Great folk song lyrics

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 06:53 AM

Spencer the Rover

His children came around him with their prittle prattling stories
With their prittle prattling stories to drive care away

Anyone with kids will know why I love it:-)

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 06:36 AM

From Child 88. Young Johnstone.

'Now live, now live, my fair lady,
O live but half an hour,
There's neer a leech in fair Scotland
But shall be at thy bower.'

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: banjoman
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 06:27 AM

How about Tom Paxtons song about 9/11

I'm haunted by the sound
of Firemen running up the stairs while we were running down.

This one came to mind as I was thinking about those two brave men who lost their lives in Southampton (UK) on Thuesday night.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: deepdoc1
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 06:23 AM

Yes, I do apologize for wandering. A couple of glasses af wine and my enthusiasm started tugging at the leash. I shall slink off int' the underbrush and attempt to learn restraint. It probably won't work, but I'll try. ;)

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: CET
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 05:51 AM

I started off with Stan Rogers because Field Behind the Plow was what I had been listening to. That may have got people off on a singer-songwriter tangent.

I'm a traditional music lover myself, and I find a lot of singer-songwriters to be pale imitations of the real thing - BUT there are some who have the gift, Stan Rogers being very notably one of them. He did have his off days, and some of what he wrote could be described as well meaning effusions, but with Field Behind the Plow he reached the summit.

Ian Tyson is another great writer. His lines quoted above are just about perfect:

"And the hookers standing watchfully, waitin by the door" - no attmpt to be "poetic", but with just a few words he puts you right there on the street.

Ian Tyson had the same gift with that song that Kipling had in so many of his poems:

"Oh the young recruits are shaking, and they'll want their beer today
After hanging Danny Deever in the morning."

Thank God for Peter Bellamy. Would we ever have realized what a great songwriter Kipling was without him? I know he was very far from being the first to set Kipling to music, but none of the earlier songs have the same impact as his do. Compare his version of the Road to Mandalay to the old favourite, for example.

Here are some trad lyrics that do it for me, from Sam Hall. I've never heard anybody sing them except me:

I have candles lily white, hanging high, hanging high
I have candles lily white, hanging high
I have candles lily white, and I stole them all by night
They shall fill my room with light till I die, till I die
They shall fill my room with light till I die.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Terry McDonald
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 03:52 AM

Just what I was thinking. I'm always surprised by the North American view on what constitutes a 'folk song.'

For what it's worth, I'll offer

'Strange news has come to town,
Strange news is carried
Strange news flies up and down
That my love's married.'

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 03:25 AM

Without wanting to stir up YET AGAIN the oldoldoldold question: looking back thru this thread, I can't help thinking it would be nice to get some quotes from actual folk songs cited, as well as all these effusions of enthusiastic & well-meaning singer-songwriters more or less in the idiom [whatever that might subsume].

I'll kick off with that great floater, best poetic summation I know of an urgent journey made in extreme haste; the variations on getting to riverside, lying on belly and swimming, getting to other side, taking to heels and running...

Any more like that?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 03:02 AM

She wears Bougainvillea blossoms
You pluck 'em from her hair and toss them in the tide
Sweep her in your arms and carry her inside
Her sighs catch on your shoulder
Her moonlit eyes grow bold and wiser through her tears
And I say "How could you bear to leave her for a year?"

Thanks Stan.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Zhenya
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 12:58 AM

Where does an old time pilot go
After he's stood his last watch?
Does he fall by the ear of the man who steers
Saying hold her on that notch
There's a gentle sneeze in the river breeze
Saying son I'm goin to bed.
And they light their pipes and go off in the night
Or was that fireflies instead?

Second verse of Old Time River Man (John Hartford)

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,nine_ca
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 11:44 PM

The mate was a man I loved so much, you see
for he save all his pretty words and poetry for me
its "scrub the deck and paint the ship and don't you gimme any lip
, this aint no bloody pleasure trip....

or

And the hookers standing watchfully, waitin by thre door

Stan G Triggs
Ian Tyson

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: meself
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 11:23 PM

He got his mean-streak from the gutter,
He got his kindness from God.

- "Blackpatch", Luara Nyro

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: DonMeixner
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 11:20 PM

King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Kimo

or words to that effect, I don't speak Frentch as well as I'd like.

D

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: DonMeixner
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 11:18 PM

King Kitchie Kitchie kimme kimo

D

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: mousethief
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 11:15 PM

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you've lived too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself -- pacing the cage

--Bruce Cockburn

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Midchuck
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 09:48 PM

The old ways had their hardships, and the winters were too lonely;
But they knew where they belonged, in a world they could understand.
'Till the cities closed in on us, and our one choice grew too simple:
You go broke from paying taxes, or get rich from selling land.

