Fruit harvest songs. Please?

Subject: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Lizzo
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 03:24 PM

I'm asking for a friend who is too embarrassed to ask on his own account.

[Many song titles in this thread have been converted to links by a Mudelf.]

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Stewart
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 03:35 PM

Apple Pickers Reel – Larry Hanks

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 03:37 PM

Mango Time by Tony Bird.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 03:38 PM

I've heard a good version of that sung by Michael Cooney.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 03:45 PM

Jimmy Rodgers wonderful Peach Picking Time in Georgia [Lyrics]

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 04:00 PM

Berry Fields o Blair [Lyrics in this thread]

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: MudGuard
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 04:34 PM

I immediately thought of "Deportees" by the Dubliners (although it is not exactly about the harvest ...)

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 04:47 PM

Pastures of Plenty - Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city, you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 05:06 PM

After apple picking by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.

Subject: Lyr Add: GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN (excerpt)
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 05:20 PM

Golden Apples of the Sun

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Sung by Judy Collins; lyrics by William Butler Yeats from the poem The Song of Wandering Aengus, music by Travis Edmonson

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: peteglasgow
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 05:38 PM

dream up, dream up.. let me fill your cup with the promise of a man ["Harvest" by Neil Young]

Subject: Lyr Add: CHERRY RIPE (Herrick/Horn)
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 06:50 PM

Cherry Ripe - words by Robert Herrick (1591–1674) and music by Charles Edward Horn (1786–1849)

If so be you ask me where
They do grow, I answer there
Where my Julia's lips do smile,
There's the land or Cherry Isle.

(Chorus) Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, ripe I cry,
Full and fair ones, come and buy.
Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, ripe I cry,
Full and fair ones, come and buy

Where my Julia's lips do smile,
There's the land or Cherry Isle,
There plantations fully show
All the year where cherries grow.

(Chorus)

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Lizzo
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 07:15 PM

Thanks for the harvest so far. Will alert requesting person to this thread. Most of them might not suit! I have an idea that something in the space between Linden Lea, and Drink Up Thy Zider (?) is more the sort of thing. However. We shall see.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 07:51 PM

I really like the late Peter Krug's Migrant song.

I don't know how it is in other places, but fruit picking and the immigration issue are one of the most important issues here in California. I can't imagine how fruit could be harvested here without immigrant workers.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 10:29 PM

Jenny picking berries on the hill

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 20 Sep 18 - 10:55 PM

Here's a few more
I LOVE Blackberry Time by Jud Caswell


(In) Berry Picking Time- Great Big Sea
Pickin' Wild Mountain Berries-Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn
Where We Went Picking Berries-Frank Howard 1823
With Kitty Picking Berries -Fred White 1873

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 04:15 AM

Not strictly fruit but
Hopping Down in Kent

[Link fixed by a Mudelf.]

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 05:15 AM

Perhaps a popular wassail would fit the bill.

The Gloucestershire Wassail

Wassail, wassail all over the town!
Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown,
Our bowl, it is made of the good maple tree;
From the wassailing bowl we'll drink unto thee.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 05:38 AM

In Kent we have the marvelous Bob Kenwood who has written songs about apples. His songs are creeping into the repertoire of a lot of local singers.
FloraG

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: oldhippie
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 11:58 AM

"John's Garden" by Peter Mayer, good for Halloween.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 12:31 PM

Goodbye Blackberry Way
Banana Boat Song
I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

Or, my favourite

The Salford Wassail

Wassail, Wassail all over the place
Give us some money or we'll smash your face
Our clubs they are made from the good maple tree
Give us your dosh or we'll use 'em on thee

Different type of tradition in Salford :-)

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Sep 18 - 12:58 PM

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 04:43 AM

A song from Sylvia Watts about the results (fruits?) of a fruit harvest.

