Rewriting someone else's song

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 29 May 02 - 06:46 PM

I don't know boats...but it sounds like a nice line...what is the nautical problem with it? mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Bert
Date: 30 May 02 - 05:01 AM

Elliot Kenin asked me if he could sing "Size Doesn't Matter", and would it be alright if he added a few verses of his own. I was delighted and would love to hear how he's singing it now.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:35 AM

I've read this entire thread. I am a singer and a writer. I am fairly rabid on the subject of original songs and "the folk process." As a writer I do not release songs to the public until I have formed them and polished them, or received them word for word from the muse. There are "reasons" for every word choice I make, whether conscious or unconscious. When someone wants to know why I used this word or why not that I'm happy to explain my choices. When someone wants to question the order of verses I can explain that, too.

It seems to me that often people who talk about "the folk process" like to use the idea as a justification for changing what they don't like about a composition. I say, if you don't like it as written, don't sing it. If you think it would be "so much better," "easier to understand," "really brilliant if" etc., borrow the theme and make the effort to write your own song.

I have, so far, had the fortune or misfortune to write two songs that are liked in folk music circles. One of them, "Morning Shanty" seems to inspire people to write new verses, sometimes because "it sounds traditional" and because "it is too short." It happens to be a song about time together coming to an end, and is intentionally brief, the form reflecting the subject matter. The other one, "Wallflower Waltz," inspires revisions because "It needs a chorus." No, it doesn't. And when I hear it sung with a chorus created out of the B-part of the tune it makes me livid. Why? Because the verses as written embody an emotional progression from one state to another and the interpolation of a chorus mucks this up entirely.

Anyone who thinks that "the folk process" always improves songs needs to look at a few songs like "Siul A Run" where people's inability to understand Irish has created many versions with choruses of babble. Some of them have lovely tunes, but the loss of the original text and sentiment is regrettable.

One thing I fear as a songwriter is that some bastardized, inept version of one of my songs will hit the bigtime and become the default "standard version" -- the one that "everyone hears" or "everyone knows." I have, in fact, already heard someone who learned a song from my one recording of it tell me "That's not the way it goes." Ah, but it is the way it goes -- and I should know -- I wrote it.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Don
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 10:09 AM

It's very simple - If a song is in copyright (and it is for 70 years after the death of the composer) then to alter or change the lyric or melody (and I'm not talking about the interpretation of the melody here), is breaking the law. This could only be done if permission has been granted by the composer and publisher.

Real Folk Airs is a different thing. The great composers very often wrote works based on folk melodies. These melodies were just there. They had grown out of the people themselves over many years, and nobody knows where they first came from, there are no official writers credited with the writing of them.

Don

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 10:35 AM

Thanks for adding your thoughts, Don: I have really enjoyed re-reading this whole thread. Anybody who wants to rewrite my songs, just be patient. Consdidering my family history, I probably just have another thirty years around here, and another seventy years after that, they're all yours. Not that anyone will even remember me or the songs by then. If we are leaving footprints on the sands of time, we're walking the beach at low tide.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 12:54 PM

Don- "It's very simple" in a legal sense if someone is rewriting a song and using it commercially, without getting permission from the composer. If the song is being used in a less commercial sense, at music swaps or parties, then I doubt if copyright provides much, if any, protection. Still it would be nice if "recomposers" and "decomposers" would make a good faith attempt to communicate with the original composers, to at least get a better sense of what their "changes" are doing to the song. In fact, it would be nice if people remember to at least credit the source for the songs they sing.

Of course no two people are going to, or should, sing a song exactly the same. However, when one is rearranging a poem for singing, some word changes might be justified in terms of "sounding" better.

