Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: ToulouseCruise
Date: 30 Mar 05 - 07:50 AM

okay... maybe I am too young (36) or not been listening to this style of music long enough, or maybe it is just a regional thing... but I have never heard of the song Canadian Railroad Trilogy. Anyone know of where I might find this on this inflammation highway? not just lyrics (that part's easy!)...

Brian

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From:
Date: 30 Mar 05 - 08:06 PM

My vote for best Tyson song is "Summer Wages", hands down, and them ain't no 'merican names in thar. I also think "Someday Soon" is a stronger if different song the way he wrote it as opposed to Judy's "missing my boy friend" reading. Mike

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Mar 05 - 08:37 PM

"Summer Wages" is a brilliant song. No doubt about it.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Severn
Date: 30 Mar 05 - 09:21 PM

Shouldn't this poll be entitled "50 Strong Whims?"



Severn

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: DonMeixner
Date: 30 Mar 05 - 09:59 PM

Little Hawk

I gotta agree. If "Summer Wages" isn't my favorite Ian Tyson song then "Short Grass" is. I'd have to live or die on difference.

Don

or maybe its "Wild Geese"

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 05:31 AM

Can I put in a word for Tony Cuffe's arrangement of 'When First I Went To Caledonia'? Never bettered (Sorry Martin!).

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Keelo
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 08:12 AM

"I'm astonished that there's nothing by James Keelaghan in the top 50,
and I'm astonished that I'm the first to point that out here. Surely
Cold Missouri Waters deserves a place."

Greetings,

While I'm Canadian, that song is about an American and an event that took place in the USA. So I don't consider it a "Canadian" songe per se.

Cheers,

Keelo

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: John Hardly
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 08:39 AM

best new music from Canada -- The Duhks

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 09:38 AM

How could they not inclue "Mary Ellen Carter" by Stan Rogers.   Summerfolk ends each festival with this song.    How many other songs on the list have a festival dedicated to that song?

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 09:06 PM

Point taken, Keelo (a few messages up). Still, oughta be room in the top 50
for Hillcrest Mine, or Red River Rising, says I.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Severn
Date: 31 Mar 05 - 09:41 PM

The wounds of Mary Ellen shall be cauterized again!!!

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Paranoid Android
Date: 25 Apr 05 - 09:27 PM

The Black Fly song was mentioned by Bob the Postman in this thread.
I recall a "folkie" who sang that song in Dublin in the 60's and I haven't heard it since. I have checked out the Lyrics in Digitrad but the "Midifile" there does not sound anything like the air that he sang. Can anyone verify that the midifile (in Digitrad) is the correct air to this song?

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Paranoid Android
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 06:05 AM

http://www.blackflyhunt.ca/blackfly[1](1).mp3

I searched all night and found the above link.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 08:56 PM

Blackfly Video Clip

Hi there, P/A. I see that the link I posted earlier to Wade H.'s obituary has already become obsolete. Try the link just above. There you will find (I hope) a video clip of an animation which gives a couple of verses of the song as sung by the man himself, plus another video clip of "Log Drivers' Waltz". I agree that the Digitrad midi doesn't sound much like the sung version, even if most of the notes are the same. The grassed-up version of Blackfly you located is kinda fun. I have recently added this song to my repertoire--the chords and words are in Rise Up Singing. Bob.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 11:36 PM

And all those missing Kate & Anna McGarrigle compositions, not to mention those by the amazing Nancy White .....

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Willie-O
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 08:03 AM

Didn't mean to kick your opinions around PoppaGator--yup, just having fun. The best thing about listening to 50 Tracks all winter was the arguments between the panelists.

I had actually thought about phoning in "Cold Missouri Waters" last year when they were doing 50 Tracks without a Canadian Content proviso--but it wouldn't have gotten more than a two-second audio clip, cause, again, both this year's and last year's selections were for POPULAR songs. And I'm a big fan of James Keelaghan, but however terrific a writer/performer he is, and obviously well-established on the international folkie circuit, he is sadly NOT on the popular radar. Pretty much like every other folkie singer-songwriter type whose career started after 1975. (Fire away, no doubt I'm wrong and you can dig out the discographies to prove it!)

I have this view that western writers are an entity unto themselves--in the forty-odd years of Ian Tyson's writing career, his songs have been notably about the west, and which side of the forty-ninth parallel a song was set on hasn't been made much difference. One reason his writing is so good is that he has never succumbed to any kind of flag-waving approach to songwriting...always tells a real story.   

Summer Wages is my favourite too--you can play that sucker anywhere, in a country bar or a folk club. (Maybe not at a womyn's festival, but you won't see me there anyway)

The thing about Someday Soon is that there is no one way to sing the lyrics, you have to make all these decisions--is he going to ride the rodeo and she'll follow, or can he ride but follow her, or maybe she rides the rodeo and his pa can't stand her cause he's a chauvinist patriarch who thinks she should be barefoot in the chuckwagon? This can be kind of fun but personally I don't like to think that hard.

I could go on and on, but I have to go to work instead.
Cheers
W-O

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 03:50 PM

By the criteria on the CBC website, I'd have to go with "American Woman"

50 Tracks Essential Song Criteria:

- Does it woo you with words?

"Woo" isn't the word I'd use, but the words are very powerful and memorable

- Does it move you with melody?

The rythm is more moving than the melody, but its Rock and Roll, Its supposed to be that way.

- Does it have you from the hook?

It has several excellent hooks, The repeated phrase "American Woman" the guitar vamp at the start, a very memorable guitar solo, and the twist where the "American Woman" being sung to represents the whole United States. The lines "I don't want your war machines, I don't want your Ghetto scenes" completely reframe the whole meaning of the song. A "break up" song with geopolitical overtones. Wow. It was masterful!

