'Traditional' songs that are NOT !

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 09:57 AM

People making up songs locally isn't really "a strange phenomenon". Isn't it what we all do, after all, and what people have always done? The strange thing is that a culture has sprung up in which it is seen as strange.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Ron Davies
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 09:31 AM

My favorite (true) story on this topic is when I was asked in all seriousness at Sidmouth whether it was considered sacrilegious to dance to "Askokan Farewell".

Which, as noted earlier, was written for a dance camp.

It appeared the person was relieved when I gave my permssion to dance to that tune.

But it certainly is a striking example of the power of associating music with events---and possibly of not doing research.

I still suspect that very few do dance to it.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 08:52 AM

If I want to call a song traditional, then I will.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Crane Driver
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 06:54 AM

We recently visited Swansea museum, where there was a special exhibition on the copper trade (the source of Swansea's Victorian prosperity). One of the display boards dealt with the sailors who brought back copper ore from around the world for the smelters. It mentioned the three pubs where sailors had their last drinks ashore (the Cuba Inn, the Mexico Fountain and the Cape Horner) and ended: ...as described in the old shanty 'Who here drinks at the Cuba?'.

I wrote that song in 2004. It's on my CD 'Pennbucky to Llangenny' which was on sale in the Museum's shop. We didn't say anything, as I'd rather it stay there with the wrong attribution than get taken down, but we did laugh. At least I can say now that I'm genuinely a museum exhibit. And I do take it as a compliment - I'd set out to write something that sounded like a real shanty from the period, and it seems I succeeded.

Andrew

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 06:32 AM

It is quite nice when someone praises one of your songs and asks if it is traditional. Kind of suggests they think it was good enough to have lasted. On several occassions I've had people say they thought my song "Grinlae Moor" was trad. Grinlae (or Greenlaw for non locals) Moor lies between Greenalw and Duns in Berwickshire. Here is a vid of the song at our open mic in Kelso. sorry 'bout the percussion. not supposed to be any but someone was trying to join in kind of indiscriminately :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91aDY7OXACY


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Hesk
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 05:13 AM

"Soldier Boy" is tired of others repeating the same old ideas, but I wonder what he thinks is so marvellous about the new ones.
Surely this is just a place to natter about music and song, and there are loads of people who have joined recently, or who can't be bothered to wade through thousands of threads, who would find these repeats interesting.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 03:51 AM

Michael, I am the Anon GUEST (forgot to type my name in the box!) who mentioned Peter Opie. I have known this quote for a very long time. It was either in one of the books, or else something that he said during a talk in London. I remember thinking that it was well worth remembering when I first heard it.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST,Musket sans shame
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 03:50 AM

Here Jim...

If it is sung in a folk club it must be traditional........








Ok. Back to bed now. My work is done.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 03:44 AM

"Surely no song ever starts out as ' traditional"
We discovered a strange phenomenon when we started recording singers here in the West of Ireland in the early 1970s
Along with an extremely rich supply of both native and Anglo Irish songs recognisable as being from the national and international repertoires, we found dozens of anonymous local songs which, judging from their subject matter, must have been made during the lifetimes of the singers, yet in nearly every case we were unable to discover the authors/makers.
It later turned out the there were probably hundreds of them, many having disappeared when the memories of the events faded, though some were written down on scraps of paper or in notebooks - another local practice.
The subjects covered local happenings - fairs, markets etc., political events connected with the War of Independence, The Black and Tan period, local elections - even one about a popular priest who was moved on to another parish. By far to most popular subject was emigration.   
Many of these apparently passed into the local singing tradition, though some only survived on paper.
It seems that, elsewhere in Ireland, wherever there was a healthy song tradition, local song-making thrived - right up to the advent of portable televisions in the mid 1970s the practice of song-making was still happening among the non-literate Irish and Scots Travelling communities, both in Britain and Ireland.
I doubt if the songs being made today will ever become traditional as the mechanics of the tradition - the oral passing on process is long dead and most song makers insist on copyrighting their compositions - though a number of MacColl's 'Travelling People' songs nearly made it and 'Shoals of Herring' still turns up as 'Shores of Erin' and tured up in a book on Sea lore in 1973.
Jim, Carroll

From Folklore and The Sea Horace Beck, Wesleyan University Press 1973

Bonny Shoals of Herrin'19

I left my home on a pleasant day
And to Yarmouth harbor I was farin'
For a cabin boy on a sailing
Just to hunt the bonny shoals of herrin'.

When they make you a fisherman
And you've learned all about the sailin'
Let your education start with navigation
As you hunt the bonny shoals of herrin'.