The moral solution for me is if the original composer is unhappy with whatever changes I have done, I'm not going to sing that version in any commercial situation. There are more pretty songs than one.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 01:08 PM

Re: Charley's comment about "crediting the source" -- one of the things I DO NOT WANT is for someone to sing an altered version of my work and then to say "Oh, Sharyn Dimmick wrote that." No, in fact, she didn't -- not if you have changed it by adding words, subtracting them, repeating them, singing them out of order, creating choruses that didn't exist, etc. I am interested in the song as I wrote it, not in permutations of it, and I want people to have the benefit of hearing the original work.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: harvey andrews
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 07:53 PM

Now this Turner painting could just do with a bit more blue here, and a touch of red there, and this Shakespeare sonnet...not quite right in my opinion...and Dickens...never convinced by Micawber...Orson Welles...let's re-light some of those scenes..too many shadows!
Or maybe just write your own.
And I know this may be against the idea many hold of the folk process but I could take a couple of pages to show how any changes in my lyrics have always been for the worse, whereas the melody, chords, style etc I'm happy to put up for grabs. Muisicians can undoubtedly improve a song's presentation, impact, etc but I've yet to find them improving the words....oh yes...that poem..what was it,.."not waving but drowning"?..surely I can put that better..."you don't see my misery" hmm..."this is just a front"....er..."not smiling but crying"....er..?

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:16 PM

I always find, when I check up on the words I settled on for a song I wrote some time ago, that the way I sing them has changed over the years, in all kinds of ways. And most times it's for the best.

Memory does that kind of thing, and so does oral transmission, combined with memory. Sometimes not for the best, that's true enough.
However I don't think it's realistic to expect to avoid it, in the informal context. When it comes to putting out records maybe it's a different thing.

As for Shakespeare, while it's true that nobody would rewrite a sonnet (though they might quote it wrong), people who are putting on his plays consciously rewrite and chop and amend the text all the time. Very few of us have seen a full version of Hamlet for example.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mg
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:51 PM

I think if you don't want people to alter your songs, you should only sing them in private, and get a pre-rendition agreement in writing if it is all that important to you. I think otherwise that you have released the song to the world to do with it as it may...and the best songs come from the world and will go back to the world. On the other hand, and I never have trouble speaking out of both sides of my mouth, I think the best policy is to sing the song as close to what you learned as possible, with some exceptions, the most serious being racist language. I think the gender should never be changed..and I think that most people who add on words to some of the best writers' songs are seriously deluded that they have improved them.

mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mmb
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:56 PM

I can't recall who it was, but back in the 60's or 70's, someone who recorded "Eleanor Rigby" placed a disclaimer on the album notes, giving a reason for changing one word in the song. Can anyone help me - Joan Baez, Simon & Garfunkel???

The reason I think of that example is related directly to the "Swimming to the Other Side" reference in the posting that started this thread. I recall a teacher who really loved the song and wanted to teach it to her class. Except her children's parents were of a particularly conservative religious stance, and would have had fits at the lyric "We can worship the ground we walk on." She never did use that song with that class - at least not that year.   M.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Merritt
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:06 PM

Many perspectives here.

I often change everything about a song. Lyrics, rhythm, chords, melody..so it suits me. And then I change it again.

I can play stuff "just like it sounds," but have zero interest in replicating material. This does not mean that I don't love the original; I often do. But someone else already does the original. If the author of a tune I was playing in some pub came up to me and told me I was doing wrong, that person would have the stage in a heartbeat to present the original.

The crux of the biscuit, for me, is that my relationship with a song is not linear.

Anybody's free to interpret my original stuff altho', picking up on someone's comment above, >I< rarely play/perform it the same way twice anyway.

And, really, at the end of day, nobody gives a rat's *ss what I play in my living room, or some little bar in rural Wisconsin.

- Merritt

"It's all one big note." – F. Zappa

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jeri
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:52 PM

Harvey, your analogies don't quite work. Paintings, literary works and specific films are done once. Songs are usually done over and over by a variety of folks. If I had to re-write a Tennyson poem exactly as Tennyson wrote it, I'd just slap it on a copy machine. Why bother? If you think of your songs as poems, then the analogies might work - except they leave out the flexibility in interpretation. I'd think you'd believe the flexibility would be acceptable if it involved just the performance and not what was being performed.

