Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 Mar 05 - 09:07 AM

given the nature of the list as "essentially Canadian", I'd certainly substitute "Urge For Goin'" for the "Big Yellow Taxi" choice (if there must be a JM song in the list).

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 05 - 08:58 AM

I'd include Stan's "Macdonell on the heights," but that's for personal reasons. "Northwest Passage" is it.

Nobody likes "In the early morning rain"?

And there's also Stan's "Barrett's Privateers", which I've heard called "the greatest party song ever written, lots better than "Louie Louie."

"Cape St. Mary" and "Squid Jiggin' Ground" are also two of my fave raves. And let's not forget "Mary L. McKay."

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 28 Mar 05 - 07:41 AM

Another for Canadian Railroad Trilogy. I have to agree that it is in a league of it's own. I would also include Acadian Driftwood by The Band.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: paddymac
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 11:41 PM

Thanks for the edjamacation, Clay T. I didn't read that anywhere, though, I got the story from a saddle-maker client who has been a friend of Ian's for quite some time. He (my friend) is travelling that final slope at present, so I can't be too abrasive about it, but I will , er, pursue the question appropriately. It's also possible I just misunderstood.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds (Clinton)
From: GEST
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 09:20 PM

How about Wade Hemsworth's The I'm Alone and Wild Goose?

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 03:49 PM

"Log Driver's Waltz" I know... But that's the extent of it....

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 03:36 PM

In case you aren't kidding, Clinton, Wade Hemsworth is the guy who wrote the Black Fly song. Here is a link to his obituary

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 03:26 PM

"Wade Hemsworth "

Who?

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: DonMeixner
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 02:50 PM

Yeah Willie,

I imagine that regionality can be an issue. But I think the things that define a song as representative of the culture of Canada could well be found in a regional recording. But then I look at the spirit of something as defining the culture rather than the gross sales.

I'm still at a loss as to why Wade Hemsworth is not on the list.

Don

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Willie-O
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:47 PM

Don, I am a big fan of Cape St Mary's, (written by Otto Kelland who died just a year or so ago) too. My personal jones is certainly of a Maritime bent.

The reason it wouldn't have made the list is that FWIW, it would have been considered "regional". And of course it's just one fine example of a very large body of work which is, well, a lot deeper than other regions of Canada might claim ;)=

Sonny's Dream almost suffered a similar fate. It just got on by persistent lobbying. One of the panel members that week, who publishes and writes most of a nation-wide music magazine with an alternative focus, Exclaim!, had never heard the song before!!!
Exclaim! is a pretty good magazine in some ways--but they expect me to understand references to seven million bands I've never heard of. That's what being over forty does I guess.

W-O

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: DonMeixner
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:38 PM

Pauline,

Cape St. Mary's (Western Boat) is in the Digitrad Data base along with half a million other great songs.

Don

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Pauline L
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:32 PM

Thanks, Don Meixner, for posting the words to Cape St. Mary's. I love that song. I havent heard it in a long time, but when I read the words, I could hear it inside my head, and I got shivers up and down my spine.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:16 PM

If I EVER hear 4 Strong Winds or Can. RR Trilogy EVER again, it'll be too soon...

And putting anything by that goof Tom Connors, or "Home For A Rest" on that list shows exactly how vacuous and worthless these kind of polls are...

'Tower of Song'... I played that last night at the request of a VERY beautiful young woman... I can still feel her eyes on me... Lens music is goof for that... We had a blast singing "Closing Time" to each other to end the night...   

And 'If I had $1000000' by the Barenaked Ladies and 'Lovers in a Dangerous Time' by Bruce Cockburn are abso-frigg'n lootly FOLK songs

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Obie
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:02 PM

We're drifting this thread but nobody ever matched Harry Hibbs doing Cape St.Mary's.
Another Newfoundland song, Squid Jigging Ground should be in any top 50 if folk is included.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: DonMeixner
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 12:42 PM

Hi Again Willie,

Here you are, Same song, two titles,   It is also on the Mirror site with music as well.

