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Info & stories about John Greenway

Related threads:
Anyone knew John Greenway? (29)
Book: American Folksongs of Protest (Greenway) (5)


26 Oct 98 - 04:24 PM
Bruce O. 27 Oct 98 - 01:01 PM
GUEST,Bob 15 Nov 02 - 05:02 PM
GUEST,Bob 15 Nov 02 - 05:24 PM
John Hindsill 16 Nov 02 - 01:32 PM
Charley Noble 16 Nov 02 - 02:53 PM
GUEST,Jay Cadillac 19 Mar 11 - 11:33 PM
Stilly River Sage 19 Mar 11 - 11:57 PM
GUEST,CU grad 16 Apr 11 - 09:38 PM
GUEST,Diane Answer 14 May 11 - 06:40 PM
GUEST,former student U of C 1972 03 Dec 11 - 08:57 PM
GUEST,GUEST, former student U of C 1963 06 Jan 12 - 05:47 PM
GUEST 02 Nov 12 - 10:58 PM
GUEST,Fred McCormick 03 Nov 12 - 06:59 AM
Charley Noble 03 Nov 12 - 09:40 AM
GUEST,David Craig South Australia 11 Nov 12 - 12:50 AM
Charley Noble 11 Nov 12 - 08:41 PM
GUEST,Jerome Clark 15 Nov 12 - 10:01 AM
Owen Woodson 15 Nov 12 - 03:00 PM
Charley Noble 15 Nov 12 - 05:14 PM
Bob Bolton 15 Nov 12 - 08:15 PM
Bob Bolton 15 Nov 12 - 08:41 PM
Charley Noble 15 Nov 12 - 08:58 PM
Charley Noble 15 Nov 12 - 09:06 PM
Thomas Stern 15 Nov 12 - 09:31 PM
Bob Bolton 15 Nov 12 - 09:42 PM
Bob Bolton 15 Nov 12 - 11:07 PM
Bob Bolton 18 Nov 12 - 11:53 PM
Charley Noble 19 Nov 12 - 07:33 AM
GUEST,fels 01 Sep 16 - 02:56 PM
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Subject: John Greenway
From:
Date: 26 Oct 98 - 04:24 PM

As a freshman at the U of Colorado in 1959 (yes, it's true), I was fortunate to have as my anthropology prof, Dr. John Greenway. On occasion he would bring his guitar to class and introduce what most of us had never heard before or new existed; such as, talking blues, Australian folk, etc. What seems now as a simple gesture had a very big effect on my views towards music. The timing was right- 2 or 3 years either way may not have had the impact. I know Dr. Greenway's still exist on Folkways- but is he still alive, etc.?


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: Bruce O.
Date: 27 Oct 98 - 01:01 PM

According to a site on the web, he has died, but I don't know when. [Put 'John Greenway' on a search engine on the web to find it.]


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: GUEST,Bob
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 05:02 PM

Dr. Greenway died in 1991. Check Journal a American Folklore 1992, PP208-210, obituaries. They have a web site.


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: GUEST,Bob
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 05:24 PM

I have all of Greenways records except 'American Songs of Protest', recorded on Riverside RLP 12-607 and on Wattle C1. I have found only one reference on the web and that source wonted $81. Does anyone know were this recording is available?


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: John Hindsill
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 01:32 PM

Greenway did a concert at Santa Monica (City) College ca.1960. Every year, for several, a local folk show would reprise that concert. While the show and its host still are around, that tape is no longer available. Does anyone out there have their own copy...was it ever commercially available?. I'd sure like to hear it once more.


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 02:53 PM

John Greenway's book American Songs of Protest is generally available from www.Bookfinder.com at a fairly modest price. Worth reading for the overview of protest songs up until the 1960's.

Some Australians still have mixed feelings about the way Greenway collected songs in that country and his subsequent recordings.

Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: GUEST,Jay Cadillac
Date: 19 Mar 11 - 11:33 PM

Even 30-plus years later I still have so many of Greenway's maxims imbedded in my brain, witticisms and truisms (he hated the word "truism") that slammed into my young CU student's skull and stuck.
Like, "the purpose of religion is to make people behave."
Like, "morality is whatever conduces to the survival of the group."
Like, "stout fences make for brave dogs."
At the time I didn't fully appreciate his brilliance, but still I loved the man. I loved his wit, his intelligence, his guitar, his slide shows that comprised the bulk of his anthropology lectures before hundreds of young skulls.
I will never forgive the leftwing establishment at CU-Boulder for persecuting the man because he dared to think differently than they.
Rest in peace, my good professor.