Cider for Me

(The Blue clicky doesn't seem to be working on my computer so, if it doesn't work on yours, here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC4ZPZXK1JQ&feature=youtu.be

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 03:56 PM

Jenny Pluck Pears is a Playford dance from the 1650s, and a lot of the tunes / titles come from the songs, but I can't find any lyrics online

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 05:08 PM

fruit of the vine, tom paxton

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Tangledwood
Date: 22 Sep 18 - 07:03 PM

The Peach Picker's Song - John Dengate.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 23 Sep 18 - 09:57 AM

Strawberry Fields Forever, The Ould Orange Fruit, sorry, I’ll get my coat...

I don’t think Jenny Pluck Pears actually refers to fruit, but is a euphemism, but there is another Playford Tune called Oranges and Lemons isn’t there? Plus an old song called the Lemon Tree and I Gave My Love a Cherry, which surely must be oblique as well.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 23 Sep 18 - 10:41 PM

Aengus Finnan, Apple Blossom Tyme

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 24 Sep 18 - 02:52 AM

There are some easy hopping songs - if you regard hops as a fruit.
FloraG.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Acorn4
Date: 24 Sep 18 - 03:15 AM

"One More Dollar" - Gillian Welch.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 24 Sep 18 - 04:02 AM

The Nutting Girl/A-nutting we will go

Now it's of this brisk young damsel, was nutting in the wood,
His voice was so melodious, it charmed her as she stood.
She could no longer stay and what few nuts she had, poor girl,
She threw them all away.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Sep 18 - 04:10 AM

technically nuts and hops are not fruit , i had the same thoughts then checked on computer and decided not to mention them

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 24 Sep 18 - 06:56 AM

I’m guessing we have to pension off the Watercress Girl on the same premise.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 24 Sep 18 - 01:13 PM

The common terms for seeds and fruit often do not correspond to the botanical classifications. But the Nutting Girl was probably collecting hazelnuts, cultivated as filberts and Kentish Cobs. And these do meet the botanical definition of fruit.

From Wikipedia; However, in botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary or carpel that contains seeds, a nut is a type of fruit and not a seed, and a seed is a ripened ovule.

True nuts are produced, for example, by some plant families of the order Fagales;
Family Fagaceae; Beech (Fagus) Chestnut (Castanea) Oak (Quercus) Stone-oak (Lithocarpus) Tanoak (Notholithocarpus)
Family Betulaceae; Hazel, Filbert (Corylus) Hornbeam (Carpinus)

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Sep 18 - 02:23 AM

Some believe the nutting girl was collecting nuts of men, and was then impregnated with a seed, apparently the world went round and round for her

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 25 Sep 18 - 11:56 AM

This is the funniest thing I've ever heard, but WARNING - there is some bad language in it, so don't watch if easily offended.

"Jump The Q" were a punk band from Forfar, in Angus. This is a parody of the Charlie Daniels song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia", where the devil goes to Forfar and gets into a [rasp]berry-picking competition with "Wullie". I'm not sure it will travel well outside Angus or Perthshire, let alone Scotland, but as someone who spent summers picking berries in Blairgowrie, it had me in fits.

A "luggie" is the small bucket you strap round your waist to drop the berries in to.

https://youtu.be/fybwkm7ivQc

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 26 Sep 18 - 07:53 AM

Jerry - Jenny may have been plucking euphemisms, but the thing about songs from that era is that they enjoy double meaning (if it was a song)

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,OldNicKilby
Date: 26 Sep 18 - 07:59 AM

Julie Preen has a lovely song about Autumn Fruits.Try contacting her through Phil Preen at Bang on the Wall Band

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 26 Sep 18 - 08:35 AM

I don’t recall ever hearing any words to Jenny Pluck Pears, but the title could still be obtuse. A band I play in call it Jerry Brought Beers, in honour of me once remembering to bring some bottles to a rehearsal. I laughed until I stopped (which was shortly before I started).

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 27 Sep 18 - 01:03 PM

I also thought of Deportees, but remembered who it was by!