If a song has bits that feel awkward, I just won't sing it. There's a song that many people love by a well-respected songwriter, and I just can't sing it because a line in the last verse is just plain bad. I couldn't sneak a change in because many people know it the way he wrote it, but I have to wonder how that line made it into the finished song!

From what I've heard of your songs, Harvey, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to change them. It does seem that some folks (not most) make changes just to leave their fingerprints on a song.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:25 PM

Jeri,

Part of the point is that you CAN copy a Tennyson poem on a copy machine because publication and copyright have allowed you to obtain Tennyson's exact words. You can read them. You can recite them. You can give them to others to read or discuss.

Why should a writer who writes songs not have the same copyright and publication rights as a poet or essayist or novelist? (We don't)

With songs it's a crapshoot: if you are Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell you have had the luck and power to establish your original work as the primary version -- the one that will get heard somehow. If you are unknown, obscure .... And if you are also a singer who sings traditional material and belong to a folk community of some kind you may have to put up with all kinds of nonsense about "the folk process"
misapplied to non-traditional songs by living writers.

As a singer, I am primarily an aural/oral learner: I learn most things by listening to recordings or live performances. I can, however, read
and forums like this one and others make it easier and easier to track down authors of particular songs, which means that I can do any writer the respect of listening to her or his original material. If I like it well enough, I can continue to sing it. If I find I am frequently changing something about it I can query a living author about this and discuss the change. I might even learn something.

The idea that if I like my own work well enough to insist that it is treated respectfully I should only sing it in private interferes with one of the great joys of writing, which is that of communicating experiences to others.

Whew!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mg
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:38 PM

well, then I would suggest that you preface each public singing of it with a description of your desires for it not to be altered and put that in writing and maybe put out copies of the sheet music and the exact words and put it on a web site with your preferences...you have stumbled into a tradition that doesn't share your point of view exactly, although some cultures within it are very careful to not change stuff...I personally actually don't change much and if I had to rewrite a song I just wouldn't bother probably but I think your preferences are your preferences and if I ever am exposed to any of your songs I will do as you say but if it is too much trouble I wouldn't bother frankly...

mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 12:17 AM

Getting a little warm in here, Catters...

Tonight, I went to hear Rick Fielding and had a wonderful time. He asked me to come up and do a couple of songs, with a particular request for Handful of Songs. He jokingly pointed out that he changed the melody, the words and the chords when he "arranged" it. But, I told him, "It's still the same song." And he does a beautiful job on it..

Seems like there's too much concern about covering our posterity. What's gonna be is gonna be. I'd prefer that people learn the words to songs that I've written, and use the same melody and chord progression, but I really can't ge that concerned if they feel the song another way. Who knows what's going to survive, and in what form it's going to survive? Maybe Smells Like Teen Spirit (by Nirvana) will last longer than all of our songs. I try not to sweat things that I don't have any control over. I had a friend who spent most of his life in a snit because he got mail addressed to William Pitt, and his actual name was Bill. Maybe he should havfe had his name changed legally to William, just to avoid being irritated so much.

I don't change recently written songs, myself, because I know the loving care that went into writing them... and I like the song to reflect that writer. But, songs that are already in the tradition in umptee billion versions are fair game, as far as I'm concerned. Even there, though, I don't want to lose the flavor of the time and circumstances in which strong originally came out of.

"Let it be, let it be.."

Or should that be "allow it to be, allow it to be..."

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 10:33 AM

"allow it to exist, allow it to exist"

It's not so much "should" and "shouldn't" as "will" and "won't."
If you do the definitive version of a song, the one everybody knows, then that's likely how people will learn it.
If someone else changes it and others hear both your version and theirs and they like the other version better, I don't know that there's anything that can be done about that short of publicising the fact you don't approve of the other version. In the case of "Wallflower Waltz," the first and only time I've heard it, it had a chorus. The singer was also pretty darned clear about the fact the original didn't have a chorus and the author (sharyn) strongly disapproved of the chorus. Using a chorus that retains but repeats your original words seems to me to be more a matter of arrangement than anything else.

