Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!

Subject: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Glynis
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 06:22 PM

I'm doing a gradually-evolving project around song repertoire.

I'd like to know if you have deliberately chosen not to sing songs which were formerly part of your repertoire; if so, why have you stopped singing them - have your sensibilities changed, is it in response to a change in the social climate, is it connected to your age, personal experience, etc.

Also, I'm interested in why you might have begun to sing other songs - for reasons other than just a change/variety.

Please be specific about the songs, where you got them from, the version you sing (or don't sing), etc.

Thanks,

Glynis

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Deckman
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 07:32 PM

Hi Glynis ... My appologies, but at this moment I do not have the time to respond in the detail you wish. However, I do briefly want to mention two things: I think this is a great idea for a thread, and I also want to mention that over the many years, I have laid many songs aside. I have done this for generally one reason: I knew that I was'nt ready to do that song justice. Is this the kind of input you are looking for? CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Leadfingers
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 07:42 PM

When the 'Troubles' started in 1969 I and a Hell of a lot of other UK singers dropped the Rebel songs from our rep. There seemed to be remarkably little point in singing 'Dublin In The Green',cracking chorus tho it was when there coud be people in the audience with Husbands, brothers etc serving in Northern Ireland.
That is the only time I have consciously dropped a complete Genre of songs all at once. The rest of the time , a lot of Older songs have just been displaced by more recently learned material.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Deckman
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 07:52 PM

"Leadfingers," perfect point. I also, about the same time stopped singing the IRA ballads that had so stirred me. I still sing them to myself, but only to myself. CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Scoville
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 08:41 PM

I stopped singing the gospel song "Farther Along" because of philosophical issues. I still love the tune, and love a lot of other country gospel songs, but I tend to be choosy. I didn't grow up in that kind of religious environment and sometimes they hit me wrong.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 10:04 PM

To a certain extent, singing a song is like acting in a play. When one sings a song one assumes the character of the person who is telling the story of the song. That person may be an outright narrator as in, say, "The Long Black Veil", but doesn't have to be.   Since what's happening in a song most often didn't actually happen to the person singing the song, the singer is not speaking from his own experience and, thus, is assuming a role. I won't sing any song that is presented from the viewpoint of a character with whom I don't feel an affinity.

For example, I live on the Gulf Coast where native-son Jimmy Buffett is extremely popular. Gigs at bars, and particularly beach bars, are always replete with audience requests for Buffett songs. Now, I like quite a bit of Buffett's music when he does it, but the laid-back, beer-drinking, joint-toking, beach bum persona that Buffett has assigned to the characters telling many of his songs just isn't me. I don't feel genuine when I try to sing them. I can't sell that lifestyle when I don't live it and, to put it bluntly, don't like the people who do live it.

I won't do Irish Republican songs for the same reason. Even in my imagination, I can find no common ground with the characters telling the stories of Republican songs. In my magination, I can be a railroad hobo, even though I've certainly never been one in real life, but I can't imagine myself as an Irish rebel/patriot.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Scoville
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 10:12 PM

Is Jimmy Buffett a cultural thing? I'm on the Gulf Coast, too (Houston vicinity) and my ex-boss was OBSESSED. I didn't mind Buffett until I worked at that place and had to listen to him all the time.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 10:57 PM

Yeah, I think it's a cultural thing. Specifically, it's a beach thing. People who live more than an hour's drive from either the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean have never heard of the guy.

Bruce (Pensacola, FL vicinity)

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Les B
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:41 AM

Scoville - how odd - "Farther Along" is one of the few religious songs I've learned (although I actually haven't done it for awhile). Mainly because it doesn't get into the "God", "Jesus" name dropping.

