Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Guest Joan F Date: 18 Aug 22 - 10:17 AM I honestly grew up thinking "galore" was a Yiddish word. It is of course Irish Gaelic. But we (Jews) really needed it, so we took it. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GerryM Date: 15 Aug 22 - 11:16 PM I've now had some correspondence with Peter Viney. He writes, "No idea where I got that from!" Whatever he may have thought when he made that post in 1998, he certainly knows now that Danny Dill didn't write Strets Of Laredo. He says the website where he made the incorrect attribution is "frozen" and regrets that he can't correct it. Hey, we all make mistakes. I used to be certain that "spatula" was Yiddish, and "tiramisu" Japanese or Korean. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Jerome Clark Date: 15 Aug 22 - 10:03 AM Okay. I think it's hilarious that Peter Viney thinks Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo." Some years ago a prominent folk deejay remarked to me, "I didn't know John Stewart wrote 'Jesse James'." He wasn't being sarcastic. Since traditional music is in the public domain, anyone can claim composer credits and attendant royalties for a particular song. Most listeners of any sophistication understand that. (The proper attribution should read, "Trad. Arr.," of course.) I'm always surprised when I come upon someone sufficiently naive to think, say, that Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo." |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GerryM Date: 14 Aug 22 - 06:15 PM *I think it's hilarious that Robbie Robertson thinks Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo."* Jerome, I'm sure Robbie Robertson knows that Danny Dill didn't write Streets Of Laredo. A closer look at the post to which you are probably responding makes it clear that it was Peter Viney, not Robbie Robertson, who made that attribution. Viney has a music blog at https://peterviney.com/peter-viney-music-rock-the-band-record-cover/ |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Jerome Clark Date: 14 Aug 22 - 11:49 AM I think it's hilarious that Robbie Robertson thinks Danny Dill wrote "Streets of Laredo." In the real world, "Cowboy's Lament" -- now better known as "Streets of Laredo" -- was written and published in 1876. Francis Henry Maynard, who wrote the lyrics to a traditional tune, was an actual cowboy. The melody was/is related to "Bard of Armagh," "Handful of Laurel," "Unfortunate Rake," and others united by a common theme of a young man's untimely death. In the late 1950s and '60s country songwriters and stars wrote and/or performed pseudo-folk songs to cash in on the folk boom. (Arkansas folksinger/composer Jimmy Driftwood contributed "Battle of New Orleans" to Johnny Horton, as but one of many examples.) "Long Black Veil" was composed in the fashion of a traditional ballad for a growing popular audience then attracted to that sort of thing. Lefty Frizzell had a hit with it, but the first version I heard was on a folk-oriented mid-1960s Johnny Cash album; |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GerryM Date: 13 Aug 22 - 06:34 PM Joan, Goodman may have done it different ways on different occasions. In a live performance posted to https://youtu.be/8QUSQJQml40 he sings, Ever since the dog got drunk and died, and Momma went to prison, Why, nothing 'round this farm's been the same. John, you know, when Mom broke out last Christmas, She drove that old getaway laundry truck right into a train. I think John Prine must have been in the wings, otherwise I'm not sure what the "John" in line three is about. Then there's a live performance with John Prine at https://youtu.be/J0J1ISJLRb0 where they sing, Ever since the day my Momma went to prison, There's nothin' 'round this farm that's been the same. You know that when they let her out last Tuesday, She drove her pickup truck into a train. So, you may well have heard him do it the way you remember it. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Guest Joan F Date: 13 Aug 22 - 09:47 AM My version of the Goodman song goes: I got drunk the day my Ma got outta prison Took my dog & went to fetch her in the rai-ai-ai-ain But before I could pick her up In my good old pickup truck She went & got run over by a damned old train At this point I don't know if I heard Steve do it like this or its mine own embellishment. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Guest Joan F Date: 13 Aug 22 - 09:40 AM Those of us who learned it from Joan Baez, who sings it *goodly*, always flinch when we hear people singing "there were few at the scene" instead of "the people at the scene" even though "few" is how it turns out to have been written. Better to flinch at why if you were gonna stab somebody on a *dark* night you would choose the town hall light to do it 'neath. Need to make sure you've got the right stabbee? |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GerryM Date: 13 Aug 22 - 12:58 AM Mrrzy must be referring to I was drunk the day my mama got out of prison And I went to pick her up in the rain But before I could get to the station in the pickup truck She got ran over by a damned old train. from Steve Goodman's You Never Even Called Me By My Name. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: Mrrzy Date: 12 Aug 22 - 11:02 PM Um, perfect country song? It doesn't exactly mention prison, and where are mama, a train, a truck, and getting drunk? [I couldn't resist.] |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST Date: 12 Aug 22 - 08:52 AM Johnny Cash covered LBV on 'Live from Folsom Prison' LP. The voice, the venue and the lyrics are just spooky. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GerryM Date: 08 Aug 22 - 11:43 PM Joe, MMario gave that same link way back in the 2nd post in this thread. It confirms what I've read elsewhere, except for its allegation that Dill was the composer of Streets of Laredo, an allegation that has been laughed out of court elsewhere on this thread. I read on another site the author's opinion that it was the greatest country song ever, and that one of the things in its favor is that it's so great you can't sing it badly. Then I looked elsewhere and saw folks suggest Johnny Cash sang it badly, Joni Mitchell sang it badly, Joan Baez sang it badly, Lefty Frizzell sang it badly, Mick Jagger sang it badly.... Anyway, I think the preponderance of evidence is that it's correctly attributed to Dill and Wilkin, circa 1959. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: Joe Offer Date: 08 Aug 22 - 05:56 PM So, is this traditional, or not? I said trad, and people at the Mudcat Singaround corrected me.
See http://theband.hiof.no/articles/long_black_veil_viney.html But another message from Malcolm Douglas says the song is traditional, so who's a person to believe? Joe Offer or Malcolm Douglas? Personally, I'd believe Malcolm. -Joe- |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Hootenanny Date: 02 Nov 13 - 02:51 PM Janie, I listened to Lefty Frizell along with the others and include his version as not at all to my taste, not very convincing. Hoot |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: Janie Date: 02 Nov 13 - 09:05 AM Lefty's recording, Hoot. Becky linked to it in her above post. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: Ron Davies Date: 02 Nov 13 - 07:36 AM I agree that this is a a great song, a well-crafted song, a fun song to sing, and one very much in the tradition of Appalachian ballads. But--it's been done an awful lot by bluegrass bands, and requested of them even when they had not planned to do it.. And so, at a bluegrass festival years ago I heard an adjustment to part of the lyrics of the last verse: "Now the scaffold is high and eternity near She stood in the crowd and had hotdogs and beer." I can't remember if, having sung that, they even finished the song. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Jaze Date: 01 Nov 13 - 04:57 PM I love a song written by a ghost. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: meself Date: 01 Nov 13 - 10:54 AM The first version I heard was by The Band, on their first or second album. It made quite an impression on me - course I was about 15; lots of things made quite an impression on me .... ----------------------------------------------- Now, on the subject of writers who don't know basic grammar: "Unlike most other versions, producer Don Law ...... " |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Hootenanny Date: 01 Nov 13 - 08:25 AM This is a song that I really like but I don't think that any of the above versions do it justice, in fact I couldn't listen to any of them all through. Mitchell most unsuited to do it with Cash and as for the Dave Matthews sung with absolutely no feeling and masses of over produced sound behind him. I can say in all honesty that I have heard it sung with more sincerity and feeling by an ex-pat American dobro player who plays in sessions in London. Are there any commercially recorded versions out there that really are worth hearing? Hoot |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: Larry The Radio Guy Date: 31 Oct 13 - 10:45 PM I have the lp (or had it) of Danny Dill called "Folk Songs of the Wild West", which I think was released in 1960. He recorded Long Black Veil on it, and it sounds absolutely nothing like any of the other versions. I'm not sure if that's how he originally intended it to sound......but his version is pretty awful. |