- Does it define a generation?

It not only defines a generation, it defines how a generation of young Canadians, and a lot of young Americans, were starting to view the US. see the lines quoted above.

- Did it create a musical revolution?

Not really, but then, neither did any other song on the list. Musical revolutions are pretty rare.


For the most essentially Canadian song, I'd go with Northwest Passage. A Canadian folk singer driving across some vast expanse of Canadian countryside thinking about the explorers of the past. What id the "One warm line?" The Railroad? The Trans Canada Highway? Canadian Identity? Canadian Unity?

More than any other song, that one gets me thinking about Canadian history and what it is to be Canadian. Canadian Railroad Trilogy is a dry history lesson in comparison.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 04:02 PM

For an Expatriot Canadian, it is Joni Mitchel's "If I had a River." or Lucie Blue Tremblay's "Tour Song", or of course, Un Canadien Errant".

For a pure poetic discription of a single aspect of Canada, "Let Me Fish off Cape St. Mary's is good. I grew up 100 miles from Cape St. Mary's. But INMHO, 'Mon Pays' by Gilles Vigneault (1965) is better.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Burke
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 06:50 PM

Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is another one that is not about Canada. The boat was taking ore from one US port to another US port. The ore was probably mined in northern Minnesota.

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconson

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:07 PM

Mon Pays was #30. American Woman was #5. Northwest Passage was #4. I too find Northwest Passage very moving, despite the bathos of the song turning out to be about a guy on a car trip (en route to the Vancouver Folk Festival, presumably). I think the "one warm line" is the vanishing thermal trace of a solitary warm-blooded explorer traversing a frozen landscape. It refers to the ephemeral human presence in the wilderness which IMO is the true essence and symbol of Canada--not some crummy highway or railroad.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Will A Scot
Date: 14 May 05 - 12:21 AM

I'm a poor excuse for an authority on best Canadian songs, but one I would like to throw in the mix would be Hart Rouge "Danny Gaudry"

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: number 6
Date: 14 May 05 - 12:39 AM

How about "I'm movin on" by Hank Snow!

sIx

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 14 May 05 - 08:51 AM

"I'm Movin' On" was #34 on the list. See the link in the first posting in this thread.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: dianavan
Date: 14 May 05 - 09:40 PM

Scollin thru this thread was a medley! Wow - I hope Canadians keep pumping out the tunes. I can't imagine a memory without Ian and Sylvia or Leonard Cohen or Valdy or Joni Mitchell or Ronnie Hawkins or...

Beautiful songs!

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Mr. BEEF
Date: 18 May 05 - 05:12 PM

personnally i like the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 11:26 AM

RE: "Someday Soon" ~ I first heard it from Ian and Sylvia, and really loved it. That was years before the cover version came out, of course, but I still hear the original rendition in my mind. But you're right, it's set in the US, not Canada, which probably means something in this context.

The story in the song is based on Ian's relationship with Sylvia. They met in Toronto in 1959, when she was 19 and he was 26. Injury had ended Ian's career as a rodeo rider. Sylvia grew up in Chatham, Ontario, where Mr Fricker, her father, worked in the white goods section of Eaton's department store. Ian and Sylvia's albums were on display in the record racks around the corner.

Just as the song says, Sylvia's parents were not keen on their association. Mr Fricker and my Uncle Peter went to a bar every Friday night, and Mr Fricker frequently complained about the "pseudo-cowboy" who had married his daughter.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: meself
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 02:26 PM

Thanks for that anecdote, henryp - that's funny.

Now, while I see it's been fifteen years, I like Bobthepostman's last post (whatever happened to him?). I thought I was the only one on earth who was struck by "the bathos of the song turning out to be about a guy on a car trip (en route to the Vancouver Folk Festival, presumably)" - those lines in which ol' Stan compares himself cruising along the Trans-Canada to those half-mythical wilderness explorers of Canadian history just make me cringe every time I hear them ..... Maybe you have to have spent a night or two in a tent in the Canadian wilderness, as opposed to at a folk festival, to really get what I mean.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 11 Aug 20 - 09:32 PM

I find it loads of fun to read what I had written 15 years ago. I don't think my opinions have changed a bit. Henry, Thanks for the story about Mr. Fricker's opinion of Ian Tyson. Wadda hoot!

Don Meixner

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 11:15 AM

Thanks, meself; all these years, I thought I was the only one. In fact, "Northwest Passage" is perhaps my least-favourite Stan Rogers song. There's absolutely no way a 20th- or 21st-century person can grok the experiences or thinking of a Henry Kelso.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 12:40 PM

Charmion, I think Stan had in mind a wannabe history teacher who could only find work as a long distance trucker.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: meself
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 01:01 PM

("Kelsey" - Stan got it wrong). I've just been reading a bit of the journals of Samuel Hearne - the grueling hardships of his journeys are unfathomable, unless, I suppose you've been 'lost in the barrens' yourself. And he mentions these only as they pertain to the subject matter at hand, e.g., "Because my feet were so swollen and in such pain from this affliction, we only made 12 miles that day. Some of my companions were no better off, but Mattonabee insisted that if we did not continue the next morning, we would miss the caribou altogether. It had been two days since we had eaten anything more than boiled moss, so there was no choice." (Not an actual quote, but could well be).

Of course, for Hearne's Native guides and companions, this was more or less just life as they knew it, with a few more trade goods. But they did know it, whereas for Hearne, Kelsy, MacKenzie, et al, it was all new.

As you know!

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 01:21 PM

Stan isn't the only one who got that wrong, meself. I distinctly remember the name Kelso from the Grade 6 history text used at Manotick Public School in the early '60s. Stan Rogers was only five years older than me, and his family lived in Dunnville, Ontario, so he could well have used the same history book.