Can you give us a hint about the philosophical dislike? It is perhaps a bit negative on saying how other people live.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Flash Company
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 06:41 AM

In common with Leadfingers & Deckman, I suddenly started listening to the words of some of the Irish songs I was singing in the late 60's and thought 'I'm not sure I should be going there!'
I agree about 'Dublin in the green' being a cracking tune. There is a version I heard which purports to go back to the Battle of Blenheim

Hurrah for the Scarlet & the Blue,
Bayonets glistening in the sun

Someone must have the rest

FC

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Micca
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 08:28 AM

Here you go, Flash Company, this is the version I sing

THE PLOUGHBOY (THE WARWICKSHIRE R.H.A.)

I am a jolly ploughboy and I'm ploughing up the fields all day,
'Til a silly little thought came into my head I thought I'd be away,
For I'm tired of the dear old country life since the day that I was born,
So I've been and joined the army and I'm off tomorrow morn.

I'll leave behind my pick and spade and I'll leave behind my plough,
I'll leave behind my old grey mare I shall not need her now,
And no more will I go harvesting or gathering the golden corn,
For I've been and joined the army and I'm off tomorrow morn.

Well there's one thing that I'll leave behind and that's my Nelly dear,
And I've promised I'll be true to her whether I be far or near,
And if ever I return again I'll let you all see me,
For we're going to do the churchyard walk and a sergeants wife she'll be.

Ch: The Ploughboy
And hurrah for the scarlet and the blue,
Helmets glistening in the sun,
And the bayonets flash like lightening to,
The beating of the military drum.
No more through fields of wheat I'll roam
Or among the waving corn
For I'm off to join the army
(I've taken the kings good shilling)
and I'm off tomorrow morn

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Deckman
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 08:30 AM

I can give you an example of one song and it's many varients that speak to the changes in me over the years. Back in the early 1950's, the first folk song I heard and learned was "Foggy, Foggy Dew," pretty much as sung by Burl Ives. My mentor of the time was the late "Willi Waw Willi." I sang this version often until I heard and learned the fine version that Sandy Paton recorded in the late 50's. I sang that for some years. In fact it ended up on an obscure record that several of us made at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962.

Much later, I learned the version as recorded by Ewin McCall. I still prefer this version as it's much slower, deeper, and much more thoughtful. There is no way I could have performed it in my younger years.

What I found interesting is that when the version from the 1962 resord surfaced recently, I at first thought, "Hey. What a neat version." I didn't even recognise that it was me, at first. When I was recently asked to sing that version at a gathering, I did so, but then I followed it with Ewin's slower varient. The effect was quite startling.

The point I'm trying to make is that I have aged (matured?) over the years, my tastes have also. And this is very true of most of the singers I know. CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 08:40 AM

After the 9-11 attacks, I stopped singing any war song, no matter how much I liked it, as well as any religious songs ditto. Exceptions = the few about how unutterably awful war is - no glory, just death and pain. Now, I've relaxed again, and I'll sing them but I think about the lyrics more, and talk about meanings more with my kids before we sing them together.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 09:17 AM

I noted in a much earlier thread that I don't sing "Isn't it grand boys" because when I do people seem to die. I mean people related to me by either blood or marriage, not the listeners. Superstition, perhaps.

I sing Irish rebel songs, but only for myself to keep the lyrics fresh. I'd do them among a group of friends as well, but not otherwise.

These days I'm drawn more towards 1) humorous songs, such as "Johnny Maceldoo" and "I was born about 10,000 years ago", 2) optimistic songs, such as "Mary Ellen Carter" and "The Yew Tree", 3) drinking songs and other "neutral" songs, such a "Mary L. McKay", "The Idiot". I'll also do war songs from the wars such as WW2, the US Civil War, the American Revolution, the Jacobite Rebellion, and so forth -- strife long over. Protest and anti-war songs from the sixties, too.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: GUEST,Barry
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 09:34 AM

A very interesting topic. First up I am Irish - live in the southern state. Was rared on rebel songs and loved them until 1969. I don't support terrorist violence and wish that those on either side would listen to the vast majority of us and dissappear.