Subject: RE: Origin: Long Black Veil From: Desert Dancer Date: 31 Oct 13 - 01:30 PM The Long Black Veil is the Perfect Country Song And the Perfect Halloween Song by Betsy Phillips guest at the Culture blog at ThinkProgress.org October 31, 2013 It's Halloween, which means it's a fine time to talk about the greatest country and western song, hands down, ever. Now, I'm sure you've been mislead into believing that it's something like "He Stopped Loving Her Today" or something by Hank Williams or, hell, "Red Solo Cup." But no. The greatest country song, ever, is "The Long Black Veil." It is literally the perfect country song. It contains all the elements a country song should have — infidelity, murder, and people needlessly suffering because of outdated senses of honor. It sounds like it could be an ancient Appalachian ballad, even though Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin wrote it just over sixty years ago. Almost everyone who sings it manages not to butcher it. And, best of all (and appropriate for today), it's sung from the perspective of a skeleton. In Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles (in which the song comes in at an inexplicable 222), David Cantwell writes, " 'The Long Black Veil,' in which a man can't clear his name because to do so would require admitting that he's been 'in the arms of [his] best friend's wife," is a gothic cheating song — where love and guilt stretch beyond the grave and mourning never ceases." Yes, this is it exactly. The song conjures up the most tender sore spot imaginable and then lets you wallow in the painful pleasure of poking at it for three whole minutes. Lefty Frizzell did the first and best version. His voice is as beautiful as it ever was, though you can hear a kind of hiss on some of his s-es, at the end of "hills" and "knows" that sound like he might have been nursing a hurt jaw. The accompaniment is sparse — just a simple guitar and an occasional crying fiddle. Unlike most other versions, producer Don Law resisted the temptation to use the music to hit you over the head with the spookiness of the song. But over the years, there have been some really interesting takes on it. Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell did a great version, where Mitchell sings like she's haunted herself. Dave Matthews does a very "Dave Matthews" take on the song that is worth it to hear Emmylou Harris's voice cutting through all the ridiculousness. And probably my favorite cover is, weirdly enough, Mick Jagger and the Chieftains, who make the song sound like it's a thousand years old. I envy those of you who've never heard it before, because the chills you're about to get come only the first time you hear the song: Lefty Frizzell sings Long Black Veil. ---- ~ Becky in Long Beach |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Dave Hanson Date: 27 Mar 04 - 12:33 AM Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, my favourite version of Long Black Veil, as for the Chieftains, well in the book by John Glatt, Paddy would play with anyone just for the publicity. eric |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Stewie Date: 26 Mar 04 - 04:54 PM Put 'Long Black Veil' into the Google newsgroups archives search box and you will get a vast number of hits. Select 'Search all groups': Click Here. --Stewie. |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Coyote Breath Date: 26 Mar 04 - 03:45 PM I just remembered: I heard it on a Country Gentlemen album also "Good Woman's Love". My memory seems to be returning, does that mean I'm well again? CB |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 26 Mar 04 - 12:34 PM Lefty Frizzell's hit, "The Long Black Veil," is at the Record Lady, Real Country page 2: Record Lady |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,THE REAL POOP Date: 11 Dec 02 - 12:57 PM A friend of mine's mother-in-law said her daughter heard that a neighbor had read an article in a newspaper that a guy from out of town told the New York Times editor that his uncle DEFINITELY knew that DANNY DILL was the AUTHOR of the lyrics to LONG BLACK VEIL and had pitched it to MARIJOHN WILKIN, who wrote the MUSIC for the DIRGE... |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST Date: 11 Dec 02 - 02:48 AM You gotta admit, Joan Baez'Nashville version is really quite good. |
