Best Folk Song writer ever

Subject: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: olddude
Date: 26 May 08 - 08:50 PM

Ok to start a small discussion, if you had to pick the single greatest folk song writer who ever lived, known or unknow what is the first one to come to mind.

Stephen Foster perhaps? Dylan? Who

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Joe_F
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:00 PM

Anon.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:07 PM

olddude-I'm not sure Foster thought on his songs as folk songs, it just so happened that way. Anon fits the bill perfectly. My vote goes to Irving Burge who wrote many of the calypsos made famous by Harry Belefonte.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:17 PM

I'm with Joe. The best songs are the ones that last not because of who wrote them, but because they are good songs - and the old traditional songs have stood the test of hundred of years.

Yes, there are lots of good folks writing good songs today - I enjoy singing them. But I think the best of them are those who have deep roots in folk culture and tradition.

Dan

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: kendall
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:21 PM

I don't mean to plow up a snake here, but seems to me that folk songs are not written. They are handed down through the oral tradition from generation to generation.
One of the oldest songs is The Fox. That one goes back to the 12th century, and no one knows who made it originally.

Now, if you want to talk songs written in the folk genre' by singer songwriters, I'd go for,Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Tom Paxton, Gordon Bok and Eric Bogle.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: olddude
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:45 PM

bogle, Seeger, good choices so is burge. I agree the best are handed down from generation to generation. How many versions of "granfathers waltz are there, hundreds or thousands because, they were granfathers waltz ... but we tend to tribute the music to an author maybe not the correct one but someone made it famous or brought it to the eye of the folk world, so I put them in that category whoever the they are. How about woody guthrie

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Banjovey
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:49 PM

McColl

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 May 08 - 09:53 PM

1954

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 May 08 - 10:29 PM

I think the best songwriter of the last 50 years is Bob Dylan...if I have to pick someone. That doesn't mean I think he's the best "Folk Song" writer, because that label doesn't really fit him. He went beyond that. He's just the best songwriter, period.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 26 May 08 - 10:42 PM

Your thread is PURE

B. S.

As Kendal has noted:

ANONYMOUS!!!

This person is not only the BEST but also the most prolific.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Joe - we now have "above" and "below"....how about another "exclusive" section for those with MC roots to the 90's...the newbie-diaper-stench is distressing to the nerves.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 26 May 08 - 11:01 PM

Subjective as this thread is my vote would be for Stan Rogers.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: the button
Date: 26 May 08 - 11:02 PM

Not just any old "anon." The anonymous hacks who turned out broadsides in the 19th century (often acting as unwitting collectors of traditional songs), giving us 95% of the folksongs we have today.

Then the other anons got hold of them, stripped away some of the flowery verbiage, and added some truly beautiful melodies.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,iancarterb
Date: 26 May 08 - 11:07 PM

Gargoyle has the answer right, and there's only one right academic answer to the explicit question. If you know who wrote it, it probably hasn't passed into oral tradition yet, and likely hasn't wandered through variants in 8 languages by people who nver heard the radio. Such songs can't be common in English any more.
My preferred variant on the implicit question is 'the best writer of songs that SOUND like folk songs,' and I have never heard anyone better at that than Stan Rogers. Gillian Welch is the best still living and writing in English that I'm familiar with.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: topical tom
Date: 26 May 08 - 11:11 PM

I agree totally with kendall's list though I personally would not have chosen Gordon Bok.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: CupOfTea
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:49 AM

If yer looking for a "folk song writer" perhaps a way of parsing it out is: who is the known author who has the most songs that other folks have thought was "Trad?"

Works of Robert Burns, Si Kahn, Pete Seeger, some of the Scottish and Irish writers in a traditional vein have had that misattribution. In some cases when newer songs (especially from the other side of the Atlantic) are performed by singers who also do a good line in the very old songs, that the "trad" gets assumed by listeners not aware of the actual author. I particularly got a kick out of being earnestly told that "The Scotsman" was a very traditional song, and couldn't possibly have been written by an American bluegrass guy...