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 27 Sep 18 - 10:48 PM

Here are three more ideas:

1. "The Cherry Tree Carol", Child #54

2. A vaguely remembered parody of Woodie Guthrie's "Union Maid", with the only fragments I remember being these:
   There once was an apple maid
   ...
   The apple maid was wise
   To the ways of Northern Spys
I thought I had seen it in Rise Up Singing, but it's not there.

3. The Bulgarian song "Dilmano Dilbero", about the production of red peppers (botanically a fruit though treated as a vegetable). I was surprised how many versions of this that I don't like are on You Tube. After sampling over a dozen, I decided that this one from the Yale University Slavic Chorus obligatory blue clicky is, to my taste, fairly good and is also decently recorded. My taste, however, was formed listening to the Pennywhistlers do this, and I haven't found their version on-line. The page at another blue clicky gives the following transliteration and translation:
Dilmano dilbero - this is a girl's name and/or a play with the name
kazhi mi kak se sadi pipero. - tell me how the peppers are planted
Da tsafti da varzhe da beresh ka sakash - so that they blossom and give fruit, fruit that you can pick whenever you want
Pomuni go, pobutsni go, pomuni go, pobutsni go - put it in the soil and push a little, put it in the soil and push a little (this is a bit rough translation)
Teta kak se sadi pipero - that is how the pepper is planted

Subject: Lyr Add: CIDER WITH ROSIE (John Tams)
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 28 Sep 18 - 03:23 AM

CIDER WITH ROSIE
John Tams

Remember when summers were long
And the girls used to dance to an old schoolyard song
Remember the glance and the hint of romance
Life was so easily won

Kitty just cries, Lucy tells lies
But Rosie just smiles at the sun

And remember when harvest was done
And the larks tried to burn their wings on the sun
You lay by my side with your face to the sky
First love is never undone

Kitty just cries, Lucy tells lies
But Rosie just smiles at the sun

And remember the edge of the day
When the cider-gold sun bid the stars on their way
Remember the dreams we spun from moonbeams
The promises broken too soon

Kitty just cries, Lucy tells lies
But Rosie just smiles at the sun

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 28 Sep 18 - 08:54 AM

Howard's post reminds me of Ralph McTell's "Peppers and Tomatoes".

And more cider songs:
Dead Dog Scrumpy (in the DT)
Johnny Jump Up
and others on a thread from 2001, "Songs about cider"

Subject: Lyr Add: APPLE PIES (Meryle Korn)
From: GUEST,Bruce Baker
Date: 28 Sep 18 - 12:52 PM

APPLE PIES
Meryle Korn
6 October 1986

The apple crop on my uncle's farm was the best in many a year
He called his kin, said, "Take all you want, just haul 'em out of here!"
So we drove to the farm on a sunny day, picked apples large and small,
Loaded 'em in boxes, filled up the car, we'd never had such a haul!

Cho:

Oh, them pies! Oh, them pies! Apple pies so sweet,
We'll have 'em for the holidays all winter long, they're so good to eat!
Pull 'em from the freezer, pop 'em in the oven, bake 'em till the crust turns brown,
I'll bet we've got more apple pies than anyone else in town!

So we took 'em home and fired up the stove down the basement where we'd can,
And it stayed nice and cool while we cooked all day, though outside was 110!
With apple butter and applesauce, we filled jars large and small,
Filled every quart jar, filled every pint, we still hadn't used them all.

(Cho.)

So we peeled and cored and sliced some more, we thought we'd make some pies,
And we rolled out the dough, put the crusts in the pans, my Grandma, Mom and I;
Filled all the crusts with apples and spice, sugar and butter too,
Put on the top crusts, put 'em in the freezer, I think we made thirty-two!

(Cho.)

Then the fall rains came, school started again in an Oregon Autumn sweet,
And we thought about the holidays coming soon, and the pies that we would eat;
On Thanksgiving Day they sent me down to the freezer down the stairs--
Imagine my shock when I opened it up and just three pies were there!