You have a high level of control over paintings and literary works precicely because there isn't a whole lot of creativity involved in simply reproducing them. You'd have the same amount of control over a song if you were the only person allowed to sing it in front of people. Even songs sung in living rooms to only a few people can get changed and passed on with those changes.

I'm new to songwriting. I write the songs because I have things to say and I want to do a good job saying them. I share the songs because I want others to sing them. If I became known as someone who disapproved of any changes from my version, I don't think people would be as likely to sing my songs. Frankly, if they did go on to sing a song knowing I'd be mad at them, I'd know I'd written a pretty darned good song!

Again, I think I'm talking about my view of reality vs. the way things ought to be. It gets pretty frustrating when I tell folks how things ought to be because even though I'm always right they never listen to me.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 12:20 PM

This is one of the more interesting discussions in a while, and I'll need to re-read it. I feel myself on both extreme sides of it.

   The analogy to painting isn't quite so off-target. There's a legend about Turner adding a small, devastating accent of color to a painting in the so-called "varnishing period" before it was displayed. Artists used to touch up works for the occasion--I recently refused to let a client see my painting in sunlight, since it was painted for interior light. I couldn't stand to look at it. As Picasso said, a painting is never finished, but the painter is not always around to tweak it.

   When I worked in an art museum they always doing cute, horrible, "relationships" (visual puns, co-incidences of color schemes, William Bailey still-life with eggs beside Gregory Gillespie Turtle eggs--uhg!) which had no respect for the artist's vision. The mindset is that the curator is the real artist, and uses these odd artist's notion's and knick-knacks as material in their theme-show production. It's really awful, most of the time. Galleries do the same thing.

   I often like songs that have lines or lyrics I can't commit to, and my defense is that I'm an unimportant songster, play for myself and for kids, mostly, and in a vein--well, one doesn't really object to the Smothers Brothers' bits and liberties because they didn't project themselves seriously.

   I'm re-writing Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me as a Thankgiving song to do next week, and have no qualms about it. But still, if I were more serious, it would bother me that such a great little tune had it's lyric--which seems to reduce the sense the tune makes to a bit of a complaint, or a public service announcement.

I think one objects to tampering with real artistry, but not with what seems trivial. The problem is drawing a line there--because great work has it's details and imagery, and stubborn residue of odds and ends, without which it would not breath life. It's part of the nervous system, and changing it changes the whole for people who really love it. Deep thread--great posts.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: mg
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 02:19 PM

One thing I really hate is parodies of great songs. One rule that one song circle has, I think, and I wish it were followed everywhere, is that at least you can't follow the original song with the parody. And I am always hazy on the definition of parodies...one song that I think stands on its own is the Rolling Mills of New Jersey...good song...lots of people don't know the original song.. mg

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 07:14 PM

What about just plain old errors? I know someone - a good songcrafter and not illiterate who recorded 'the tempetuous sea', meaning, evidently, 'tempestuous'. And what about those who sing 'calvary' for 'cavalry'(and vice versa)?

And what about presentation? I have a friend who wrote a 5-verse song and varying chorus who sings it in a certain order because of the harmonies. But she's WRONG! She sings the last chorus, and invites the audience to sing along, as 'Did YOU do what you came to do'?- It's MUCH more effective singing 'Did I do what I came to do'?, etc. :)

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Snuffy
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 07:43 PM

Many parodies are excellent, when they take an idea from the original song to another plane (see Les BArker, the Kippers). What I can't abide is the parodies that just say "Isn't this song crap?" (No, not the Fields of Athenry, I never will sing the Wild Rover no more, etc)

WassaiL! V

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 02:33 AM

Jeri, Re: using a chorus that retains the original words is "arrangement." Not so. The original "Wallflower Waltz" has six verses in the order 1,2,3,4,5,6, as you would expect. The Lani Herrmann chorus version goes 1,3,4,2,3,4,5,3,4,6,3,4. Without even seeing the words, you can see that the end of the song -- the climactic line -- is now out of place. The way I wrote it, the whole song builds toward the imperative statement:

Put down your fiddle, put down your bow --
I am still here on Wallflower Row:
We'll make it sweet, we'll take it slow.
Teach me to waltz.