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Mar 11 - 11:57 PM

Sounds like a smart and wonderful teacher!


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: GUEST,CU grad
Date: 16 Apr 11 - 09:38 PM

On Youtube there's a snippet of a tape you can buy when Professor Greenway appeared on William F. Buckley's Firing Line, discussing drug legalization (he was against it, the wise man that he was). Alas, the DVD's not worth the 10 bucks, as this particular Greenway appearance was not very compelling. I wish they'd offer some of his other Firing Line shows, as I know there were many.


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: GUEST,Diane Answer
Date: 14 May 11 - 06:40 PM

This is an answer to Bob who inquired about the record by John Greenway "American Songs of Protest". I have the record and some books which belonged to Mr. Greenway. I am willing to sell them.


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Subject: RE: John Greenway
From: GUEST,former student U of C 1972
Date: 03 Dec 11 - 08:57 PM

Had the life changing opportunity to witness Dr. Greenway's teaching of Anthro 101 as a freshman. He did, indeed, play his guitar, but he also spit out the most outrageous antisemitic, antiblack, antihispanic retoric ever blasted from a podium. His career came to end during that semester, as the school decided that they could no longer justify his tenure. Too bad, as I understand he was (at one time)a very well respected anthropologist.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: GUEST,GUEST, former student U of C 1963
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 05:47 PM

Dr. Greenway was indeed unique. I had that same class. He never taught from a book, and the final was everything to do with what he said in class.
I have several tapes of the recordings he made on Folkways ( I think) label. I cannot say he changed my life, but he certainly made one think about things in a different way. He made me appreciate folk music, and I still like to listen to it.
Any idea what he did after leaving CU? I had heard that he went to California and started a church, so as not to pay taxes.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Nov 12 - 10:58 PM

Too bad that the "former student U of C 1972" didn't provide at least one example of Prof. Greenway spitting out "the most outrageous, antiblack, antihispanic retoric (SIC)." The professor committed the sin of being politically incorrect, and he suffered for it. He was ostracized, hounded, and persecuted for daring to speak up against the bullies in the CU Liberal Establishment. I see you, former student, got precisely nothing from this brilliant man's lectures.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 03 Nov 12 - 06:59 AM

American Songs of Protest is a fine book, although it must be feeling its years by now. Unfortunately I know of nothing else published since which is in any way as comprehensive.

It includes a nice story about how Greenway found himself - entirely fortuitously - seated next to Woody Guthrie on a plane ride from New York to California.

As they flew over Oklahoma, Greenway woke Guthrie, pointed through the clouds and said "That's your old homestead down there".

Woody said "Got a pen?".

Greenway gave him a pen and watched in amazement as Guthrie wrote out a song called Gonna Lay My Head On A Bank Of Oklahoma Clouds, without a single hesitation.

Greenway said "Do you always write songs that fast?"

Guthrie said. "Nope. Only when I got a good pen."


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Nov 12 - 09:40 AM

Anyone care to characterize John Greenway's political evolution without name-calling, insults, and other troll-like postings? I'm frankly curious. I certainly listened to his recordings of talking blues and his Australian bush ballads, and read his book on American Songs of Protest. But I really don't know much about the man and the evolution of his politics and philosophy of life. I take it from the posts above, you either loved him or hated him, or maybe both!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: GUEST,David Craig South Australia
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 12:50 AM

I was Principal of a school on a remote Aboriginal Community on the Nullabor Plains in South Australia when John Greenway visited in 1965/66. He accompanied an Australian anthropologist, Norm Tindale, and they were studying the music and culture of the Aboriginal group who had been relocated from their traditional land because of the testing of Atomic bombs at Maralinga.

John impressed me because he spent quite a bit of time at our school learning the children's traditional songs but more so because he offered to bring his guitar and sing for us. He kept the students, who spoke very little English, enthralled for an afternoon with his folk music accompanied by his guitar. The staff were also very impressed by his down to earth attitude.