(Cho.)

Then my Dad walked up with a beet-red face and he said he could explain,
Though he hemmed and hawed and started and stopped, his embarrassment was plain.
Seems he'd sometimes take a midnight snack, a whole pie for himself....
And he'd bake it up and he'd eat it all.....
        Till all of a sudden he stood appalled.....
                When he saw he'd nearly eaten them all, and left the last three on the shelf!

(Cho. 2X)

Tagline:

Well, at least we HAD more apple pies...than anyone else in town!

Subject: Lyr Add: APPLE PICKER'S REEL (Larry Hanks)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 28 Sep 18 - 05:24 PM

This was mentioned by Stewart on 20-Sep-2018. The songwriter sings it a bit differently than the lyrics in the DT. Also, the DT doesn’t make it clear that there is a chorus, and it misses a verse. I have fixed that.


APPLE PICKER'S REEL
Words and music by Larry Hanks
As recorded by Larry Hanks on “Berkeley Farms: Oldtime and Country Style Music of Berkeley” (1972)

CHORUS: Hey, ho, makes you feel so fine
Lookin’ out across the orchard in the bright sunshine.
Hey, ho, makes you feel so free,
Standing in the top of an apple tree.

1. Up in the morning before the sun,
I don't get home until the day is done.
My pick-sack's heavy and my shoulder's sore,
But I'll be back tomorrow to pick some more. CHORUS

2. Start at the bottom and you pick 'em from the ground,
And you pick the tree clean all the way around;
Then you set up your ladder and you climb up high,
And you're lookin’ through the leaves at the clear blue sky. CHORUS

3. Three-legged ladder, it’s as wobbly as hell.
I’m a-reachin’ for an apple—whoop!—almost fell.
I got a twenty-pound sack hanging 'round my neck,
And there's two more apples that I can't quite get. CHORUS

4. Hey, ho, makes you feel so funny
When you’re walkin’ through the town and you got no money.
Hey, ho, makes you feel so free,
Standing in the top of an apple tree.

5. Hey, ho, well, you feel so down,
Picking up windfalls, crawlin’ on the ground.
Hey, ho, makes you feel so free,
Standing in the top of an apple tree.

6. Hey, ho, well, you lose your mind
If you sing this song about a hundred times.
Hey, ho, makes you feel so free,
Standing in the top of an apple tree.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Greg F.
Date: 29 Sep 18 - 01:45 PM

Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) Perhaps one of the greatest fruit harvest songs of all time.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,jkilloran59
Date: 30 Sep 18 - 09:35 PM

The Garden Song
(Inch by Inch, Row by Row...)
John Barleycorn
Bringing In The Sheaves

Jaime

Subject: Lyr Add: THE BERRY FIELDS O BLAIR (Belle Stewart)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 08 Nov 18 - 09:12 PM

Mentioned by a GUEST back on 20-Sep-2018:


THE BERRY FIELDS O BLAIR
As recorded by Belle Stewart on “Voice of the People 20: There Is a Man upon the Farm” (1997)

When berry time comes roond each year, Blair's population's swellin.
There's every kind o picker there and every kind o dwellin.
There's tents and huts and caravans; there's bothies and there’s bivvies,
And shelters made wi tattie-bags and dug-oots made wi divvies.

Noo there's corner-boys fae Glesgae, kettle-boilers fae Lochee,
And miners fae the pits o Fife, mill-workers fae Dundee,
And fisherfowk fae Peterheid and tramps fae everywhere,
Aa lookin for a livin aff the berry fields o Blair.

Noo there's travellers fae the Western Isles, fae Arran, Mull and Skye;
Fae Harris, Lewis and Kyles o Bute; they come their luck tae try.
Fae Inverness and Aberdeen, fae Stornoway and Wick,
Aa flock to Blair at the berry time, the straws and rasps to pick.

