ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 15 - 07:39 PM

> And have you noticed that Yarmouth Town shares its opening two bars with Santa Claus Is Coming To town?

No!

But why am I not very surprised? The tune doesn't sound very trad-like in any case, though I can't quite say why.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Sep 15 - 11:39 PM

So, would one class "Yarmouth Town" with Jack the Jolly Tar/Do Me Ama?

In "Yarmouth," the landlord's daughter is using a string to set up an assignation with a sailor.

In "Jack the Jolly Tar," it's an upper-class setting things up with her lover, and Jack overhears and deceives the woman by taking the string meant for another.

Same song?

As far as I can see above, we haven't found any traditional sources for "Yarmouth Town" - or have we?

There being no string involved, I see no tie (couldn't resist) between this song and Cruising 'Round Yarmouth, other than the coincidence of geography.

-Joe-

-Joe-

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Sep 15 - 01:53 AM

i always thought it would be nice to have the recording of Peter Bellamy singing this one playing in that museum of Fishing on the front at Great Yarmouth.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: GUEST,Cookieless Steve
Date: 03 Sep 15 - 08:15 AM

Joe,
My own advice on this would be to treat it as a modern remake of the old song. It only has a single source and that source is questionable at best. I'm fully aware that I am very sceptical/suspicious of single source songs being claimed as traditional but that's me!

The modern, i.e. last century onwards, way of treating song classification is to be the same song 2 items should have substantial text in common. If they merely share a theme or story they are different songs. I know Child didn't always follow this system but he died before modern scholarship came in.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Sep 15 - 09:45 AM

Well said, Steve.

The themes are similar, but they're hardly the "same song." Anybody hearing one and knowing the other would most likely say, "Hey! I know another song that's like that!"

Not "I know that song!"

Yarmouth is relevant only because Sam Larner sang about it in a forebitter that Bellamy was familiar with, suggesting (along with all the evidence) that he (or someone) thought it was a good location for salty adventures.

But that's total conjecture, of course, and it would be meaningless of "Yarmouth Town" had thoroughly traditional antecedents.

But it doesn't.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 04 Sep 15 - 07:11 AM

So what are we saying here, exactly? That Peter Bellamy "wrote", or confected the song he called Yarmouth Town?—the evidence being that it has no known traditional antecedents, that he claimed to collect it from an informant whose name is a suggestive echo of his own, and whom nobody else seems to remember, and that, having disavowed any intellectual ownership of the song, declined to claim any royalties on its subsequent recording by other artistes, even by Planxty. And that much the same can be said about Fakenham Fair?

If only....!

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Sep 15 - 07:43 AM

I'd happily be persuaded otherwise by the discovery of earlier trad versions of either song.

Of, course, if Bellamy wrote them, those versions don't exist.

If they do, where are they? Like Pete Bullen, they've had half a century to be discovered.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: Yarmouth Town
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 04 Sep 15 - 08:27 AM

Planxty's version was the b-side to their Irish chart-topping single Cliffs Of Doneen. The royalty cheque from that would have bought him an ocelot-skin concertina case and left enough over for a bag of chips...