Johnny Todd & football

Subject: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 06:53 AM

A query after watching Saturday's BBC football round-up programme Match of the Day, during which "Johnny Todd" was to be heard twice —

— a classic Liverpool song, famously featuring in Fritz Spiegel's signature music for Z-Cars, a classic tv series set in a (fictionalised) Liverpool suburb; and, appropriately, customarily played at the home matches of Everton, a distinguished Liverpool-based football club.

Now, for some reason, a North London club, Watford FC, have also adopted the practice of playing it at their matches.

WHY? In what way whatever, please, is it a suitable match-anthem for Watford?

Much puzzled. Anyone any idea?

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: banjoman
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 07:15 AM

I think its the tune they have nicked. Its a Scottish one called (I think) Coulters Candy. Is one of their directors from north of the border?

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 07:43 AM

From the Liverpool Echo:

Why Z-Cars will make Watford feel right at home in Merseyside

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 07:48 AM

I think Coulter's Candy {"{Allee ballee ballee ballee bee, Sitting on his mammy's knee" &c}, a similar, but by no means identical tune. Play them back-to-back on you·tube and I think you will agree. Don't think any other song I have heard goes to precisely the same tune as Johnny Todd.

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 07:55 AM

Many thanks, Guest Ed. Most informative article on the topic, showing that I am not the first to have raised the query; tho, as the feature less than a year old, it was clearly a bit of a slow-burn matter at that!

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 08:18 AM

Unfortunately the question is being asked a few months too late. Fred would have known all the answers. Presumably one of the Liverpool early crowd wrote Johnny Todd in the 50s, Stan Kelly, one of the Spinners, Jacqui and Bridie? And presumably they set it to a local version of 'Ally bally bee/Coulters Candy'. Curiously it doesn't feature in any of my copious indexes so I'm presuming it hasn't been around that long.

I realise this doesn't answer the question being asked, and that has been answered anyway, but what of the origins?

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Snuffy
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 08:33 AM

Steve, In this thread Masato Sakurai says Kidson considwered it old in 1891!:-

"Johnny Todd" is in Frank Kidson's Traditional Tunes: A Collection of Ballad Airs (1891; reprinted S.R. Publishers, 1970, pp. 103-104; with music).

"JOHNNY TODD is a child's rhyme and game, heard and seen played by Liverpool children. The air is somewhat pleasing, and the words appear old, though some blanks caused by the reciter's memory had to be filled up."--Kidson

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 08:41 AM

Thanks, Snuffy, you're keeping me right as usual. I did have it but didn't think to check my children's song index. I actually have 16 entries for it. There are variants in Gomme and in Greig-Duncan, under a variety of titles. Senility strikes again! Of course many children's songs share the same tunes so it's no surprise this one shares with others.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 09:01 AM

It would appear that the tune is enjoying a revival in the football world as back in the early sixties, around the advent of "Z Cars" several teams ran out (as opposed to the boring "respect" business these days)to this most inspiring piece of music. I even recall my home town's team South Shields taking the field to it's strains back around 1962.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 09:03 AM

You didn't bother to look at my link, did you, Dave?

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 09:27 AM

Steve -- WHAT others in the lists you mention at 0841 share their tune with Johnny Todd? I can't say, as I mention above in reply to the Coulters Candy suggestion, that I can think of any other song to that precise tune, with its very characteristic irregular
slow-down-in-tune·&·rhythm variant in line 3.

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 12:42 PM

Peggy Seeger once said (jokingly) that most folk tunes are related to 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star - I certainly think Johnny Todd is.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 01:36 PM

do you, jim?, they are both in a major key certainly, perhaps you would provide the sheet music to prove your very amusing post,   the first cadence point in johnny todd goes to the dominant chord, in twinkle it goes to the tonic.
you either have a problem with your hearing or you are trying to pull our legs.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 02:30 PM

The tune base Dick - there are of course differences
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 03:16 PM

Mike,
I was just referring to the tune you mentioned basically, though there may be others if we set our minds to it. How about the Norwegian 'Paul's Little Hen'?

and Jim is perfectly correct to point out similarities with the ubiquitous 'Twinkle Twinkle' and all of its relatives. Tunes don't have to be identical to be related. Many tunes have phrases in common which may or may not be coincidental.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: GUEST,Andy Kenna
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 03:44 PM

Don't know of any connection with Watford. Johnny Todd was a version of the Liverpool skipping song Johnny Sailor - I had a version from my grandmother who came down with her family from Glasgow, at the end of the 19c. They lived on Scotland Rd. and she sang this with her mates for skipping. I recorded it at an EFDSS Festival at the Bluecoat Chambers in 1964.
Fritz Spiegel adapted it as the Z cars theme.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 05:29 PM

Ah, thank you, Steve. Paul's Little Hen had not come my way before, but I found it on YouTube and certainly hear a resemblance there.
Can't say I hear much resemblance to Twinkle Twinkle, tho.

