The first song you performed in public?

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 02:20 PM

"On Top of Old Smokey" when I was 4 or 5. It was at some kind of costume party because I remember wearing my cowboy outfit and firing cap guns at the end, for punctuation.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: CupOfTea
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 01:51 PM

Spent my last two years of high school dating guys who were great guitar players, singing pop folk folk/rock along with their playing.

By senior year I was doing a serious amount of "singing in the car" time with the then sweetie, Mark, and concentrating on Peter Paul & Mary songs. Out of this experience came a request to sing "The Wedding Song" at the wedding of some friends of his. He played guitar, we both sang & that first try at singing in public went well enough, but the stress/stagefright/terror to mess up someone's wedding was strong enough that I didn't do anything that could be construed as performing in public for decades.

Joanne in Cleveland who still struggles with stage fright sweats

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 09:27 AM

I think it was "Walkabout with my Pen" at The Bridge Folk Club, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2004.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Charmion
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 09:21 AM

"Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note unto the sweet bird's throat?"

If I remember correctly, I was five or six years old and the occasion was a session of the Ottawa Music Festival, which puts the date in the spring of 1960 or 1961.

The Festival was a local music competition that formed the learning experience of many a budding classical artist -- most notably the pianist Angela Hewitt, who swept the field in the keyboard classes throughout her youth.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: GUEST,Frug
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 08:57 AM

The Wind that Shakes the Barley............at the age of 7 at my primary school . We were being visited by a famous Irish singer of the day and he had requested to hear some pupil performances. As my mother had a reputation and history as a singer I was one of those selected and told to go home, get a song , rehearse and be ready next day. My mother taught me the air and rehearsed me hard and sent me in with the crib sheet. I still remember the feeling to this day. I finished the song with my face feeling like it was on fire, shaking like a leaf and with very wet trousers..........the singer (can't recall the name) was generous in his comments and then sang Kevin Barry...........Ah The experiences you could have with an Irish Catholic upbringing!!

Frank

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 07:33 AM

"Treadmill song" learned from Steeleye Span was my first attempt in December 1982, Bridgwater Folk Club. I had made a concious decision to turn myself into an extrovert and this was my first try at standing up at the front.
There was a stool there to sit on if you wanted. I stood behind it so that my trembling knees would not be visible!
I had also started on the Anglo so my other item was a set of three tunes, starting withthte inevitable "Winster Gallop".
It went OK and I performed a different song each week there for more than a year without repetition. Wish I could learn things that fast nowadays!

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: autoharpbob
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 07:27 AM

"Early one Morning" at my first music lesson at secondary school. The teacher asked if anyone knew it, then proceeded to play all twiddly to try to put me off, and I stuck with it! To a paying audience, the first song was "Let it Be" in the Lympstone Sailing Club bar, playing with the microphone of my reel to reel taped to my guitar as a pickup, when I was 14.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 18 Jan 11 - 06:38 AM

Apart from family sing songs and school singing (I have a photo of self aged three singing in a kindergarten concert) I reckon 'Hang Down your Head Tom Dooley' must have been my first solo concert piece. I'd have been about five or six years old some time around 1956 in our gangs 'skiffle group'.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bob Landry
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 11:27 PM

I took piano lessons during the 50s. Two tunes I remember doing in my village's music festivals are Glowworm and Darktown Strutters' Ball. Picked up the guitar in the late 60s and tagged along to a coffee house with a couple of more experienced buddies. The only song I remember we did that night is Bottle of wine (fruit of the vine.) My first public solo took place at a local bar in the early 90s when the resident musician got pissed out of his mind and asked anybody who wanted to take over to step up. I offered Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode" to an audience of about a dozen more or less inebriated patrons, then returned to my beer.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Janie
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 10:16 PM

First time I ever performed on stage other than with a choir, or sang through a mic was a duet with Allan C., at my first Getaway. We sang "Sometime Lovin'." Allan played guitar and as I recall (tell if I'm wrong, Allan), Jed Marum also added guitar. I think that would have been 2002.