I found this site because I've been hunting up a song he sang that day for our Christmas programme at church. He sang the English folk carol "The Sans Day carol' which has remained with me since and I have now found it again.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 08:41 PM

David-

Thanks for your contribution.

Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 10:01 AM

Whatever his undeniable contributions to folksong research, Greenway's politics moved ever rightward in later life.

I recall watching him on William F. Buckley Jr.'s Firing Line in the late 1960s. Greenway advocated shooting smokers of marijuana and didn't seem to be joking. Buckley remarked that Greenway's views were well to the right of his own.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 03:00 PM

Jerome. That's amazing and disconcerting. At the time he wrote American Folksongs of Protest, and for a long time afterwards John Greenway was very much on the left. So he must have covered a lot of ground to have ended up in the Buckley camp.

The name William F Buckley rings a few vague bells with me. As I recall, he was an extremely right wing pundit and cheerleader for every reactionary cause imaginable, and way ahead of the curve in terms of Reaganism and Thatcherism.

Disconcerting, depressing and downright demoralising.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 05:14 PM

Very disconcerting. I wonder what the explanation was?

Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 08:15 PM

G'day Charley,

I do remember John Greenway playing a bracket of his songs at the Bush Music Club in Sydney, Australia ... early / mid 1960s - before I scarpered off to Tasmania and assorted Hydro projects ... ~ late 1965. I also remember some indignation among Sydney & Melbourne folklorists - over material they had shown to Greenway appearing as "his research" back in the US of A.

His decided shift to 'right-wing' politics had, by the time I was involved, led to a 'revised' line in our sung version of Henry Lawson's poem "Texas Jack" (an acerbic Aussie view of an American "rough rider" act that toured around the late 1800s. The litany of 'unimpressing' foreign influnces foisted on us changed, in this specific, from: (~) " ... and generals and Admirals to learn us how to fight ..." to: (~) "... and doctors come from Frisco, to learn us how to skite!."

The late Chris Kempster ... a lifelong perormer of Henry Lawson's poems a songs ... told me, before his far too early death, that he had been impressed with the strong liberal views in Greenway's early singing ... but that he had an operation of some sort ... possibly affecting some brain affliction ... and afterwards underwent a 'polar shift' in his political stance.

I wasn't particularly aligned with anybody else's politics ... but I could appreciate that things had clearly changed with John Greenway! (Notwithstanding, when I sing my version of "Texas Jack" ... I stay with Henry's old words!

I'm not sure if I have submitted this one ( ... of two ... ). I may have to extract the proverbial digit ...

Regards,

Bob


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 08:41 PM

G'day again,

I see that my portable hard drive has the words of the "Bush Music Club" - revised Texas Jack (and I note that the DT has an entirely different American song of the same title).

These are the words I remember being sung at old Bush Music Club meetings ... ~ 1963 - 1965:

Texas Jack, you are amusin'. Great Lord Harry how I laughed
When I seen your rig and saddle with its bulwarks fore-and-aft;
Holy smoke! From such a saddle how the dickens can you fall?
Why, I've seen a gal ride bareback with no bridle on at all!

What? You've come to learn the natives how to sit a horse's back!
Learn the bloomin' cornstalk ridin'? What yer givin' us, Texas Jack?
Learn the cornstalk! Flamin' jumptup! Now where has my country gone?
Why the cornstalk's mother often rides the day afore he's born'.

No, before you teach the native you must ride without a fall
Up a gum, or down a gully, nigh as steep as any wall -
You must swim the roarin' Darlin' when the flood is at its height
Bearin' down the stock an' stations to the great Australian Bight.

As poet and as Yankee I will greet you, Texas Jack,
For it isn't no ill-feelin' that is gettin' up my back,
But I won't see this land crowded with each Yank and British cuss
Who takes it in his head to come a-civilizin' us.

Though on your own great continent there's misery in the towns.
An' not a few untitled lords, and kings without their crowns,
I will admit your countrymen is busted big an' free,
An' great on ekal rites of men and great on liberty:

I will admit your fathers punched the gory tyrant's head -
But then we've got our heroes, too, the diggers that is dead,
The plucky men of Ballarat, who toed the scratch so well,
And broke the nose of Tyranny and make his peepers swell.