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Blimey - Isn't the internet a lovely handy trouble·saving resource, but?! What did we do before!

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Mar 16 - 07:27 PM

what did we do before?,, we went down the pub and talked about mao tse tung the dalai lama, and chinas invasion of tibet, the dalai lamas passivity, how buddhism suits the capitalist establishment because it discourages people from challenging the status quo, how mao murdered more people than stalin, all the things that i did tonight, down the pub. oh yes and donald trump and hilary clinton and other puppets

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Mar 16 - 04:05 AM

Yes. We can still do that too if we like. But we didn't, and still won't, find there a guy who off top of his head can tell us other songs to the same tune as the one we are thinking of. That's what dear old www can do, tho!, once good helper like Steve has pointed us in right direction.

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Mar 16 - 02:13 PM

I must apologise to Jim, he is right and I am wrong, the two[ twinkle and johnny todd] are very similiar.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Mar 16 - 03:30 PM

Both tunes are very basic as are most children's trad tunes and they repeat similar phrases, though not in the same order.

'Gentle Jesus meek and mild/We will rock you' the Czech carol has similar phrases.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 09:44 AM

both tunes are basic?whatever do you mean, johnny todd basic?

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 10:40 AM

Simply, that like many ballad tunes and children's song tunes it has no complicated phrases and unexpected turns, a typical folk song if you like as opposed to a sophisticated art song. It's also pretty repetitive. This is in no way a qualitative assessment. Some of the most basic tunes are indeed some of the most beautiful (IMO)

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 10:53 AM

Don't agree about the 'no complicated phrases and unexpected turns', Steve: as I mentioned above, it has an unexpected slowing down to take in a couple of extra metric feet, with tune varying to carry them, in the 3rd line.

What you'd expect, tout simple, would be "And he left his love behind him";

what you actually get is "And he left his troo·oo ·minimal pause· love behind him"...

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Snuffy
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 11:37 AM

Michael,

Some versions have the unexpected slowing down that you mention, but others use a "regular" tune without the additional bar. I have recordings by The Spinners and by Hughie Jones as well as a version sung by John Millar at Mystic Seaport Festival in 1976 (not to mention the midi file in the digital tradition database).

See also this thread where I mentioned the plurality of tunes

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 11:49 AM

Thank you, Snuffy. To check, I had already played Bob Roberts' rendering on Youtube as likely to be an authoritative version [not of course that this is entirely a viable concept with regard to any traditional artefact]. FWIW I found that he sang the extended 3rd line. I don't think this variant was entirely down to Fritz Spiegl!

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Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Snuffy
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 12:25 PM

MacColl also sang the "extended" version.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 12:53 PM

"MacColl also sang the "extended" version."
An aside
Ewan gave it as an exercise to people who had never sung before and were having trouble learning tunes.
It was a mainstay in the London Singers workshop, got many sluggish engines on the road
Regarding tune bases; when Peggy was putting together 'The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook, she sent us a list of his songs that she was having trouble placing - it was an amazing exercise in understanding them
I listened to him making new tunes one time - he would take one that fitted the shape he had in mind and kick it around and adapt it until he had something that fitted - he seldom used an existing tune.
I was amazed to realise that Tunnel Tigers was based on a version of William Taylor
We have a recording of the 'original' Joy of Living' adapred from a Sicilian folk tune
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 02:01 PM

My father told me that when a theme tune was required for "Softly Softly", a spin off from Z cars, they went back to the same arranger and he just turned the music upside down!
I've never seen the dots but it could well be true.

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 02:34 PM

"I listened to him making new tunes one time - he would take one that fitted the shape he had in mind and kick it around and adapt it until he had something that fitted - he seldom used an existing tune."
    exceptions being, champion at keeping em rolling ,englands motorways., and possibly sweet thames flow softly.
jim, did he ever borrow tunes from classical music?

Subject: RE: Johnny Todd & football
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Mar 16 - 04:52 PM

I listened to him making new tunes one time - he would take one that fitted the shape he had in mind and kick it around and adapt it until he had something that fitted."
Jim, could you clarify, do you mean he wrote the words first, and then adapated it to fit the shape of the words