The Getaway is the only place I ever sing publicly, or through a mic.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Janie
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 10:08 PM

Age 5, preserved for all posterity on 16mm home film. The Wilglow Junior Theater presents their first annual Christmas program -the nativity scene. I was Mary and sang "Away in a Manger." (Wilglow for the cast, made up of the Williams kids and the Uglow kids.)

Couldn't hit the the high notes, even then.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: mousethief
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 06:11 PM

cringes

One Tin Soldier.

Hey, okay, I was very young and idealistic and only knew four chords!

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: IvanB
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 06:08 PM

"Accentuate the Positive" at a family reunion when I was five. I think I learned it from the Andrews Sisters' version, but not sure. Several entertainers recorded it about the same time. When I was about 11, someone at a family reunion brought up my earlier performance and the fact that I had all the words and their pronunciations down pat. When told of this, I could remember the first two and fourth lines of the first verse and nothing else. Given the number of verses, I doubt I knew it all at the age of five, so I suspect family member who lauded my feat six years later was suffering a memory lapse, too.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: kendall
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 04:34 PM

Actually, the first time I sang in public was at a school play when I was in Kindergarten. I still remember it:

I love to see the traffic cop
I love to see him stand
And show the people where to go
By moving just his hand.

I remember thinking, What is a traffic cop? We lived so far back in the woods we had to come in to hunt.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 02:03 PM

"The Wearing of the Green", before the rest of the class at school, as we all auditioned for the Christmas Concert, agaed seven or eight. Maybe not the best choice.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 01:49 PM

PS: Que Sera Sera was another of my living-room hits as a child.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 01:48 PM

Frank Sinatra's Learnin' The Blues, to an admiring circle of my parents' friends in our living room, while my mother played piano for me. I even remember being cool and snapping my fingers to the beat. (I was pretty young.)

Oh, you mean the first public performance? That would be something or other from Judy Collins, in a Boston/Cambridge coffeehouse. I'd sung privately to my guitar all through high school but was too shy to step out into any limelight until college (with some kind encouragement by friends). My mum had always been very encouraging too - but, at that age, when does what your mother say ever convince you?

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 01:17 PM

Just as the Tide Was a Flowing    Trad. (About 1980 I think)

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: GUEST,Doug Saum
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 01:09 PM

My four piece band did Van Morrison's "Gloria" at a community talent show in 1965 when I was 15. DS

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: EllenV
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 10:19 AM

"Chester" (an American Rev. War tune), at age 12.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 09:58 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnVuB4I-kKI
at Farningham folk club

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 09:32 AM

The Lisburn Lass in a pub in Listowel, Co. Kerry. Nobody threw anything. Been singing ever since. Still waiting for someone to throw something.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 09:13 AM

So I am told it was 'My old man's a dustman' age 6 at a primary school concert, which aparrently caused great hilarity, as my late father was in fact a Church of England priest. I'm relying on someone else's memory here. first song I remember myself (and definately the first time my guitar came out in public, was 'Lord of the Dance' aged 16, to an audience of about 500! never looked back since!

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: jennyr
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 08:29 AM

First solo performance? 'We Three Kings', st Sunday School, when I was about 9. I did the Frankinsense verse, I think.

As an adult, it was 'Ellen Vannin'.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 08:26 AM

Tom Paxtons ' The Ballad Of Spiro Agnew '

I still get requests for it, but it's dated now.

Dave H

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: GUEST,Phil Cooper on Susan's laptop
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 08:23 AM

Tom Paxton's song "General Custer" at an open mic when I was 17.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Alan Day
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 08:20 AM

We're bound for South Australia
The first sentence only as I thought everyone would sing it.Performed at The Black Horse Sing Around at Nuthurst Sussex.
Al

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: acegardener
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 08:07 AM

Hanging Johnny, in el castrato, didn't realise I had to pitch it. Finished it though. 40 years later and I still sing it, nice loose undercrackers and a lower key.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 08:00 AM

yes indeed I can. It was a song I learned from Iam cambell Folk Group in Birmingham, Rocorded on their debut album, featuring the late John Dunkerly on banjo and Vocals and Dave Swarbrick on fiddle. It was called The Dtovers Dream, I performed it Acapella and still do as I've never found chords for, can anyone help there? It begins