Subject: Chords Add: LONG BLACK VEIL (Wilkin/Dill) From: Joe Offer Date: 11 Dec 02 - 02:23 AM I found this version of the chords here (click) -Joe Offer- Long Black Veil by M.J.Wilkin and D.Dill. Album: Music from Big Pink
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Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST Date: 01 Oct 02 - 12:43 PM Streets of Laredo-Bard of Armagh-Rake's Lament have all been discussed and lamented over in several threads here. St. James Infirmary usually has a different tune. There are also threads diagnosing that one as well. 47312 has more Long Black Veil. Long Black Veil |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Dave Bryant Date: 01 Oct 02 - 10:25 AM The "Streets of Laredo" has virtually the same tune and plot to the much older british "Rake's Lament", "Young Sailor/Soldier cut down in his prime" group of songs. Just as the song was modified for the central character to be a soldier, Sailor, Highwayman etc. someone, presumably across the Atlantic changed it to a Cowboy - perhaps that was done by Dill. I always understood that "Saint James Imfirmary" was a later adaption of "Laredo". |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Martin Ryan Date: 01 Oct 02 - 04:56 AM CB Sounds like you're thinking of the "Lock Hospital" versions - Christy Moore recorded one many years ago, for example. There was indeed a "Lock Hospital" for the treatment of VD in Townsend St. in Dublin - but there were lots of others wherever the British Army went! There is a St. James Hospital in Dublin, alright, but no relation. Regards |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Thomas the Rhymer Date: 30 Sep 02 - 08:20 PM The fidelity that transcends life itself... Well now, I've been doing this song for years, all enthusiasticly like Ms.Baez, and I heard other versions much like it... Then I started hearing a creepy rendition done in song circles and open mics where the beat seemed all heavy and the singer miserable and twitching... And yes, sure enough, the awesome chieftons CD that I heard at a party had this miserable rendition on it by none other than Mick Jagger. I was so sad hearing good local musicians doing Mick's version... just seemed wrong... |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Art Thieme Date: 30 Sep 02 - 07:48 PM Friends, I do feel that this is about as close to a song about ghosts and other supernatural / occult topics that you will ever see in a commercially produced and distributed song in these still terribly puritanical United States. In the world of folk lyrics, hovering in the mists of the oral tradition for all to see, are the ghosts conversing with family etc. in songs like "The Lady Gay", "Lost Jimmy Whalen", "Tamlyn" and a few others derived from the English and Scottish (Irish too) Popular Ballads. But only this and, maybe, the Country Gentlemen's "Bringing Mary Home" are all that vome to mind at present. Art Thieme |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Leadfingers Date: 30 Sep 02 - 05:44 PM Streets of Laredo/St James Infirmary and a whole lot of others have their roots in The Rakes Lament,which was adapted by both the Army and the Navy and transported round the world in the eighteenth century.Or very early nineteenth.I think. |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Coyote Breath Date: 21 Jul 02 - 03:24 AM I've always liked and often sang Long Black Veil but I think the guy was a jerk since the gal chose to stay with her husband rather than save her lover's life, sheesh! As for Streets of Laredo, I understood it to be a very close relative of the Saint James Hospital-Saint James Infirmary, also to be Irish in origin and further also to be of a young man dying of "the pox" The version I sing is a bit more graphic than the usual version in that the young cowboy asks that roses be strewn over his coffin to mask the smell and in the last verse he asks the singer for a glass of cold water and "...but when I returned the spirit had left him and gone to his maker, the poor boy had died." I cannot remember where I learned the song in the first place or where I had heard of its ties to Dublin's St. James Hospital (if there ever was such a place) Life is full of mysteries. CB |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,K Date: 20 Jul 02 - 10:17 AM MY LONG BLACK VEIL Alternative lyrics as recorded by Marijohn Wilkin herself on a 45 rpm in 1961 Ten years ago on a cold dark night There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light The few at the scene were wrong as could be Cause the man they accused that night was with me But what could he do and what could he say For that one stolen