Oh the work was hard and the hours were long,
And the great men shouted up from bailin'
And I used to sleep standing on my feet
As I dreamed about the shoals of herrin'.

On a stormy sea and a livin' gale
I an' the gear that I was farin'
Sailed ten thousand miles, caught ten thousand fishes
As we hunt the bonny shoals of herrin'.

Night and day you're sailin'
Come winter weather weather, winter gales
Sweating a course, growing old, growing old
As you hunt the bonny shoals of herrin'.


19 Personal collection Collected in Dingle, County Kerry in 1969, this is typical of songs popular among fishing fleets to this day

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 03:38 AM

... and, in the US, I would mention Jean Ritchie; her West Virginia Mine Disaster sounds very traditional.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 03:36 AM

There are a few, of whom Peter Coe is one [others who come to mind being Peter Bellamy, Ewan MacColl, Bob Pegg, 'Fiddlers Green' John Connolly] who had/have that knack of 'making' a song sufficiently in the idiom eventually to pass, maybe.

And what about all of Bert Lloyd's 'reworkings' or 'restorations' or whatever we are to call them, on which we have had more than one thread? Where do they 'fit', exactly?

~M~

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 03:30 AM

Pete Coe's "Joseph Baker" has by all accounts long since 'transitioned' to 'traditional'.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Jun 13 - 02:52 AM

Surely no song ever starts out as ' traditional ' they become traditional over time, as many fairly recently written songs will.

Dave H

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 10:47 PM

My point is that, just as it doesn't in itself make any real difference to me whether I personally know the name of the person who may have made a song, it doesn't make any real difference if no one knows the name, especially if the name is the only thing known. There's an interest arising out of curiosity, but it's not much to do with the quality of the song, which is what matters a lot more.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 10:01 PM

"The fact that no record can be traced of the person who might have made a song is a matter of chance."

Well...sort of. There was a time when hardly anyone thought to write down either who 'composed' a song- if they could write at all - or the words. I suppose it is technically 'chance' that no one knows who created "The False Knight on the Road", but it is a bit different than losing track of the author of a broadside from 1827. And when Bruce Olson was active here, he sometimes DID find the one reference to an author that kept a song from being anon.

I think both our distinctions are relevant.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: John P
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 09:58 PM

To answer the specific question in the OP, some songs that were introduced to me as traditional but weren't are She Moved Through the Fair, Boys of Bedlam and The Queen of Argyll.

I once had a tune I wrote shown to me as a traditional tune. I took it as a compliment, but I also took the royalties.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 08:20 PM

I'm told that THE LAST WHALE HUNT sounds traditional, and that's because I wanted it to. I take it as a compliment.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 08:11 PM

It's probably a great compliment to the author to have a song described as being "traditional" or "in the tradition", but as JC has pointed out, they could also be missing out on their royalties.
A few songs that spring to mind that sound traditional, but are not, are:
"The Earl of March's Daughter" by the late Lionel McLelland, and
"Yellow on the Broom" by Adam MacNaughtan, and
"The Vinney Den" by the late Jim Reid.

And it doesn't just apply to songs: the lovely air "Inisheer" by Thomas Walsh appears as "traditional" on one CD that I know of.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 08:05 PM

There's a big difference between songs that can be traced to an actual author but are 'accepted into the tradition', and totally anonymous old songs.

I think I'd dispute that distinction. The fact that no record can be traced of the person who might have made a song is a matter of chance. Thomas Gray was right to comment on the fact that there are plenty of "mute inglorious Miltons" whose names we will never know.

The more relevant distinction is between songs which have been handed down relatively in one piece, and long forgotten songs which have been unearthed by musical resurrectionists from ancient broadsides and manuscripts and reshaped and relaunched. (And I'm not objecting to the latter practice, I hasten to add.)

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 08:02 PM

According to PRS (the bastards) all songs belong to them and there are no traditional songs.

That stance is of course helped by a general malaise/greed among revival singers of traditional material to go for the money.

Every traditional song sung live is a new arrangement and so has no place in the "trad / arranged" canon so beloved of certain individuals and those bastards at PRS.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 07:22 PM

There's a big difference between songs that can be traced to an actual author but are 'accepted into the tradition', and totally anonymous old songs.
It's quite a feat to come up with a tune, story and phrasing that fools 'most' people, but those whose notion of folk/trad begins with Dylan & Burl Ives sometimes just fall for a basic theme.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 06:58 PM

I must admit I was thinking about song introductions at live events rather thsn bad info on recordings !

