 (Wikipedia says 1909, corrections welcomed here), Second Hand Songs called it a 'Folk song that tells the story of a woman deserted by her lover when she needs him the most. In 1904, ethnomusicologist John Lomax recorded it with his huge Edison recording machine as sung by an African American woman called 'Dink' in a tent camp of migratory levee-builders in Texas. It was published in 1934 in John and Alan Lomax's "American Ballads and Folk Songs". The Lomax recording is believed to be lost (or worn out at least).'
It was prominently featured in the Coen brother's film Inside Llewyn Davis, which was based on Van Ronk's posthumous memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Here is the film's star, Oscar Issac singing it with Marcus Mumford and some of the Punch Brothers providing the instrumental backing, Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song)

The other song was He Was a Friend of Mine. Willie Nelson sang it in the film Brokeback Mountain but I'm partial to the way Jerry Jeff Walker performed it on his Scamp CD. He Was a Friend of Mine

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: Beer
Date: 05 Oct 25 - 08:34 AM

Love Jerry Jeff Walker. To many have left us. But we can still listen to them.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 06 Oct 25 - 06:50 AM

Yep, JJW was one of a kind.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Remembered
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 10 Oct 25 - 09:23 AM

Buddy Miller has written some wonderful songs, including Watching Amy Dance (with Julie Miller), but I especially like to hear him sing older songs with that soulful voice of his. That's How I Got to Memphis was written by Tom T. Hall and Miller really wails on it. Here it is off his Love and Other Lies album -That's How I Got to Memphis and a live solo version that's too good not to include here Live . A couple of other favorites are his version of the Bob Wills classic Time Changes Everything, written by Wills' lead singer Tommy Duncan, which he performs here with Asleep at the Wheel- Time Changes Everything . Then we have One of These Days, written by Earl Montgomery, it was a hit for George Jones in 1972 and Emmylou Harris recorded an excellent version on her Elite Hotel LP. Miller performs it live on an Emmylou tribute album- One of These Days.

The aforementioned Tom T. Hall was a prolific song writer who wrote a bunch of Country Music hits but he also performed my favorite version of the Bluegrass standard Fox on the Run (flirting with a theme here), with banjo titan J.D. Crowe on the 5 string. The song was actually written by British songwriter Tony Hazzard and Manfred Mann had a hit with it in the UK in 1968/69 (not to be confused with a song of the same name that Sweet had a hit with), American Banjo player Bill Emerson heard it, rearranged it, recorded it with Cliff Waldron and then The Country Gentlemen (where I first heard it) and the rest is Bluegrass history, Fox on the Run.

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: Beer
Date: 11 Oct 25 - 12:09 PM

All good. Time Changes Everything is a song I do very often when I make my rounds at Senior Homes. Even tough far away from the Texas Swing State, here in Quebec it still left a mark. Especially Bob Wills

Subject: RE: Old Songs Newly Found
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 12 Oct 25 - 09:32 AM

Like the song says, Bob Wills is still the king. Brennan Leigh, who will reappear on this thread soon, wrote and recorded a tribute to Tommy Duncan, with Asleep at the Wheel, If Tommy Duncan's Voice was Booze.