Noo there's some wha earn a pound or twa, some cannae earn their keep,
And some wid pick fae morn till nicht, and some wid raither sleep.
There's some wha has tae pick or stairve, and some wha dinnae care.
There's some wha bless and some wha curse the berry fields o Blair.

Noo there's faimilies pickin for one purse, and some wha pick alane.
There's men wha share and share alike wi wives that's no their ane.
There's gladness and there's sadness tae; there's happy herts and sair,
For there's comedy and tragedy played on the fields o Blair.

Ah, but afore I put my pen awa, it's this I would like to say:
You'll traivel far before you'll meet a kinder lot than they,
For I've mixed wi them in field and pub and while I've breath to spare,
I'll bless the hand that led me tae the berry fields o Blair.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Nov 18 - 09:22 PM

There was a funny takeoff on the "Apple Picker's Reel," substituting peaches for apples, on the TV sitcom "Major Dad" starring Gerald McRaney. The wife and daughters wanted to go peach picking and since his team was losing the big game, Dad consented, causing him to miss a phenomenal upset victory.

Subject: Lyr Add: BLACKBERRY TIME (Jud Caswell)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 12:56 AM

Julia L mentioned this back on 20-Sep-2018:


BLACKBERRY TIME
As recorded by Jud Caswell on “Blackberry Time” (2007)

Lately I’ve been chasing after little things that always slip away,
Living in my calendar and living in my car, instead of living in the day;
But a wind blew down from Canada this morning like a warning shot of cold across my bow,
So now I’m out here in my sandals
Getting bloodied by these brambles,
And eating all the berries I’m allowed.

CHORUS: Because it’s blackberry time, blackberry time.
It’s a secret of a season in its prime,
When all the world is full and ripe and quickly going by;
Then it’s blackberry, blackberry, blackberry, blackberry time.

And the air is full of cricket song and hayseed, honeybee and dragonfly.
The last full day of summer baked and cooling on the windowsill smells a lot like apple pie;
And up beneath the popple and the birches at the border where the grass is gone to trees,
I got those stains upon my fingers
And an aftertaste that lingers:
One part sweet, and one part fruit, and two parts seed.

CHORUS: Blackberry time....

And I wish I had a cup to fill to take this harvest home and make it stay,
And I wish I had that recipe to press it into wine and seal the flavor of the day.
Watching from the silver maple’s branches, there’s a catbird sings a hungry kind of song.
He says be thankful for the sweet,
Because you know that it don’t keep;
You just eat what you can eat and then you move along.

CHORUS: When it’s blackberry time....

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 02:44 AM

You put the lime in the coconut, you drink the bowl up…

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 03:29 AM

Surely Deportees is nothing much to do with fruit harvests, but more about immigrant labour and their castigation in society and in the Media in particular. The clue being in the title and the chorus. A message that becomes more relevant day by day around the world.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Thompson
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 03:56 AM

But it's about how the First World has stopped partaking in the harvest, has outsourced it to poor migrants, and then treated those migrants with brutal contempt. So very much apposite to the harvest.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 06:46 AM

All very true, but the fruit harvest is just the context for the real issues about divisions in society and manipulation by the Media.

Now you could use other contexts, such as office cleaning companies, hotel and catering trade, clothing sweat shops, etc. which offer jobs that many consider beneath them and whose workers are treated with contempt for daring to try and make a living that way.

With the Media, we now get stories reported about a dozen unfortunate UK holidaymakers having their vacation plans completed ruined by some pesky natural disaster at their destination, with scant mention of the thousands of local inhabitants that have either died or had their whole lives ruined.

Subject: Lyr Add: IN BERRY PICKIN' TIME (Yellen/Wenrich)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 09:46 AM

Julia L mentioned this song on 20-Sep. The following lyrics are from the sheet music at Baylor University:

(YOU PICKED ME WHEN I PICKED YOU)
IN BERRY PICKIN' TIME
Words by Jack Yellen, music by Percy Wenrich, ©1917.