Songwriters who have multiple works written in my lifetime that I believe will live on "in the tradition:"
Woody Guthrie
Pete Seeger
Eric Bogle
Gordon Bok
Phil Ochs
Sidney Carter
Tom Paxton
Andy M. Stewart
Tommy Sands

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 May 08 - 02:27 AM

Not ANON but TRAD.

eric

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: mark gregory
Date: 27 May 08 - 02:35 AM

Anonymous or anon or trad should be replaced with "author not known" or perhaps "author(s) not yet known"

mark

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: fat B****rd
Date: 27 May 08 - 04:22 AM

Maybe not the best but I believe the most profitable to be Trad. Arr BY....

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 May 08 - 05:15 AM

Mark Gregory, why ?

eric

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 May 08 - 05:16 AM

IMO Guest iancarterb has it about right, at least as far as the UK is concerned.
The singing tradition among both the Irish Travelling and settled communities lasted somewhat longer here, allowing written material to be taken up and adapted, but sadly, even that appears to have disappeared now.
This doesn't mean that new songs can't be written using traditional styles - but that's a different thing altogether.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 May 08 - 05:24 AM

It's remarkably persistent this idea that, in order for a song to be classified as a folk song, its author must be anonymous, isn't it?

Many folk songs are anonymous purely because we have no record of the author's name - it's as simple as that! Nevertheless, someone must have written them. They didn't just spring, fully formed, from the earth!

The fact is that any song, whether it has a known author or not, can become a folk song as long as it has undergone the 'folk process' which has been discussed exhaustively in previous threads.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 27 May 08 - 05:48 AM

"She moved through the fair" written by Padraig Colum, is in the oral tradition.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 27 May 08 - 05:57 AM

Guest Shimrod....it was not necessary for people to write down songs back in the days when the men harvested the fields manually and grafted on ships of the line. At the end of a week of harvesting the land...the farmer would supply copious amounts of liquor or ale and every man, to a man, was 'expected' to sing..whether or not he had a voice for it. Most of these men were illiterate but could make up their own songs...as did the men on board ships. So a tradition of Folk music came about with many anonymous 'inventors' rather than writers of songs. Over many ensuing decades, certain people have collected these songs and many have been put to paper...so as you say, they did not spring fully formed from the earth...but from the many illiterate men who worked the earth and sailed the seas.
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 May 08 - 06:12 AM

Step a bit outside the British Isles and things can look very different.

There are maybe 200 songs by Pir Sultan Abdal that have survived in mainly-oral tradition for 400 years. Pir Sultan was something like a Turkish William Blake, and was hanged by a feudal lord for leading an insurrection in the time of Suleyman the Magnificent, so the Joe Hill factor kept him in popular memory as well as the quality of his songs.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 May 08 - 06:37 AM

'but from the many illiterate men who worked the earth and sailed the seas.'

They may not have been illiterate. They just didn't live at a time where people registered themselves owners of intellectual property. To write something like say The Cutty Wren or Sir Patrick Spens argues considerable intellligence and education. Certainly a command of and familiarity with creative processes. This stuff didn't just spring from the dull earth.

Their work may simply not have have had a discernabble value to people who account themselves arbiters of what is an important folksong.

You can see the same sort of process at work even to this day.

They might be anon or trad, but only because some gang of self important arseholes whose job it was to chronicle the times couldn't see the value.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 27 May 08 - 07:06 AM

Georgiansilver - I agree with what you say, and songs made that way are of course a key element of the tradition, but I understand that some music historians are now suggesting that those 'mouth-made' songs have tended not to survive as intact, or to have travelled as far, as the ones which were actually written down.

I've hear people say that there's a growing school of thought that perhaps the bulk of the 'classic' trad repertoire was actually composed by a comparatively small number of skilled makers, who did in fact write them down, thus making transmission more likely - and as has been said above this definitely applies to the broadside writers.

I've no idea if this applies pre-broadside, and it could be that the pond has been muddied by the activities of very early collectors (the broadside idea didn't spring from nowhere after all), but someone suggested there might have been a few musical equivalents of Shakespeare, who hoovered up stories and perhaps other writers' works, and made good songs from them which were then robust enough to remain recognisable even after much erosion and reconstruction through the centuries.