I was travelin with me sheep
Me mates all fast asleep
No moon or stars were shining in the sky
I was dozin I suppose, and me eyes had hardly clothes
When a very strange procession passed me by

Always gets a good reception. I remember I was terrified by the way! ;)

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: GUEST,vectis
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 07:46 AM

Good King Arthur's Day when I was 19 and terrified of having to face a class of 13 year olds on the Monday, so I sung it at my local folk club on the preceding Friday. The next week I had learned another song and it just snowballed from there.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Allan C.
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 06:05 AM

I don't know if one could count the talent show I produced in my parent's basement before a handful of neighbor kids. For that I lip-synced Bing Crosby's rendition of "Deep Purple". My public debut was delayed for some years due to losing the class competition to Stuart Brown for the "O Holy Night" solo in fifth grade. Three years later I had taught what little I knew then of guitar playing to my buddy, Keith Behner, with whom I performed "Red River Valley" and a Kingston Trio song called, "South Wind". This was at a brief intermission arranged for us by the Sisters during an eighth grade dance at Keith's school.

I really can't recall my first solo performance. I nearly always performed in a duo or trio. If I had to guess it would have to be when I performed at a church coffeehouse in Annandale, Virginia during the winter or early spring of 1966. A local artist commemorated my appearance with a lovely watercolor, which I still have, of me on the stage there.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 06:02 AM

'Hearts of Oak' with my primary school class at Beaconthorpe Church and later 'C'mon Everybody' at St. Peter's Church Youth Club, Cleethorpes.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 05:46 AM

'Matchbox Blues' - learned off Hamish Imlach. I was twenty six, and I was so nervous my fingers turned to jelly. the Station Hotel, Sutton Coldfield in front of about six people. It was a singers night and they made me continue til I'd completed four songs. After that there was no stopping me. I've had to be strangled to get me offstage ever since.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 05:32 AM

The Port of Amsterdam         This was not the first live recording but it is the first song I ever did in public. This particular recording was to cassette tape in the eighties... hence the poor quality.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Kit Griffiths
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 05:31 AM

Summer 1966, St John's Church Hall, Sevenoaks -my friend George Bowser (now half of Bowser and Blue)and I (both aged 17)did three songs: "Greenback Dollar", "Rain" and "Hold Tight" (the last one purely because I had been given a fuzz-box for my birthday). "Greenback Dollar" was first. There were two nuns in the front row. We sang the "censored" chorus ("And I don't give a (pause) about a Greenback Dollar"), and each time the nuns winced. For the last (repeat) chorus, we sang "...don't give a damn...". The nuns crossed themselves, and walked out.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Brakn
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 04:42 AM

I think it was either "The Letter" or "Morning Dew" - New Years Eve (perhaps) Chippenham Town Hall 1969.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 03:58 AM

"The Woad Song" or "Woad Ode", unaccompanied, aged 13 at a Scout Gang Show, dressed as an Ancient Briton. Around 1968.

Traumatised me so much that I didn't perform in public again until 2009, a gap of 41 years!!!

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 03:52 AM

In the school choir - Bach Cantata No 4. Since getting into folk music, after much coercion, Hanging Johnny.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 02:41 AM

short of random solos at church and singing with my daughters where ever we happened to be, beach, Disneyworld, WalMart, etc. I sang first time voluntarily alone at a sing around at Rochester Sweeps 2008. The song was Graham and Eileen Pratt's The Minstrel. Tone Deaf Leopard were there. It has been a steamroll downhill since that first very nervous performance.

You can't shut me up.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: alanabit
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 12:44 AM

I was six or seven when I made an inauspicious debut singing "When You Come To The End Of A Lollipop" at a school concert. It had been a recent hit for Max Bygraves. Somebody had the idea that I should hold a prop of a giant lollipop while I was singing.
The last time I heard of Max Bygraves, he had just recorded a song, which extolled the virtues of Lady Thatcher. It was so dire, that it simultaneously torpedoed any chances of a comeback for either of them - a gratifying outcome!