1. I saw a berry bush as I was coming home tonight,
And somehow it brought back a bygone day
When you and I went berry picking many years ago
Along a country lane so far away.
How well I do remember: that sweet day when we first met
Has left a picture in my heart I never will forget.

CHORUS: We were picking berries at old aunt Mary’s
When I picked a blushing bride.
As we rode home together, I just wondered whether
I could win you forever if I tried;
And at love’s suggestion, I popped the question
And asked you to be mine.
From your kisses I knew: you picked me when I picked you
In berry pickin’ time.

2. How sweet you looked that day, dressed in a simple gingham gown.
To me you were as lovely as a queen.
From underneath your bonnet peeked a pair of golden curls
And the bluest eyes that I had ever seen.
Your lips were red as berries, but they tasted twice as sweet.
It only took one kiss to make me happiness complete.


Recorded by:
Albert Campbell & Henry Burr (1917)
Johnny Barfield (1941)
Roy Ross & His Blue Ridge Mountain Boys (1968)
Great Big Sea on “Great Big Sea” (1993)
Fiftin Market on “Lost at Sea” (2007)
A band organ arrangement appears on two albums: “Jazz Baby: Music of the Roaring 20’s” and
“Orchestrion Jubilee Vol. 3”

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 12:25 PM

There are more verses to Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty:

Pastures of Plenty
Woody Guthrie

It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and westward we rolled
Your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Then up north to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from the ground
Cut the grapes from the vine
To set on your table the light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union we migrants have been
We come with the dust and we're gone with the wind

It's always we've rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if it be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 12:26 PM

Ahhh sorry... just noticed Henry's link. D'oh

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 05:28 PM

No need to apologise, Bonnie! It is a great song, and so relevant today;

'Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free'

I've recently seen an exhibition of photographs Dorothea Lange took of the farm workers and the conditions they endured. The most famous is 'Migrant Mother'.

Shocking and moving at the same time.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 06:05 PM

At the inauguration of Barack Obama, Pete Seeger, his grandson Tao and Bruce Springsteen sang "This land is your land, this land is my land." Everyone present joined in, but it's impossible to imagine Donald Trump doing so.

In fact, Woody Guthrie encountered Donald Trump's father Fred when he signed a lease for one of Fred's apartments in Brooklyn.

Will Kaufman writes, "Guthrie’s two-year tenancy in one of Fred Trump’s buildings and his relationship with the real estate mogul of New York’s outer boroughs produced some of Guthrie’s most bitter writings, which I discovered on a recent trip to the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa."

Old Man Trump

"Woody Guthrie and Old Man Trump" is the title of Will Kaufman's new show.

Subject: Lyr Add: WITH KITTY PICKING BERRIES (Fred White)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 07:52 PM

Another one mentioned by Julia L on 20-Sep; from the sheet music at the Library of Congress:


WITH KITTY PICKING BERRIES
Words and music by Fred White ©1873.

1. The morning sun shone bright and warm
  in golden autumn weather
When, with our baskets on our arms,
  we wandered forth together.
The air was full of music sweet
  of mockingbirds and thrushes.
The dew was glist’ning at our feet
  and on the berry bushes.

CHORUS: Her eyes they were divinely blue,
  her lips like two ripe cherries.
On golden wings the moments flew
  with Kitty picking berries.

2. We sit beneath the chestnut tree
  among the crimson clover.
She said she loved no one but me,
  her darling and her lover.
Then tightly o’er the field she trips,
  her motions like a fairy’s.
I stole the cherries from her lips
  while we were picking berries.

3. Like little mice, her pretty feet
  stole out beneath her kirtle,
Above her curls a chaplet sweet
  of woodbine, rose and myrtle.
The fragrant honeysuckle buds
  were opening sweet and pretty,
But the sweetest flow’r in the woods
  was my own darling Kitty.