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 06:45 PM

My favorite is the story referred in this page about Dave Webber's Hail! Hail! The First of May

Oops - I've been telling that story about Tony Deane's "Following The Old 'Oss"...

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 06:41 PM

And Barbara Berry's setting of an old poem 'I Wandered by a Brookside' was recorded as "Trad" as well .

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Elmore
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 06:35 PM

I'm sure this subject has been done to death, but Archie Fisher's "witch of the Westmorland", and Stan Rogers' "Barrett's Privateers" come to mind.

f

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Joe_F
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 06:24 PM

Confession time: I was shocked, at the age of 20, to discover that "Old Man River" was a show tune.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: treewind
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 05:31 PM

Oops! - cookie reset time. GUEST above was me.
Anahata

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 05:28 PM

My favorite is the story referred in this page about Dave Webber's Hail! Hail! The First of May

Dave has told me that story himself, so it's probably true.
Apparently a woman said something like: "If I were you, young man, I'd leave the local songs for the local people to sing!"

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Kampervan
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 05:13 PM

Well, it all depends on how you def...................................................................................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: nutty
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 04:33 PM

I can't remember the name of the film I watched which was supposedly set in pre-war Ireland and had people singing Fiddlers Green.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Will Fly
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 03:12 PM

Ashokan Farewell, a fiddle tune composed by Jay Unger for the Ken Burns Civil War documentary has often been confused with being a civil war era tune.

The tune was written as a farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps, run by the composer and his wife, at the lakefront campus (near Ashokan Reservoir) of the State University of New York at New Paltz.

It was then later used for the Ken Burns documentary.

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Mark Ross
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 03:05 PM

Utah Phillips was at a coal mining conference. Someone (it may have been Nimrod Workman) got up to sing what they said was an old song THE GREEN ROLLING HILLS OF WEST VIRGINIA, which of course was written by Utah. Archie Green offered to introduce Utah as the author of the piece. Utah said that he was happy to have the song enter tradition if the folk wanted it that way.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: open mike
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 02:48 PM

The song Darcy Farrow , by Steve Gilette and Tom Campbell once won a contest for traditional songs, even though recently composed, to the embarrassment of the judges. Also Ashokan Farewell, a fiddle tune composed by Jay Unger for the Ken Burns Civil War documentary has often been confused with being a civil war era tune.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcy_Farrow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMswQRt8C2A

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 01:51 PM

I know of at least one person who was convinced that "The Bakewell Witches" was traditional.......For all I know there may be more! What's also nice is digging an old text out of an archive somewhere, making a tune for it, singing it around and then, years later, watching the resulting song (same words,same tune) turn up on CDs as 100% 'trad.' Even though I'd obviously appreciate a little credit now and again it's good to clap myself on my shoulder and say "Well done!".

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 01:18 PM

GUEST ~~ Have you a ref as to where Peter Opie 'once said' that? I know his work pretty well and can't place it. I also knew him quite well [interviewed him & Iona for Folk Review, July 1974] & never heard him say it.

Not that in any way disproves his having said or written so; but I should welcome some more precise authentication.

~M~

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 11:06 AM

It's worth knowing about because there are still composers getting ripped off by ignorant or mendacious attributions to Anon (and less often but still too often, the other way round).

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 11:04 AM

LOL... I'll never forget listening to a radio program on public radio & hearing Steve Goodman's City of New Orleans referred to as traditional. Kept control of the truck, but not my irate shouting... :)

Of course, there is a secret delight when a tune or song that hubby or I have written gets the "Where did you get that? Is it traditional?" response. And wouldn't it be just wonderful if it did get preserved in the tradition....

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Soldier boy
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 11:02 AM

Not this old chestnut again surely!

Sorry, I don't want to sound negative or combative, but I would have thought that this particular subject had been flogged to a permanent and timely death by now.

You'll just go round and round in endless arguments and never ever agree.

Oh well here we go again (deep sigh!)

Chris

Subject: RE: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 10:56 AM

The expert on Children's songs and lore, Peter Opie, once said that anything that sounded old, was probably modern, and anything that sounded modern, was probably old.

Subject: Folklore: 'Traditional' songs that are NOT !
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 Jun 13 - 10:50 AM

A question for any 'old' (OR 'New') Folkies - Any songs you first heard introduced as traditional that turned out to be recently written ?

I recall hearing 'Dark as a Dungeon' introduced as "An English Miners song from the early eighteenth century" with NO mention of its actual American contemporary origins .

I know that Keith Marsden himself used to introduce 'Bring us a Barrel' as trad in his early days - Any other examples people can think of ?