I personally believe that the elements of song which render it liable to survive are the images it conjures up, and the emotions it triggers - and that applies to story songs, work/community songs and relationship songs. A good tune may survive because its a good tune, and a good story may survive because it's a good story, and some good lyrics survive because they're strong or useful (hence floating verses) but a good song - as a song - survives because it 'goes in.' People tend to want to sing it the way they heard it, so the erosion is slower than if they'd felt it needed improving.

While the folk process does periodically give words or tune a make-over, you can usually tell by comparing radically different versions of a great song that there was a skilled mind at work in the initial conception and construction, which time has not been able completely to obscure.

There's nothing to say that that skilled mind was literate or educated in any way, but it would be reasonable to suggest that it was practised, and took the process of song writing seriously.

It's certainly true that we do know the authors of a lot of songs now called Trad, and people are finding more all the time. Known authorship does not exclude a song from the oral trad repertoire (pre recording), and nor from the recorded trad repertoire (post recording). The more authors we can identify (along with key make-overers too) the better, in my opinion.

This is not to take anything away from song carriers and sources, but how handy would it be if we knew who first made the Musgrave/Groves story into a song, and what he or she actually composed? We'd then be able to interpolate all sorts of things from the various versions.

Tom

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 27 May 08 - 07:07 AM

And what Al said, too

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 May 08 - 07:25 AM

yes indeed contrast this with the craftsmen who built the great cathedrals - sometimes we know their names and even how much they got paid.

right up the start of the 17th century - we cannot be sure how much of Shakespeares plays are written by the man himself. Small wonder we have no record of the great ballad writers - the great performers who must surely have edited them.

However their genius is luminous -in the hands of a skilled performer. That brings us neatly back to brian peters new album!

well done mate!

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: the button
Date: 27 May 08 - 07:43 AM

This is kind of relevant, if any of you haven't seen it before. Articles on the passage of songs from print into the tradition. Interesting stuff.

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/dungheap.htm

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 27 May 08 - 08:30 AM

From Button's excellent link:

"the two traditions should not be considered as entirely separate"

An important if topical (here, at least) statement. So, was it Child, then, who began the academic separation, and later romanticisation, which led to the 54 definition, and the eventual elevation of carriers over writers? (Please reply using only words ending in ion)

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: The Doctor
Date: 27 May 08 - 08:33 AM

No-one has mentioned Graeme Miles, author and composer of literally hundreds of songs between the late 40s and early 70s. Many, perhaps even the majority, have been lost over the years, so we'll never know whether there was a classic amongst them or whether they deserved to disappear. But that seems to be the lot of folk songs anyway. But enough have survived to show what a great writer he was, and if you're not familiar with his work try Martyn Wyndham-Read's CD 'Where Ravens Feed', and especially the title track.
Whether he, or anyone else, belongs in this list of greats, however, is entirely a matter of personal taste and opinion. I tend to pick great songs rather than songwriters.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 May 08 - 09:27 AM

"At the end of a week of harvesting the land...the farmer would supply copious amounts of liquor or ale and every man, to a man, was 'expected' to sing..whether or not he had a voice for it. Most of these men were illiterate but could make up their own songs...as did the men on board ships. So a tradition of Folk music came about with many anonymous 'inventors' rather than writers of songs."

Forgive me, 'Georgiansilver', but this seems a bit hypothetical to me. Have you got any evidence to support this hypothesis?

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 27 May 08 - 09:27 AM

The answer to the title of this thread will never be answered but the devil wrote all the best tunes!

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Folkiedave
Date: 27 May 08 - 09:32 AM

The Doctor is correct of course - there is Graeme Miles, and the rest.

Listen to Craig Morgan Robson sing "When the Snows of Winter Fall" and marvel.

Still alive - saw him the week before last at Shepley Festival.

