Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD

Subject: RE: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 09 Oct 04 - 10:31 AM

Anybody have the lyrics to 'Rummy Crocodile' please?

Regards, John

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Check Wonderful Crocodile, John.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 02 Feb 00 - 10:08 AM

Neglected to mention:

Ballads Thrice Twisted sells for $15 (US).

Subject: RE: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: GUEST,Nancy-Jean
Date: 27 Jan 00 - 01:55 PM

By the way, if any of you want to write Margaret, here is the correct spelling of her email. I wrote it wrong in a previous thread entry. My fingers was froze.

[e-mail]

Everything Dick said is true! Nancy-Jean

Subject: RE: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 Jan 00 - 01:16 PM

Ballads Thrice Twisted is now available through Camsco. If you've encountered, Margaret MacArthur, all that's needed to be said is that this is a very good MacArthur recording. Which is very good, indeed.

If you haven't encountered her, and you like ballads, this is a treasure. 17 ballads, 16 of them traditional. Beautifully sung, with (thank God!) tasteful and appropriate accompaniments and arrangements.

If you don't know Margaret, and you're not familiar with ballads, it's a good place to start enjoying a form which many consider the foundation of English-language folk music.

Subject: RE: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: Nancy-Jean
Date: 15 Jan 00 - 10:33 AM

To obtain this CD, with "The Rummy Crocodile" and more, contact: Margaret MacArthur at Box 15 MacArthur Road, Marlboro, VT 05344. Her email is: [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: Art Thieme
Date: 14 Jan 00 - 09:44 AM

Nancy Jean,

In another thread I've already expounded on this CD's beauty, content and even where to get it. Margaret is a gem and this new ballad CD (with the family on a few tracks) is the Hope Diamond of her body of work.

NJ---See ya in Cleveland next month.

Art Thieme

Subject: Margaret MacArthur's new and finest CD
From: Nancy-Jean
Date: 13 Jan 00 - 09:26 PM

In the booklet accompanying this CD, entitled Ballads Thrice Twisted, Margaret says," I am a ballad singer. As a child I wished that the nursery rhymes my mother sang were longer. As a little girl, I heard cowboy songs in Missouri; as a grown woman, ancient ballads in Vermont. I moved to these Green Mountains in 1948....Here I learned old ballads, sang them with my kids and husband and friends...."

Of the 17 traditional ballads, thirteen come from my grandmother's collection. Margaret writes of Helen Hartness Flanders, "She encouraged me as a young singer, and at her passing many of her tapes and ducuments were placed in my keeping." In this CD, which was made possible by a donation from her friend Gordon Bok, Margaret sets about to "...salute and credit all of the New England Singers who preserved these songs."

I won't tell you the titles of the ballads but I will let Margaret's words whet your interest. "The lovers, adventurers, villains and magical women of these songs travel by foot or on fancy steed along streets and highways, or journey along streams and along the high seas. The powerful are frequently undone; the underdog meets challenges with spit-in-your-eye defiance. Over and over we hear the numbers 3 and 7, of disguise by changing clothing, of milk-white steeds, of gold and silver, of ladies gay and their lords, and of kings of England. Listen to the dialogue; follow these old stories set to music; let them conjure what they will in your imagination."

This collection of ballads sung by Margaret and sometimes accompanied by her homegrown "family chorus", is a VERY special recording. "King John and the Bishop" might just drink to that!!!!