Tune Req: Geordie Black

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Geordie Black
From: GUEST,#
Date: 04 Aug 21 - 12:49 PM

I don't know that it will help, but try also with the spelling Geordy Black.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Geordie Black
From: Colin Randall
Date: 04 Aug 21 - 06:19 AM

Thanks for the feedback, all, and apologies to Dave Sutherland for misinterpreting his post. Bill Taylor, my friend and the author of the piece in question, linked to the Campbell, Benny Graham/Bob Fox and one or two other versions but could not locate a clip for the High Level Ranters performing it. I drew a similar blank the looking for the Elliotts.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Geordie Black
From: Reinhard
Date: 04 Aug 21 - 12:46 AM

The notes on Bob Fox and Benny Graham's album "How Are You Off for Coals?" say "The tune was later added by Johnny Handle and makes a superb combination". Johnny Handle recorded Geordie Black with the High Level Ranters in 1970 and 1987.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Geordie Black
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Aug 21 - 09:51 PM

Here's the recording of "Geordie Black" by Bob Fox and Benny Graham - sounds like a music hall melody to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otUM_9JNI60. This is the melody from Lloyd's Come All Ye Bold Miners, which Lloyd transcribed from the singing of Peter Elliott, Birtley, Co. Durham (31 July 1963). The other thread has an ABC and MIDI of the tune from Lloyd/Elliott.

Here is the recording from the Ian Campbell Folk Group, more of a pensive folk tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfLZl4-_WV4

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Geordie Black
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 03 Aug 21 - 04:50 PM

No the Elliott's tune is far different from the one that the Campbells used.The Former's tune is much more in the Music Hall vein.
I'm away at present but once home I'll try to find an example of the tune.

Subject: Tune Req: Geordie Black
From: Colin Randall
Date: 03 Aug 21 - 10:20 AM

A friend has written a piece for my site
Salut! Live about the song Geordie Black, composed by a Tyneside singer/songwriter/poet, Rowland “Rowley” Harrison, around 1870. He cannot find a tune for it other than the one Dave Swarbrick and Ian Campbell came up with for a 1965 album after
they too, searched in vain for the original melody. A reader, Dave Sutherland, says he uses one he learnt from the work of the Elliotts of Birtley but assume it is the same as that of the Ian Campbell Folk group and later versions. It seems odd that the original should have vanished altogether. Does anyone in the often scholarly Mudcat family have any light to shed?