So when it comes to ridin' mokes, or yardin' up a cow,
Or stickin' up for labour's rights, we don't want showin' how.
They came to learn us cricket in the days of long ago,
An' Hanlan came from Canada to learn us how to row.

An' "doctors" come from Frisco just to learn us how to skite,
An' pugs from all the lands on earth to learn us how to fight,
An' when they go, as like as not, we find we're taken in,
They've left behind no learnin' - but they've carried off our tin.


A couple of 'Australianisms' probably need clarifying:

"your rig and saddle with its bulwarks fore-and-aft": Australian riding practi ce uses saddles derived from British prototypes ... not the massive Spanish-style saddles of the American 'Old west'.

"... ride without a fall
Up a gum, or down a gully, nigh as steep as any wall -"

A suggestion that our best riders could ride up the sheer, smooth side of a "gum tree" ... a stout, tall, smooth-barked eucalypt!

"... The plucky men of Ballarat," - the gold miners of Ballarat Diggings, who rebelled against swinging license fees for the right to prospect for gold ... and were suppressed by British soldiers.

"They came to learn us cricket in the days of long ago,
An' Hanlan came from Canada to learn us how to row..."

Various visiting sports men / ~ teams - English cricket teams / Canadian scullers did not do as well as they expected against Australian teams or individuals of the era ...

And, of course, this version has John Meredith's reaction to the rightward drift in Greenway's politics ... which I discard as no longer relevant!

I will dig out Henry's words ... as well as the MIDI file of John Meredith's version of a traditional (collected) tune - which I need to identify ... - and post those as well... some time later!

Regard(les)s,

Bob


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 08:58 PM

Thanks, Bob, for adding from your experience with Greenway.

I only listened to his Talking Blues recording, the Australia Bush Ballads recording, and read his American Folksongs of Protest from cover to cover. Usually there's some unhappy political encounter which one can trace the swing from left to right. Greenway was still left-leaning at the end of the McCarthy period and I'm unaware if he ever gave testimony before any of the committees giving hearings. Any other clues?

Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 09:06 PM

Here's what I've harvested from the notes included with Australian Folksongs & Ballads, Folkways Recordings:

John Greenway was born in England in 1919. As a young man, he went to the USA where after serving in the US Army in the Second World War, he furthered his tertiary education eventually becoming an English teacher and subsequently an anthropologist. Early on, he was strongly leftist with an interest in songs of protest and labour songs reflected in his records and publications. In 1956, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarshop to study Australian labour movement songs. He also undertook field work with traditional aboriginals. He viewed the aboriginal research very positively but he "became so disgusted with the abuses and power of the Australian labor movement" that he became a "rightist" which well accounts for why, when he put out this album of Australian folksongs in 1959, not one union or protest song was included.

Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 09:31 PM

RESOURCES:


BOOKS
-----
American Folk Songs of Protest
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953

¦Australia: the last frontier
¦The American tradition: A gallery of rogues
¦The Golden Horns: Mythic Imagination and the Nordic Past
¦Too Little to Cut Wood
¦A GUIDE THROUGH JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES
¦American Folksongs of the Protest
¦Anja Skaar Jacobsen, Andrew D. Jackson, Karen Jelved, and Helge Kragh, eds. and trans. H.C. Orsted's Theory of Force: an Unpublished Textbook in ... An article from: Scandinavian Studies
¦Bibliography of the Australian Aborigines and the Native Peoples of Torres Strait to 1959
¦Den praktiske muse: Tycho Brahes brug af latindigtningen. (book reviews): An article from: Scandinavian Studies
¦Don't talk to my horse;: Tall tales from the U.S.A (Folk literature around the world)
¦Down Among the Dead Men - Australian Aborigines
¦DOWN AMONG THE WILD MEN. A Narrative Journal of 15 Years Pursuing the Old Stone Age Aborigines of Australia.
¦Enlightenment Science in the Romantic Era: The Chemistry of Berzelius and Its Cultural Setting. (book reviews): An article from: Scandinavian Studies
¦Ethnomusicology
¦Folklore of the Great West Selections From Eightythree Years of the Journal of American Folklore
¦Gormless Tom and other tales from the British Isles
¦Literature Among the Primitives
¦Primitive Reader
¦Southwestern Lore, Vol. XXIX, No. 1, June, 1963
¦Southwestern Lore: Official Publication The Colorado Archaeological Society Volume 26, June, 1960, No. 1
¦Southwestern Lore: Official Publication The Colorado Archaeological Society Volume 26, March, 1961, No. 4
¦Southwestern Lore: Official Publication The Colorado Archaeological Society Volume 29, December, 1963, No. 3
¦Southwestern Lore: Official Publication The Colorado Archaeological Society Volume 29, September, 1963, No. 2
¦Tales from the British Isles (The World folktale library)
¦Tales from the United States (The World Folktale Library)
¦THE INEVITABLE AMERICANS: A Lively Analysis of the American Character
¦The Last Frontier: A Study of Cultural Imperatives in the Last Frontiers of America and Australia