That been said there are some rebel songs that I love. As kids my father used to sing us to sleep with The Bold Fenian Men but I always thought it was a sbout a woman plucking nettles.
Unfortunately these songs were hijacked and became non-PC.
I wonder if in these times of a peace process it is PC to dust some of them off again.
My own opinion is that it fully depends on the audience. For instance a version of The Merry Ploughboy relating to the British Army might be non-PC in Ireland. While the version "Dublin in the green" might be non-PC in England.
Although anything Irish might be non_PC after what happened in Twickenham last Saturday :-) :-)

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Glynis
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 11:47 AM

Thanks for all of that, so far.

What about gender politics? I'd be interested in this particular topic from both male and female perspective.

If your repertoire has changed over the years alongside your age, please indicate the decades in which you sang/stopped singing certain songs, or give me your age. PM me if you don't want this broadcast on the net!

What about songs relating to industries, or strikes, etc.?

Keep the information coming! Thanks,

Glynis

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:20 PM

Bee-Dubya-Ell, I live in the UK, which is about as far as the Gulf Coast as you can get, and I'VE heard of Jimmy Buffet - used to do a couple of his songs (PencilThin Moustache and Chivalrous Shark). But he IS an acquired taste!

Oh BTW, I've been to the Gulf Coast (Houston, Clearlake and Galveston Island - Aaaaaaagh!).

Johnny :0)

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Deckman
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:57 PM

Glynis ... I can sure think of one type of songs I no longer sing ... anything relating to homesexuality issues. Not that I ever did sing many, but I do remember one ditty we sang in Sausilito, California in 1959. This was a parody of "East Virginia":

I was born, in Petaluma,
Sausilito, I did roam,
There I met, the strangest fellas,
Who's age and sex, I could not tell."

It declined from there. Bob

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:58 PM

Bee-dub, Srollin' Johnny beat me to it.
That's why Buffett sells out his concerts all over he States.
By the way, there are 3 Buffett brothers.
Jimmy, Warren and Allyoucaneat.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: DonMeixner
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 01:09 PM

I draw the line with songs I like.

I care if the song is or is not politically correct I will still sing it as long as I like it.   I won't edit a song that was once acceptable and it isn't now. The historic value of a song is more important to me that whether it mentions Jesus, God, War, Women (Wymyn) or Indians in currently acceptable terms. The only exception is when the song uses the "N" word. Then I change that to something that fits the context of the song.

And I also don't sing songs I can't. I don't sing in church. Not for any religious reason but because I find church songs to be set in awful keys and are generally not suited for my voice.

Don

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 01:11 PM

Actually, I do perform "Pencil Thin Moustache" and "The Great Filling Station Holdup". It's the pirate/dope smuggler/beach bum songs that I can't relate to. And I was being facetious about JB only appealing to US coastal residents. There are Parrotheads everywhere. It just seems that the closer one gets to Jimmy's hometown of Gulf Shores, Alabama, the stronger his attraction is, and I'm only an hour's drive away from there.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Willie-O
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 01:41 PM

"the laid-back, beer-drinking, joint-toking, beach bum persona that Buffett has assigned to the characters telling many of his songs"...

Hey. I guess I should learn some more Jimmy Buffett! Except I would quibble with the persona in one detail...it would be boat bum, not beach bum.

I used to occasionally play with an Irish-Canadian singer, somewhat older than myself, who used to be a bluegrass groupie. So she had some interesting repertoire...once while we were preparing for a gig, she tried out a song that used to be popular in her bluegrass crowd. Something about Clayton somebody's pickup truck. Clayton went off to Vietnam and left his truck up on blocks, and the narrator (his name must be Bubba) is thinking and fantasizing about how his life will be great once he figures out how to gain ownership of Clayton's truck. The funny punch line is about how he got a girl pregnant, "but that's OK cause I ran her down with Clayton's pickup truck." Clayton's truck saves the day again.

