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Subject: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Gary T Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:03 AM I've never heard Merle Travis' recording of "Dark as a Dungeon." I've heard it in numerous jams, and I recall it being done in 3/4 time. ( // Dark / -- / as a // dun- / geon / and // ...) I have it in a songbook from the Country Music Hall of Fame and it's in 4/4 time. ( // Dark / -- / as / a // dun- / geon / -- / and // ...) So my questions are, did Merle indeed do it in 4/4 time? As recorded by others, is it usually in 3/4 or usually in 4/4? Am I correct in sensing that it's often (or even always) done in 3/4 in jam situations? |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: JennyO Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:32 AM I've never heard it done in anything but 3/4 time. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Amos Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:40 AM 3-4 with a drawl -- it's an West Virginian song, after all. A |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: chip a Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:57 AM Listen to Grandpa Jones' recording for the "drawl version"....very nice. Chip |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 12 Jul 03 - 12:48 PM Never heard it anything but 3/4 |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Mark Clark Date: 12 Jul 03 - 01:59 PM Merle wrote it and recorded it in 3/4 time. And I'd imagine he thought of it as a Kentuky song. - Mark |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Gary T Date: 12 Jul 03 - 02:04 PM Thank you all for the replies. Looks like the book is R - O - N - G wrong! |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Amos Date: 12 Jul 03 - 03:44 PM Wal, all right, Mark. Kentucky it is. Still drawls it out some, though... A |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Fortunato Date: 12 Jul 03 - 03:50 PM It only works in 3/4 time. I sing it unaccompanied, and it naturally falls in waltz time, that is the cadence of the lyric is 3/4 time. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: GUEST,Tunesmith Date: 12 Jul 03 - 05:51 PM Certain songs have "switched" time. The standard "Autumn Leaves" began its life as a French song in 3/4 but now it's often heard( always?) in 4/4 |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Richard Bridge Date: 12 Jul 03 - 07:57 PM Wild Mountain Thyme also comes in two versions |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: BuckMulligan Date: 12 Jul 03 - 09:46 PM I've heard Billy Ed Wheeler's "Coming of the Road" in both signatures too. And 3/4 version is incredibly hoky. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: GUEST,Jon Date: 12 Jul 03 - 10:15 PM Gary, any chance of the 4/4 transcription? I'd be interested to hear how it fits. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:07 PM I've heard (and played) a number 3/4 standards "shifted up" to 4/4 to good effect. "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "That Was Before I Met You" come to mind. Personally, "Dark as a Dungeon" is not one that I would try it with. As noted above, everything about the song says "waltz time". Bruce |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: rangeroger Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:15 PM A bluegrass band I used to play in would start out Greensleeves in 3/4 time and then kick it into 4/4 bluegrass style. Picked up that version off a Josh Graves LP with David Bromberg playing guitar. One of the best versions of Dark as A Dungeon that I have heard is by John Cowen (NewGrass Revival) rr |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: JohnInKansas Date: 12 Jul 03 - 11:33 PM Folk Songs of North America, Alan Lomax, Doubleday, 1960 shows "Dark as a Dungeon" in a "skeletal" score as 3/4 time, with the notation "any walz time style." Attribution is to Merle Travis, ©1947. Song Fest, International Outing Club Association, Crown Publishers, 1961 (10th) printing also shows it in 3/4 time. The Essential Johnny Cash, Hal Leonard, (who seldom shows a publishing date) ISBN 0-7935-7583-4, shows it in cut-common, i.e. 4/4. ©1947 Unichappell Music Inc & Elvis Presley Music Inc. A lyric and chords can also be found in Rise Up Singing, which doesn't really tell you much; but which implies 4-beat measures by the chord spacing given. Rise Up gives a list of recordings, presumedly agreeing with the version printed(?). Quite frankly, the 4/4 notation does a better job of showing the way I've generally heard it performed, although neither version really shows the "swing" of a specific performance. I'll have to try to dig out my Travis CD to see which way he did it. One might "think" it in 3/4, but with a "drag" or "hold" on one beat of each measure, so the duration of each measure is a long-3-count, with a sort of wandering fermata, or as a 4-count with the emphasis moving around in the measure. Usually, the first or second syllable in each measure is "drawled out" to fill the beat. Either way works ok, but the 4/4 version is not uncommon in performance. - Sort of like those 3/4 polkas where the "beat note" is also "held" to make it come out sounding 4/4(?), except that in this piece the "beat/held" note can move around in the measure(s). John |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Jul 03 - 07:13 AM A quick listen through on The Best of Bluegrass: Volume Three (Track 13), CMH Records 1995, which appears to be Merle doin' his original stuff, is definitely "Dark as a Dungeon" in 3/4 time. (I don't find any disk number on the CD, and my index doesn't reflect one on the packaging. It's a 3 disk set.) Compared to some other performers I've listened to recently it's a rather tame rendition - more sing-songy than some recent covers. I'm not sure, but there appeared to be one or two verses that other performers have changed somewhat, so I guess now I'm going to have to dig out my several versions and see if I can figure out which one(s) I really like. SWMBO pointed out that the song is on a Johnny Cash disk that has another one she was trying to learn, so the constant repetition may be what made the 4/4 phrasing sound okay to me; and - as she noted appropriately - Johnny does (almost) everything in 4/4.