Subject: RE: Burl Ives experts?
From:
GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 11 May 07 - 01:28 PM
River of Smoke / I've Got a Fever In My Bones was issued as a red-label Columbia 78 rpm single in, I think, 1950, one of the last years 78s were issued.
(I don't know about the River of Smoke / Bachelor's Life pairing, but different pairings were frequently tried in an attempt to get the best angle on the market.)
This was one of the best singles Ives ever put out. Up-tempo, beautifully sung and arranged, part of his continuing effort to mix pop with the folksongs he'd introduced to so many people during the 1940s and early 50s. That trend resulted eventually in his leaving folksongs almost entirely for country and pop.
Both songs were standouts of their kind, and this is my favorite duo of all Burl's songs.
I've Got a Fever In My Bones, by Terry Gilkyson (later of the Easy Riders and "author" of a pop recasting of the old island song "Marianne") is a great monkey lust song, undeservedly little-known -- perhaps because PC it ain't. Any farm-raised kid, though, latches onto that song at once and knows exactly how it feels.
River of Smoke, by country writer Bob Hilliard with Carl Sigman, is a different kettle of fish, strong, serious, emblematic of the postwar mood of back-to-work, wife-and-kids, little-white-picket fence responsibility. Its lyrics as best I have been able to restore them from bits and pieces remembered and googled:
RIVER OF SMOKE
HIlliard-Sigman
There's a river of smoke, rollin' over my home town,
Got to get to work, never let the sun shine down,
Black factory smoke, comin' over the hill
From the burnin' furnace of the mill,
But that river of smoke keeps tellin' me things are fine,
'Cause I'm workin' all day, makin' my pay,
Putt'n it away for to marry that gal of mine,
Pretty little gal of mine.
There's a river of smoke, rollin' over my home town,
Black fact'ry smoke, never let the sun shine down,
(line missing here about the factory whistle, not sure about the next either)
(....sayin' hurry, hurry to the mill?).
But the river of smoke keeps tellin' me things are grand,
'Cause I'll buy that ring, and maybe next spring,
I'll build that house on our very own plot of land,
The way that I've always planned.
(bridge)
High as a kite, merry as a meadowlark,
Ev'rything's bright even though the skies are dark.
Repeat verse 1
An example of the fine sort of folk-like song the era's popular music was capable of when it was really hitting on all cylinders. Bob
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sj