I had to observe that I didn't find that terribly amusing. She agreed, just had never thought about it before, so that was the end of that song. I had to wonder why that was supposed to be funny in the 70's...

Pete Seeger has written about how he used to sing "It's a Shame To Whip Your Wife on a Sunday" but dropped it after getting his consciousness raised. It's obviously satire but he found it didn't meet his criteria.

Some years ago I learned Martin Carthy's version of "Get Up and Bar the Door", which is of course about an old couple who are too busy giving each other the silent treatment, to prevent the invasion of their home by some robbers. At the end the auld wife is apparently raped by the robbers, causing her husband to break his silence by reprimanding them, so she cries that she won the argument "You spoke the first word, John Blunt, she cried, so go down and bar the door-oh."

I still think it's a good song, I just haven't been in a venue where I wanted to sing it it an awfully long time.

W-O

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 09:16 PM

Strikes and industrials? Heck yeah. I love "Coal Tattoo." And "Dark As A Dungeon." And the Union songs I learned at my daddy's knees, like "Union Maid." Woody Guthrie, Joe Hill -- if I know 'em, I'll sing 'em. Why wouldn't I?

The song from which I took my nom-des-claviers, by the way, was "Outlawed Rapparee." These days, when I sing it, I change the chorus slightly to

"So lift your glasses, friends, with mine
And give you hand to me,
I'm the tyrant's foe
I'm freedom's friend
I'm an outlawed raparree."

I hope the authors don't mind.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Deckman
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 10:00 PM

Rapaire ... well done! Bob

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Moses
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 07:04 AM

I used to sing "Marble Halls", which has a lovely, haunting, melody, but I was told by an old(er) singer that it's an "unlucky" song. He wouldn't (didn't) specify what was unlucky about it.   At the time I hadn't heard this superstition but strangely, shortly afterwards, mention of it was made in the Daily Mail. Various contributors to the column reported ill-luck coming to someone who had recently heard it sung. I stopped singing it "just in case" - silly??

I understand it was originally a music-hall song. Anyone any idea how it came to be thought of in this negative way?

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 08:08 AM

Interesting what Deckman said about the Foggy Dew. I have sung this song during the last six decades, in various versions, to three assorted tunes. And I have specifically changed the words accordingly over the years, depending how I felt about the story as I grew up and changed. In particular, I reworked a bit that I thought was offensively "double-standard". The lines
"I never told him of her faults"
or
"I never told him what she done" occur in old versions. I make a point of singing
"I never told him what we done" now.
   Normqally I cant be bothered with changing songs for PC reasons, either sing'em or chuck'em is my philosphy. This one stands out to me as the one occasion when I've made a feminism-influenced PC change in a song I perform.

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Mar 04 - 05:08 AM

I've heard 'Marble Halls' referred to as the Macbeth of Folk singers - never called by its real name and never sung anywhere not a stage....

I try to sing songs that other people are not doing. Every time I prepare a song I've not heard for years, I find everyone else is doing it. Songs that everyone was doing a while ago fall by the wayside as others take over.

I try very hard to sing new ones (new to me) so that others have the opportunity. If someone didn't do new songs, then soon we'd be stuck with the same 8 songs to the same 5 tunes, much in the way that Irish session music sounds to a non folky person.

Sometimes though, it's easier to write a new "traditional" song than it is to find one that doesn't upset at least one ethnic, racial or gender type pacifist.

LTS

Subject: RE: Songs you sing and songs you don't sing!
From: Deckman
Date: 12 Mar 04 - 10:31 AM

Another thought, I hope it's in keeping with the question. Many times over the years, and there's been lots of years, I have purposefully left a song. By that I mean, I have stopped singing it on purpose. The reasons vary, but when I do this deliberatly, it's always with the thought that I will return to it someday. And someday maybe 20 years. And, when I do return to the song, it's always refreshing and full of spirit. And here's the strange part, I usually return to the same "version" that I left. But it always feels like a new friend! Bob