Dick McCormack

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: deepdoc1
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 08:31 PM

Eric Bogle, If Wishes Were Fishes

And I wish I was young again my song still to be sung again
The sweet tunes of my life have gone sour and off key
Writin' my tired old rhymes tryin to turn back time
If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets in the sea
==========================
Patty Griffin, Top od the World (Folk? Debatable, but memorable)


    There's a whole lot of singin's never gonna be heard
    Disppearing every day without so much as a word somehow
    I think I broke the wings off that little songbird
    She's never gonna fly to the top of the world now
    To the top of the world

I wished I'd of known you
Wished I had shown you
All of the things I
Was on the inside
==========================
Tom Waits, San Diego Serenade, among others"

Never saw the East coast until I moved to the West
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
And I never saw your heart till someone tried to steal it away
Never saw your tears till they rolled down your face
==========================
Iris Dement. No Time To Cry

I've got no time to look back, I've got no time to see
The pieces of my heart that have been ripped away from me
========

I'm done. There's just too many. Every one of these , and more every day, are at the top of my 'smack-in-the-head' category.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Celtaddict
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 08:01 PM

The ways of man are passing strange:
He buys his freedom and he counts his change,
Then he lets the wind his days arrange
And he calls the tide his master.

Gordon Bok, The Ways of Man

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Stringsinger
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 07:44 PM

Stan Rogers was great!

I like a song that boils it down like:
"Take a trip with me in nineteen thirteen
to Calumet Michigan in the copper country....."
or
"In the shadow of the steeple, I saw my people......."

"Do you see yon crow that flies so high? T'will surely turn to white,
If I am false to the girl I love, bright morning turn to night......"

"Tell you more lies than cross-ties on a railroad or stars in the skies...."

"Longest train i ever did see was on the Georgia line.
Engine come in at six o'clock and the caboose came in at nine."
(Them trains are really long)

"You're an eyeless, boneless chickenless egg
and you'll have to stand by a bowl and beg.............."

"Some'll rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen...."

"It's cloudy in the West and it's lookin' like rain
and my damned old slicker's in the wagon again....."

The world of folk is full of profound stuff.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: deepdoc1
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 07:16 PM

Holy crap! Where to start? That's like asking which breath I liked best out of a lifetime of breathing. Like you said, a main strength of this music is the story, or the glimpse into a soul (of course a good tune doesn't hurt). (I also like the Stan Rogers you gave.)Well, here's one or two:

Gordon Bok, Old Fat Boat

Well, mercy, mercy, I do declare,
If half the fun of going is getting there,
Mercy, Percy, you better start rowing,
'Cause the other half of getting there is going.

Greg Brown, impossible to limit to just a few:

Early:

Oooo-ee, ain't the mornin' light pretty,
When the dew is still heavy, so bright and early.
My home on the range; it's a one-horse town,
And it's alright with me.

Guy Clark, (also impossible to narrow too much) Step Inside This House:


Step inside this house girl
I'll sing for you a song
I'll tell you 'bout just where I've been
It shouldn't take too long
I'll show you all the things that I own
My treasures you might say
Couldn't be more than ten dollars worth
They brighten up my day

Annette Bjergfeldt, Boo Hewerdine,
Footsteps Fall
Sung by Maura O'Connell:

And the loneliest sound of all
Is the sound of love through a stranger's wall
But when their laughter fades
And there are no more words
The silence breaks me most of all

The list goes on. My clicker is tired now.

JimB

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: oldhippie
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 07:12 PM

"You came when you were needed
I could not ask for more
Than to turn and find you walking
Through the kitchen door."

The Trumpet Vine - Kate Wolf

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: JHW
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 06:42 PM

The terraced streets were my Grand Canyons
The shipyard cranes were my redwood trees
Those steel yard tips were my mountain ranges
And the brickyard ponds were my Seven Seas

My Eldorado - Graeme Miles

Subject: Great folk song lyrics
From: CET
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 06:28 PM

I was listening to The Field Behind the Plow, by Stan Rogers, this morning, which got me thinking to great lyrics I have heard in folk music - the kind that take your breath away, or that burrow their way so deeply into your mind that you can't get rid of them. I think this is really why I prefer folk music to pop or jazz. There are thousands of songs like that in folk music, not so many in other forms of popular music. Even great pop songwriters, like Lennon and Macartney, rarely rise above being clever.

So here is my contribution to start off this thread, from Field Behind the Plow:

Emmett Pierce, the other day, took a heart attack and died at forty-two
You could see it coming on, 'cause he worked as hard as you.

I'll add others if this thread goes anywhere.

What lyrics really pack a punch for you?