Subject: Lyr Add: WHERE WE WENT PICKING BERRIES (F Howard)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 08:23 PM

From the sheet music images at the Hathi Trust:


WHERE WE WENT PICKING BERRIES
Words and music by Frank Howard, ©1868.

1. Tho’ many years have since rolled by,
  Quite well do I remember
The day that Rosa May and I
  Went berrying together.
With voice as gentle as a dove,
  With blushes like ripe cherries,
That day she promised me her love
  As we were picking berries.
Although the drooping bushes hung
  Inviting full and plenty,
When it came time for going home
  Our baskets were quite empty.

CHORUS: As slow the seasons come and go, to me there is no summer,
But oft I hear upon the breeze a sweet and soft-toned murmur.
It is the voice of Rosa May; she’s now with angel fairies.
Up there the promise will be kept she gave while picking berries.

2. When berry season came again,
  To marry we intended.
It came, but brought me grief and pain;
  The dream of joy was ended.
Alone I climb the mountainside
  O’erlooking rill and meadow,
While by my side my promised bride
  Seems flitting like a shadow;
But there she sleeps so sweet and still,
  O’ershaded by wild cherries,
Upon the side of that old hill
  Where we went picking berries.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Cori
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 10:37 PM

When (and if) the rich bastards finally succeed in stopping all migrant labor and killing off all poor people they will wonder where their cheap help went.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Erich
Date: 10 Nov 18 - 02:37 AM

The Harvest Gypsies sung by Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith (written by Boo Hewerdine)

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 11 Nov 18 - 06:11 PM

Johnny Cash's song PICKIN' TIME is actually about picking cotton, but you could easily alter it to make it about any kind of fruit.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Nov 18 - 06:30 PM

No mention of the Banana Boat Song yet?

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 12 Nov 18 - 11:10 AM

Nor, Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with that Newton boy).

Subject: Lyr Add: THE PEACH PICKER'S SONG (John Dengate)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 12 Nov 18 - 03:04 PM

Tangledwood mentioned this earlier. I found this at the website of the Bush Music Club of Australia. The chords are there, too, along with the notated melody line.


THE PEACH PICKER’S SONG
John Dengate [he credits his father Norm for the chorus]

CHORUS: On with your pulling shirts and get the peaches in,
There’s twenty to the half case and forty to the gin.
We’ll take ‘em down to Ermington and stick ‘em on the barge,
Half ripes and mediums and extra bloody large.

1. Well the boat goes down the river and it comes to the quay,
The agents swarm upon it to extricate their fee,
But we don’t get a penny it’s a dirty damn shame,
Just a bill for dumping charges, orcharding’s the game.

2. Down to the timber and harness up old Jack,
We’ll get the ploughing finished while the fruit season’s slack.
It’s only single furrow and I’m telling you the worst,
We’ll descend on Parramatta with a man-sized thirst.

3. We’ve got to beat the codlin moth so get the bag and lime.
The grog in Parramatta will have to bide its time.
We’re trying to scratch a living; we’re trying to make a crust
From a row of mangey fruit trees standing in the dust.

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 13 Nov 18 - 03:52 PM

Katey Morey is a song about picking plums. Ted Ashlaw recorded a version—there was a thread about a CD compilation of Ashlaw’s recordings on November 6, 2018. I always thought the last line should go: “Every time she smiles at me I think about her plumming.”

Subject: RE: Fruit harvest songs. Please?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 14 Nov 18 - 08:03 AM

Un, deux, trois, nous irons au bois

Un, deux, trois
Nous irons au bois
Quatre, cinq, six
Cueillir des cerises
Sept, huit, neuf
Dans un panier neuf
Dix, onze, douze
Elles seront toutes rouges

One, two, three, won't you come with me

One, two, three
Won't you come with me
Four, five, six
Cherries we will pick
Seven, eight, nine
They'll be yours and mine
Ten, eleven, twelve
We'll eat them ourselves