Dave

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: mattkeen
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:06 AM

Anon is great
CupofTeas list for those where we know the author is a great place to start
Songwriters who have multiple works written in my lifetime that I believe will live on "in the tradition:"
Woody Guthrie
Pete Seeger
Eric Bogle
Gordon Bok
Phil Ochs
Sidney Carter
Tom Paxton
Andy M. Stewart
Tommy Sands

Personally I also would add Chris Wood/Hugh Lupton and John Tams

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:24 AM

McColl/Seeger. Well written stories strong tunes a great variety. Some taken as traditional

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: olddude
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:31 AM

ANONYMOUS
OK then how did you hear it, did it come in a dream or did you hear someone play it? if so how then do you know it is the way it was originally written by anonymous? MY point, we all know folk songs go generation to generation, but you had to have heard it did you not? If not then you don't know about the song. Point is someone wrote it down taught it to you or you heard it. Hence attribute it to the source that brought it to the for front. How many clancy songs are based in tradition ... a bunch - but do we not think clancy when we hear them, at least I do since they brought it to the attention of the folk community. Hence the anonymous is not an answer

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: olddude
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:38 AM

since we cannot go back in time, any traditional music handed down from generation to generation may be entirely different from what was originally written, people add to songs, enhance, when we see a written copy who know how many changes were made, hence we cannot say anonymous is the best writer. since someone wrote it down or played it for us to hear, they interpreted the music. Like the Clancy's or other hence I attribute the anonymous to those who brought it to our attention .. Like Anon

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: olddude
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:55 AM

No.20 - The Turtle Dove (Roud 422) - this popular lament is shown to have evolved from seventeenth century broadside ballads. Its evolution is traced across three centuries including Burns' adaptation and a nineteenth century burlesque.

I love this from the button's post

Hey Gargoyle see the term EVOLUTION!! maybe 100 writers involved but the last one got us what we hear today ... RIGHT?

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: olddude
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:57 AM

my assertion: There is no anonymous folk music hence who is the best writer

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 27 May 08 - 11:13 AM

I don't think you should beat yourself up over this olddude.

Old songs were written by somebody, I think we all agree. Some were passed on more or less unchanged and authorship is known for some and not others.

Some were past on and changed quite a lot and ended up in a number of versions? Who contributed most - generally we don't know.

When we don't know we say anonymous. I am no master of words but when we don't know and cannot find the name we say anonymous.

I feel sure a scholar will explain the origin of anonymous.

Anyway McColl/ Seeger

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 27 May 08 - 11:21 AM

A folk song can either be trad. or contemporary, and one of the best known authors would have to be Ewan MacColl.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 27 May 08 - 11:24 AM

I really am very sorry I joined in this

Cheers

Les, leaving

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 27 May 08 - 11:43 AM

So much of the songbag is filled with music from the oral tradition, from writers who are either anonymous or long dead, or both. Of the composers who are living, or who have been active during our lifetimes, I'd credit Tom Paxton, Peter Seeger, Bob Dylan, Travis Edmonson (of Bud & Travis), Gordon Lightfoot, Woodie Guthrie and even Townes Van Zandt. Bear in mind that I'm speaking from the Yank point of view.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:11 PM

Guest Shimrod..The only evidence I have to support my post is that in books on and of the period...whether factual or fiction such as those written by Thomas Hardy which reflect actual 'goings on' of the day.
A good example is 'Far From The Madding Crowd'
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: kendall
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:18 PM

My bad. How could I forget Stan Rogers, Woody Guthrie and Dave Goulder?

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:36 PM

Then theres Tom Bliss himself.....

Best though......?
Best ever........!


yeh....... probably Tom.

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Def Shepard
Date: 27 May 08 - 01:09 PM

Trad. Arr and A.Non :-D

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 May 08 - 01:12 PM

The term 'folk' does not refer to a specific style of song, it refers to a process which the song, tune, tale, custom - has undergone. Even where the author of the song is known, unless it has gone through that process, it does not qualify as 'folk'.
John William Thoms coined the term in 1846 when he referred to 'folklore' and it has been in continuous use since.
As far as I'm concerned, until somebody comes up with a better one, that will remain the definition, no matter what misinterpretation, deliberate or otherwise is put on it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Best Folk Song writer ever
From: Carol
Date: 27 May 08 - 01:55 PM

Stan Rodgers was great 'modern' folk song writer