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jan 11 - 12:36 AM

Œdipal confession ~~ my mother blighted my very young [3 y-o] life by insisting that I stand up and sing On The Good Ship Lollipop at children's parties. Only trouble, as she would never get into her darling head, was that I didn't know the tune and I didn't know the words.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Janie
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 11:13 PM

Solo, with a group, or with a choir?

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 10:36 PM

I had played on stage a number of times as a member of a band but the first time I sang onstage was maybe five years ago, leading 'Dear Brother (Mama left us this morning)', a Hank Williams song. I had agreed to do it but I was so nervous I had actually to go into meditation sitting while waiting just a few seats from the stage.

I am grateful that most people are not like me. I hate - I despise performing on stage. It is only recently - in the last 10 years, maybe- that I ever sang when there were more than five or so people around.

I do recognize it as an ego thing. Which is mortifying.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 10:25 PM

Shoot... I thought it was gonna be some "badly recorded" sandra... BTW, some of the best performances are "badly recorded"... Blind Lemon Jefferson being as prime example...

B~

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 10:24 PM

well...first time in front of a real 'audience' as opposed to a sing in a living room was "Banks of the Ohio" (on autoharp).... It didn't go real well because there were no monitors for the sound system, and I had NO experience with mics, and it took my voice and threw it 'out there' and I couldn't tell what I was doing. I didn't try again for several years.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 10:20 PM

I normally sing along with choruses cos I lose the tune on my own, even if I'm at home alone singing something I've listened to/sang along with for decades. I need to sing with other people or a recording to keep in tune.

2 years ago at a Festival I was sitting in with my friends at a workshop session here I normally hand out the leaflets about the club & sing along with everyone. I was next in the circle & was asked to sing by the leader & as I had friends on each side who were good singers, & I'd been singing one of the songs in the book since childhood, I took a deep breath & said I'd sing if they sang with me. So we did.

The leader was a former leader who was visiting & didn't know I'm not a member of the group!

'My Old Black Billy' words by Edward Harrington, music by Roy Jefferies

sandra

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 09:04 PM

Can's swear to it but I think it was "Mr. Tamborine Man"...

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 08:55 PM

I had been thumping around on my recently purchased $9.95 plywood guitar for a couple of months, trying to work out an accompaniment for "Greensleeves" from Richard Dyer-Bennet's folio of 20 songs, and learning a couple of songs from a combination of Burl Ives' paperback song book and a couple of his records, and so far, I had taken about a month's guitar lessons from Walt Robertson, when a "hootenanny" was declared for one Saturday night at The Chalet restaurant. At the time, a "hootenanny" was an open party, bring your guitar, banjo, Swiss bells, whatever, and we'll sing, individually and all together, for as long as we hold out or until the cops come. This was sometime in early 1953.

I knew one song that I felt sure of. "The Fox," learned from a Burl Ives record. I was waiting my opportunity to jump in when someone shouted out, "Hey, Walt, sing 'The Fox!'" Walt did. I had not yet learned the chords for the key he played it in. D. I did it in C. So I couldn't even play along.

A few months later, there was a big city-wide hobby fair in Seattle, and the newly organized Pacific Northwest Folklore Society was there. We were asked to do something on the performance stage. Walt sang "John Henry" accompanying himself on his monster 12-string, Bob Nelson (16 years old – had just met him the day before) sang "Casey Jones," and I sang "High Barbaree."

As far as I can remember, that was the first time I sang in front of an audience larger than a couple dozen people.

Some ten years later, summer of 1963, in front of the Horiuchi mural at the Seattle Center, I sang to an outdoor crowd estimated at 6,000 people. I had a somewhat pricier Fernandez flamenco guitar by then (hand-made in Madrid), and quite a bit more performing experience.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: terrier
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 08:38 PM

Apart from solo spots at school carol concerts at around 7 years of age, as far as I can remember the first song I sang in public as a 'grown up' was at the Liverpool trad gathering. It was probably 'Polly Oliver'.

Subject: RE: The first song you performed in public?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 08:23 PM

'Coal Owner and Pitmans Wife' at an EFDSS weekend when I was still playing more Jazz Reeds than doing Folk !