RECORDINGS
----------

RIVERSIDE RLP 12-607
American Industrial Folksongs                   LP 1956
Recorded Oct. 1955, in New York

Riverside RLP 12-619
The Great American Bum - Hobo Songs             LP 1956
Recorded Dec. 1955
WASHINGTON WLP 710   
The Big Rock Candy Mountain -               LP 196x reissue of 12-619
Songs of the American Hobo and Migratory Worker

RIVERSIDE S-2
RIVERSIDE Folksong SAMPLER                   LP 1956? [2 tracks]

RIVERSIDE RIVCD-9911-2
Riverside Folklore Series Vol.3:             CD 1996 [1 track]
Singing the New Traditions-Songs, Singers and instrumentalists of the folk revival.

WATTLE(Australia) C1
Workin' on a Buildin'                      10"-LP 1957

WATTLE(Australia) C2
American Songs of Protest                   10"-LP 1957

FOLKWAYS FH 5232
Talking BLues                                  LP 1958

FOLKWAYS FW 8718
Australian Folksongs And Ballads                LP 1959

FOLKWAYS FS 3805
The Unfortunate Rake                            LP 1960 [1 track]

FOLKWAYS FA 2432
Newport Folk Festival 1959-60, Vol.2            LP 1961 [1 track]

FOLKWAYS FH 5457
The Songs and Stories of Aunt Molly Jackson    LP 1961

FOLKWAYS FH 5802
American History in Ballad and Song, Vol.2      LP 1962 [1 track]

PRESTIGE INTERNATIONAL 13011
The Cat Came Back & other Fun Songs             LP 1962


If anyone knows of other recordings, please let me know.
Also, need track list for Wattle C1.
THANKS!

Best wishes, Thomas.


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 09:42 PM

G'day Charley,

The tale of the "Great Right Shift" origins are interesting. I don't really know anybody, still around, who could appropriately comment on the account I had from Chris Kempster. Political leanings were worn quite openly in those days ... but I always viewed Chris as a fairly balanced moderate ... strong values for a peoples' muusic ... but less concerned with doctinaire politics.

I will try to sound out a few of the old hands ... but it's all water under the bridge ... down the harbour ... through the heads ... and a couple of turns round the circumpolar current - by now!

I will be posting the straight Henry Lawson version his poem (and the variously modified song, therefrom) ... about "Texas Jack" ... who, I was told some decades back, had put on his Sydney performances in an "indoor circus area" created by de-pannelling a removeable part of the second floor level of the Marcus Clark (retail shop) Building in Railway Square, near Sydney's Central Railway Station.

Seven or eight decades later, I arranged use of the Marcus Clark Staff Room ... 5 floors further up - a small room 'snuggled in the middle of the roof area' of the Marcus Clark Building ... for the Bush Music Club's Tuesday Night song-session / Club meeting.

I would have loved to know then of the connection to Henry Lawson;s poem ... and "Texas Jack"!

Regards,

Bob


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 15 Nov 12 - 11:07 PM

G'day yet again Charley,

I notice, in Thomas Stern's list above my last post:

"WATTLE(Australia)-C1 Workin' on a Buildin' - 10"-LP 1957"

That was the specific record that had impressed Chris Kempster ... and resulted in such disappointment when he subsequently met up with John Greenway.

Off hand, I don't know of anybody ... other than the Film & Sound Archive, in Canberra ... that might have copies of those Wattle recordings (re .. ?) releases. I'll have to run that past Rob Willis (or others in the same general area).