To repeat verses three and four ad nauseum undercuts the drama and tension of the song, even if it does supply a chorus part for those who like them. Futhermore, the verses were written in pairs to be sung together, so that another way to look at the song's structure is an A-part of 1,2 (sung to one tune), a B-part 3,4 (sung to a different tune)
and a repeat of the A tune. Lani's version subverts this, too, breaking the musical structure in half.

Experienced writers will know (and readers if they think about it -- and singers) that repetition of words (and the opposite, "not repeating" them) are powerful devices.

I'm getting off my soapbox for now, but I'm not promising not to return.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Bullfrog Jones
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 04:58 AM

As the original and onlie begetter of this thread I was interested to see it reappear thanks to Sharyn's passionate and well-argued intervention. I'm glad that it has aroused such interest from both sides of the debate, and glad that I'm not alone in not wanting my songs tampered with. What the thread has aroused in me is a desire to hear some of Sharyn's songs(particularly Wallflower Waltz). Sharyn, could you let me know where I can find them, please?

BJ

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 05:53 AM

My songs are like my children: I can only influence their early stages. Once they are out in the world, they receive more and more external influences, and they become who they become. I retain the honour and pride (or shame) of being the father. But if I try to continue shaping them when they are already too old, that just makes me a bad father, a control freak.

Breezy has amended the words to two of my songs, when he sings them, and good luck to him, if that's how they best express his feelings as a performer. I am more finicky about chord progressions, but even there I would support the performer who makes his/her own variation, as long as it is not simply laziness that causes them to drop chords.

And the old trick of changing a word here and there to evade copyright is starting to get knocked on the head in courts too - it will no longer work in the future. So let's not get too control-oriented, unless it is our livelihood that depends on it (and for most of us I venture to suggest that we do it for the fun, not for the money).

As for parodies, Snuffy said it all for me.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Grab
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 08:34 AM

Hands up all those who play the guitar part to their songs exactly the same as the recording, note for note, every time around? What, so few? Then why are variations in the words to fit your preferences not also permissible?

As I see it, there's three main categories of changes to lyrics: deliberate planned changes, spontaneous "riffing" on the text (extra words like and/but/so/well/yeah/hey injected "to taste"), and actual errors. Errors like Davey Graham's version of "Nobody's fault but mine" where he's misheard "If I don't read and my soul be lost" as "Fire in my soul oh Lord". Just make sure you know which category your changes fall into! ;-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:17 AM

Sharyn-

Hmmm. How about adding a chorus to someone's song? If we can ignore the legal rights of the song's composer for the moment, it seems to me that it's really a "group" value judgment on whether that is an "improvement" and we'll only know if it's really an improvement if the change is adopted by those who sing it. Folk process as the survival of the fittest is hardly a novel theory but it's probably the bottom line for me.

To be specific, I wrote a chorus to Trevor Crozier's fine drinking song "Dead Dog Scrumpy"("Dead Dog Cider'), which you kindly sang along on when I was visiting San Francisco. Unfortunately Trevor died a few years ago so I was unable to consult with him but I'd like to think he'd approve the change in spirit:

G-----------------------D7-G----C--------D7--G
Now, here's to Dead Dog Cid-er, the best there is by far;
-------------------D7-C----A-------------D7
Here's to Dead Dog Cid-er, no moaning at the bar;
--------C--------------------G--------------C-G----D7
You can search this wide world over, find many a beer or ale;
---------G-----------D7-------G—C-------G---------D7---A
But, when you've tried Dead Dog Cid-er – your search will be cur-tailed!