(?) Now if I can just find that old NGDB disk... John |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 13 Jul 03 - 08:52 AM "incredibly hoky" - New word to me. What's it mean? |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Jul 03 - 10:35 AM hoky? - I've usually seen it spelled "hokey" - possibly a take off on "hocus pocus," - from the same root??. As used in my neighborhood, it usually means "phoney" or "contrived," although as a slang term it's pretty flexible. My CD Random House Dictionary gives a second def of "cloyingly sentimental, mawkish" but I've seldom heard it used with that meaning. No etiology given, but it's indicated as having been around since ca. 1825??? Probably one of our scholars will be along to give the full "book definition." John |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: PoppaGator Date: 13 Jul 03 - 12:16 PM Wherever I've lived (18 yrs New Jersey, 5 yrs Indiana, 32 yrs New Orleans, Louisiana), I've always understood "hokey" to mean "corny" -- pretty much what Random House says. Whatever the exact meaning, this seems to be an American word, unknown across the pond. When I used it once myself in another thread and was questioned about its meaning, we bounced definitions back and forth and decided that "hokey" (as this American understands it, anyway) means much the same thing as the British slang term "NAFF." Sound about right? |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: GUEST,Q Date: 13 Jul 03 - 01:24 PM Hokey has two meanings, possibly unrelated. This from the Oxford English Dictionary: Hokey, hoaky- "In by the hokey, a petty oath or asseveration." Jameson, 1825, from Ayrshire. James Joyce used the expression "by the hokey fiddle" in Ulysses. An English expression originally. The American 'hokey' may be derived from hokey-pokey, 1846. Originally hocus pocus, but came to mean a cheat, nonsense, a cheap kind of ice cream, etc. Hokey- Age uncertain. American slang. Cleveland Amory, 1927 (Merriam Webster's). The OED quotes the NY Times for 1945, "Equally a part of America are the dull films, the tasteless, hokey confections that public taste ought to repudiate." The word is probably older than 1927. Definitions given above, phoney, corny, etc. are as good as any. 'Artificial', or 'contrived' also expresses the meaning. Don't recall hearing Dark as a Dungeon in 4/4, but I only have the Merle Travis. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: BuckMulligan Date: 13 Jul 03 - 07:16 PM Golly - now there's a thread drift I didn't anticipate. I used the term to mean "corny, banal, trite, unoriginal, artifical, contrived." There's a connotation (yea verily a shade or nuance) of embarrassment in most usages of the term in the US. That which is hok(e)y maketh us cringe a little when we witness it. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: DADGBE Date: 14 Jul 03 - 02:37 AM Missippi John Hurt played Leadbelly's Irene Goodnight' in 4/4 time. He played it once on Pete Seeger's NPR TV show. Sounded odd but damn if it didn't work OK in his hands. |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: CraigS Date: 14 Jul 03 - 06:30 PM I have a version by Pete Seeger somewhere, and my memory says it's in walz time. Re: hokey - definition borrowed from Clive James - fresh as falling cow-plop and true as old dog Trey ... sentimental splurge (from Lonesome LEVIs Lane) |
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Subject: RE: Dark as a Dungeon--3/4 or 4/4 time? From: Gary T Date: 14 Jul 03 - 10:31 PM I am surprised that the particular book I'm using has this discrepancy. It's the "Country Music Hall of Fame Series" (5 volumes) published by Hal Leonard. I'd noticed that the arrangements for a few songs got a little "chord happy" (extra semi-exotic chords in songs everyone plays as 3-chorders), but it flabbergasts me that the time would be wrong. As per guest Jon's request, here's how it goes (fudging some of the eighth notes): Come // lis- / ten / -- / you // fel- / lers / -- / so // young / -- / and / so // fine / -- / -- / And // seek / -- / not / your // for- / tune / -- / in the // dark / -- / drear- / y // mine / -- / -- / It'll // form / -- / as / a // hab- / it / -- / and // seep / -- / in / /your // soul / -- / -- / Till the // stream / -- / of / your // blood / -- / is / as // black / -- / as / the // coal / -- / -- / It's // dark / -- / as / a // dun- / geon / -- / and// damp / -- / as /the // dew / -- / -- / Where // dan- / -- / ger / is // dou- / ble / -- / and // pleas- / -- / ures / are // few / -- / -- / Where the // rain / -- / -- / never // falls / -- / -- / and the // sun / -- / -- / never // shines / -- / -- / It's // dark / -- / as / a // dun- / geon / -- / way // down / -- / in / the // mine / -- / -- / ~~ // |
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