Regards,

Bob


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway - add Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 18 Nov 12 - 11:53 PM

G'day again,

These are the words of, essentially, the version of "Texas Jack" that I sing:

A Word to Texas Jack

(Sung by Alan Scott, traditional tune: The Old Bark Hut)

Texas Jack, you are amusin'. Great Lord Harry how I laughed
When I seen your rig and saddle with its bulwarks fore-and-aft;
Holy smoke! From such a saddle how the dickens can you fall?
Why, I've seen a gal ride bareback with no bridle on at all!

What? You've come to learn the natives how to sit a horse's back!
Learn the blooming' cornstalk ridin'? W'at yer giv'n us, Texas Jack?
Learn the cornstalk! Flamin' jumptup! now where has my country gone?
Why the cornstalk's mother often rides the day afore he's born!

No, before you teach the native you must ride without a fall
Up a gum, or down a gully, nigh as steep as any wall -
You must swim the roarin' Darlin' when the flood is at its height
Bearin' down the stock an' stations to the Great Australian Bight.

As poet and as Yankee I will greet you, Texas Jack,
For it isn't no ill-feelin' that is gettin' up my back;
But I won't see this land crowded with each Yank and British cuss
Who takes it in his head to come a-civilizin' us.

Though on your own great continent there's misery in the towns.
An' not a few untitled lords, and kings without their crowns,
I will admit your countrymen is busted big an' free,
An' great on ekal rites of men and great on liberty:

I will admit your fathers punched the gory tyrant's head -
But then we've got our heroes, too, the diggers that is dead,
The plucky men of Ballarat, who toed the scratch so well,
And broke the nose of Tyranny and make his peepers swell.

So when it comes to ridin' mokes, or yardin' up a cow,
Or stickin' up for labour's rights, we don't want showin' how.
They came to learn us cricket in the days of long ago.
An' Hanlan came from Canada to learn us how to row.

An' "doctors" come from Frisco just to learn us how to skite,
An' pugs from all the lands on earth to learn us how to fight,
An' when they go, as like as not, we find we're taken in,
They've left behind no learnin' - but they've carried off our tin.

32 lines, in 8 4-line stanzas … edited from Henry's original 64 line / 8 stanza poem, as published in The Bulletin, 29 March 1890.)

This was published in the Bush Music Club's booklet Songs from Lawson, 1956 … and re-printed, around 1974/5, by me during my spell as Secretary.

The version I picked up, in the early 1960s, at the Bush Music Club, reflected current politics of with the first two lines of the last verse as:

An' "doctors" come from Denver just to learn us how to skite,
An' generals and admirals to learn us how to fight, …

The version in the BMC's 'Songs from Lawson', is headed: "Sung by Alan Scott, traditional tune". As far as I know, the song was not collected from … or by … Alan – and the setting to a 'traditional tune' is credited by Chris Kempster, in his 'The Songs of Henry Lawson' as: 'Trad., "The Old Bark Hut", Arr. John Meredith (1953).

I take this to mean that Alan had settled into performing the song to Meredith's reworking of a popular traditional tune … and the words had been trimmed – and 'adjusted' to the politics and visitations of the day. These days, I'll stick to Henry Lawson's version that remains 'generally accurate' for the broad run of visiting politicians about the place!

The 1953 date suggests that it was one of the songs integrated into the New Theatre's long (Dec 1953 – mid-1955) Sydney performance run of Dick Diamond's musical play Reedy River, set around the 1890 "Great Shearer's Strike". More current political references may well have been common in their performances in other venues between 1953 and 1957.

If someone wants to drop the song ... as I've posted it about ... into the DT, I have a MIDI file of the une, as published ... and roughly as I sing it ... that I can forward to whoever handles MIDIs to DT.

Regards,

Bob


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Nov 12 - 07:33 AM

Thanks, Bob. Nice to see the words you sing.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Info & stories about John Greenway
From: GUEST,fels
Date: 01 Sep 16 - 02:56 PM

This is a stale thread but i just found it. Listening to one of Professor Greenway's folk albums fed from Rhapsody over Sonos. Quite the example of technology advancing faster than culture.
I took numerous courses from Professor Greenway during 1970-1971. Wrote an original research paper on Father Divine for him for a Culture Dynamics class. I continue to challenge myself to test principles i learned in his classes and fine that they stand up in many disciplines over time.


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Mudcat time: 25 April 9:02 PM EDT

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