I look forward to presenting this chorus to Trevor's friends in the Bristol area where I first heard the song in the dark smoky back room of the tavern the folk club gathered at, but I won't be very surprised if the chorus makes it there first.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Davetnova
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:26 AM

I am not a writer, but I am a little bemused that an artists who so jealously guard the integrity of their words can so casually admit that they will happily change tunes. Many tunesmiths spend as much sweat getting their tunes as they should be as wordsmiths do. Why then is it right to tweak a tune to fit your personal needs when the same is not true for words. As song,or tune, is almost as much about the performer as the originator and many have taken life on their own to the extent the originator has been forgotten.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: GUEST,Fred Miller
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:48 AM

I don't remember the Smothers Brother's doing parodies of great songs, but a running parody of folk performers trying to do songs, including some great ones. I'll like a parody if it's good, and funny, not self-important. I'd rather hear even a lame parody than hear a great song earnestly sung by one of those singers who milk it to show off their voice--I'd rather hear somebody turn Sittin' on the dock of the bay into E-bay, or whatever, than hear that Bolton guy torture it. I liked Hamlet set to Carmen on Gilligan's Island, which is absurd, stupid, and funny, but hated everything about Shakespeare in Love, which was full of stale, stinky, jokey b.s. (the loan-shark producer was amusing, but that was a Shaw stock-character device).

   This question asks all the big questions about what art is and what's important about it. It's really interesting to see how people answer it, and what questions they attach to it.

Personally the survival of the fittest thing doesn't work for me in folk-songs or anywhere else. It's not a novel idea, but a circular idea. It's hard to evaluate fairly what hasn't survived, compared to what has, for whatever reasons.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:51 AM

Exxxxcellent point, Davetnova! I often spend more time on the melody than the words. I've even changed the whole melody and chord progression of songs that the first "working" melody didn't feel right. Sometimes, I've even changed the time of the song. I wrote a song recently that had a melody I found so predictable and boring that I felt like chucking the whole song. I just let it rest, which is probably one of the most important aspects of songwriting. If it doesn't feel right, walk away from it for awhile. And sure enough, after a few days, I started singing the song while I was driving in my car, and a completely different melody and rhythm came, with a chord progression for the key line in the chorus that sounded so fresh to my ears that when I got home and tried it on guitar, I had to make up the chords to play what I heard in my head. I still don't know what some of the chords are. But, I hear them in my head.

And Sharyn: I hate to stir you up even more (which may not be possible) but I have heard your song with a chorus, but not without it. I thought it was a wonderful song, but I must admit that I was busy trying to learn the words to the chorus so that I could sing along, and I don't even remember the verses. Now, don't turn all purple like that... I thought the singer did a wonderful job on the song, and clearly felt the words and emotions. But, that's a common experience with chorus songs. Everyone wants to learn the chorus, so that's where all the attention is going. For most chorus songs, that's fine, because the verses don't necessarily tell a story, or even have any particular order. But, there are songs where each verse builds on the previous one, and a chorus can disrupt the whole story. Kinda like having a "chorus" in a short story where you change the order of the paragraphs and insert the chorus paragraph
every few paragraphs. Some songs ARE short stories, where the economy of words is very restrictive. Some songs have a powerful last verse, which loses it's power if you sing the chorus after it.