night he just had to pay He couldn't tell a soul that I was out with him Cause the whole town knew I belonged to his best friend Now I walk these hills in my long black veil I visit his grave when the night winds wail Nobody knows, nobody sees Nobody knows but me The scaffold was high I knew his dead was near I stood in the crowd and shed unseen tears But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans In my long black veil I weep for his bones I walk these hills in my long black veil I visit his grave when the night winds wail Nobody knows, nobody sees Nobody knows but me |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Noreen Date: 10 Jul 02 - 09:39 PM Yes, Pluiméir Ceolmhar, that can be the only reason for including Marianne Faithful on the album... (cringe) |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: boglion Date: 10 Jul 02 - 04:22 PM Apparantly, Mick Jagger was first lined up to sing The Foggy Dew but baulked at its Republican connotations - he might not have got his knighthood!! He settled for Long Black Veil and I've had the governor of my local pub in Kerry taking the p*ss every time I sing it - claiming it's a Stones song. I learned it from Ms Baez many many years ago. |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 09 Jul 02 - 08:56 PM Just last night on a hot summer's night, Disdaining the disguise of a long black veil, I killed a man 'neath the town hall light- The Irish bard and unfortunate rake I helped to kick the pail Had begun another thread on the Streets of Laredo. Nobody knows, Nobody sees, Only the Shadow knows. |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: George Seto - af221@chebucto.ns.ca Date: 09 Jul 02 - 06:19 PM Keith and Glen, According to Bruce Olson, he ties Streets of Laredo to the Unfortunate Rake and the Buck's Elegy. ... all wrapped in white linen
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Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: George Seto - af221@chebucto.ns.ca Date: 09 Jul 02 - 06:09 PM Guest K., from the link posted by MMario way up near the top:
The hit revived Frizells career. Co-writer Marijohn Wilkin then
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Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: catspaw49 Date: 09 Jul 02 - 04:25 PM I think the whole thing in all it's permutations was a prequel to OJ Simpson. Spaw |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar Date: 09 Jul 02 - 06:29 AM The Streets of Laredo is certainly sung to the same tune as the Bard of Armagh, but chances are that the tune had already been recycled. The Bard of Armagh was someone called "Bold Phelim Brady", but I think his only claim to fame (if he even existed) is the song about him. BTW, we owe a lot to the Chieftains, but much of that album just sucks. In keeping with Paddy Moloney's less attractive character trait (and the "authorised biography" of the Chieftains), it's just one long exercise in name-dropping. |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,K Date: 09 Jul 02 - 04:14 AM Marijohn Wilkin, co-author of the song, recorded a version herself in 1961. With slight different lytrics, like: The few at the scene were wrong as can be, cause the man they accused that night was with me. Etc |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,KeithA o Hertford at work Date: 09 Jul 02 - 03:27 AM They all come from Ireland don't they, but some think it derives from the English " The Soldier/Sailor Cut Down In His Prime" |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: GUEST,Glen Reid Date: 09 Jul 02 - 12:27 AM I had heard, that the Streets of Larado was borrowed from the trad. Irish tune called, The Bard of Armagh. Any takers? |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 08 Jul 02 - 08:50 PM Gee jumping jelly beans, I guess not everybody likes Mick Jagger's rendition. I used to like Burl Ives when I was in school, but I find his singing shallow now. (Ducking again!) |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:31 PM Well that must be a very strange version of either the Streets of Laredo or the Boston Burglar, or both. |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Herga Kitty Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:23 PM I thought I'd heard the Band do it, or is that just false memory? |
Subject: RE: Info Please: Long Black Veil From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:23 PM I've been given to understand that the tune and central idea for Streets of Laredo is an older traditional song called The Boston Burglar. Dave Oesterreich |
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