One other point. I wonder if farmers in the south sat around on their front porch after a hard day's work and said, when someone changed the lines to a song, "Nice folk processing, Earl!" :-) I think us revivalists are WAY to self-conscious about being part of the process.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Ivan
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 10:01 AM

What can you do if someone changes your words (or tune for that matter)? Well if they do it commercially you can sue. There are plenty lawyers who'd be willing to take you money.
Otherwise, I don't see that you have any choice in the matter. Do you go round and listen at doors to make sure people are singing the right words while they're doing the dishes?
And have you ever been past a children's playground and heard what THEY do to songs? When my kids where younger Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" started "Uptown dolly, she been living in a Tesco trolley." I don't think he would appreciate that (well he might since the divorce).
The analogy with paintings and poetry is interesting but the argument is flawed. Once a work of art is "out there' the artist has no control over how it is interpreted. Many people completely "misunderstand" what a poet, painter or writer is trying to say. The difference we are talking about here is that a singer passes on his interpretation to someone else.
Personally I'm not too bothered if someone alters my songs, provided they say so and credit me as the original writer, though I might object if they change the whole meaning of it.
Worse things happen. There are some singers who could sing all the correct words and still ruin the song completely!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 10:19 AM

Jerry, I suspect it went more like

Al: "Earl, that song don't go like that. I've heard it all my life and it don't go like that."
Earl: "Al, it's just a different version."
Al: "A different WHAT?! The song don't go like that! You got the words wrong!"

Now if a guy showed up from out of town and sang it differently, they were probably more likely to forgive him because "That's how they sing it where I come from."

I think there might have been a whole lot more resistance to change in communities where everyone knew the song and knew how they thought it should go.

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:21 PM

I imagine you're right, Jeri. Maybe a better approach would be to have a bumper sticker that says "The Folk Process Happens." Rather Than "I Am The Proud Father Of A Folk Song I Just Changed."

Jerry

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: harvey andrews
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:23 PM

not being happy with changing the words or the music? I think it depends whether you're Rogers or Hart!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: sharyn
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 01:30 PM

Some comments of recent posts:

BJ -- I sent you a personal message with information on how to obtain a recording of a half dozen of my songs, which I recorded on cassette in 1998, along with five traditional songs. In case anyone else is interested, I sell the recording for $11.50 ($10, plus postage) and I will also swap it for a recording if someone else wants to trade.

Jerry -- No fear. I am not turning purple.

Charley -- Re: "Dead Dog Cider." What I object to is people who make changes to the work of a living writer without permission. Since Trevor is no longer alive, what I would want to know is whether he expressed any wishes about his work in his last will and testament -- if he did, I would honor them: if Bob Dylan said "I don't want to hear any friggin' piccolos in arrangements of my work," I would not perform or record a Dylan song in an arrangement with a piccolo. For me, it's about respecting the wishes of the writer. Similarly, someone quoted someone else a while back in this thread who objected to key changes. I don't happen to care what key someone sings one of my songs in, but I do care about harmonization sometimes, so I understand that writer's wish that no one alter keys and I would respect it. If I were interested in singing "Dead Dog Cider," or performing it, I would seek out Trevor's original song and listen to it first. If Trevor has left no instructions for posterity, I would decide whether I preferred his song or your revision of it. If I preferred your version, I would contact you for permission. Do you see?

As a singer, I am fondest of traditional material, which can be messed with in a respectful manner since many versions legitimately exist. I make a strong distinction between traditional and original material.

As a writer, I have written songs with choruses and songs without choruses, songs with refrains and songs without refrains. I have "stolen" "Westron Wind," written a song around it and employed the famous quatrain as a chorus. I generally make quite conscious choices about what words or elements I will repeat. As we know from this thread, not all tastes are the same!

Subject: RE: Rewriting someone else's song
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 02:09 PM

If any of my songs is around 100 years from now, it will be because someone liked it enough to sing it. If it has evolved into something else, it will be because someone was inspired to do something with it. Either something evolves or it becomes static. "Let it bleed, let it bleed, let it bleed, let it bleed."

The argument here is about the definition of folk music. In order to become folk music, a song has to be sung by someone other than the author.

The question about "mast be turned about" came about because Rod MacDonald wrote the song before he had ever set foot upon anything other than the Staten Island Ferry. On a vessel of the size that Rod was writing about the masts would be physically unable to turn.