Don


CAPE ST.MARY'S

Take me back to my western boat
Let me fish off Cape St. Mary's
Where the hog-down sail
And the Fog horns wail
With my friends the Browns and the Clearys
Let me fish off Cape St. Mary's

Let me feel my dory lift
To the broad Atlantic combers
Where the tide rip swirls
And the wild ducks whirl
And old Neptune calls the numbers.
'Neath the wild Atlantic combers

Let me sail up Golden Bay
With my oilskins all a-streaming
From the thunder squalls when I hauled my trawls.
And my old Cape Ann a-gleaming
With my oilskins all a-streaming.

And let me view that ragged shore
With the beaches all a-glisten
With the caplin spawn
Where from dusk till dawn
You bait your trawn, and you listen
To the undertow a-hissin'.

And when I reach that last big shoal
Where the groundswells break asunder,
Where the wild sands roll to the surge's toll
Let me be a man and take it
When my dory fails to make it.

Oh take me back to that snug green cove
Where the seas roll up their thunder
There let me rest
In the Earth's cool breast
Where the stars shine out their wonder
And the seas roll up their thunder.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Written by Otto P. Kelland, Quality Music, Inc., PROC.
Recorded by Stan Rogers in 1982 on For the Family, Folk
Traditions, R002.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: DonMeixner
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 12:33 PM

Hi Willie,

I'm a United Statesian folksinger and I'll bet there are loads of great songs from this side of the lake I have never heard. You probably know more than a few of them.

Bill Gallaher and Jake Gailbraithe recorded Bill's song "The Last Battle", about the Metis rebellion and The Battle of Battoche a few years ago. Gordon Bok has it on his CD "In The Kind Land".

My knowing or "Western Boat" or maybe you know it as "Cape St. Mary's" in more sketchy. I seem to recall it was written by a prison warden but I can't swear to that anymore. My favorite recording of it is by The Irish Descendents. And Gordon Bok has recorded it as well.

Don

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 10:55 AM

Heh! Thanks for dropping in and correcting that, Clay. I saw you play in Orillia awhile back, and it was a good show.

The story I heard about "Four Strong Winds" was, Ian had just purchased Bob Dylan's first album (or his second one?) and was talking to everyone about how this kid was revolutionizing the whole folk scene by writing his own original songs...and how the rest of the folkies were going to have to follow suit very quickly. Accordingly, Ian began writing songs, saying, "If that little squirt can do it, so can I." His first original song was "Four Strong Winds", and it turned out to be probably his most enduring composition of all. As for Sylvia, she tried writing some stuff too, and came up with "You Were On My Mind" (another great song).

Now...how close did I get? Accurate or not?

I just saw Ramblin' Jack at Hugh's Room the other night, and Sylvia was there for a bit early in the evening, so I heard, but I didn't see her.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Midchuck
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 10:41 AM

And Clay would know. Note his last initial. Sorry paddymac you've been euchred.

That totally got by me. Duhhhh....

Peter.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Willie-O
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 10:03 AM

And Clay would know. Note his last initial. Sorry paddymac you've been euchred.   

"Four Strong Winds" won for a number of reasons having to do with quality and popularity, the bottom line being that the most listeners voted for it.   

As for others' suggestions, you need to understand the process. It has been going on all winter on CBC radio. (The "Canadian 50 tracks" was after last year's similar show, without the nationalist qualification, came up with an, English-language pop music list of the 20th century that was almost all American). They spent two weeks on each decade (pre-1950's counted as a single decade, like it or not), with weekly guests from the music biz nominating two songs each, then voting each other's selections on or off the island. BUT WAIT! Each week also had a "listener choice" of the songs which were not selected, which is how certain items of no great popularity with critics, such as "Snowbird", were added on. Eventually they had a list of 50 songs. Then there was a whole other process to rank them from 50 to 1--that was done entirely by online poll voting from CBC listeners. (Any of you could have participated so quit carping.) Remember, the theme was"popular", not "folk". (Don, I am a Canadian folksinger and have never heard of either song you mention--sorry.) What the results show, in part, is the demographic of CBC listeners, and that 60's folk music is when "folk" was actually "popular", and most importantly, that those songs are still our best beloved. Stan Rogers being the only post-1975 folk classic in the top ten. I really think the top ten is a listing of absolute classic songs, with two exceptions.

The two songs that made top ten but are not listed in the top post were "American Woman" by the Guess Who (NOT on my list, though they were a great band they did better work) and most puzzlingly, the NUMBER TWO song was that catchy little jingle by the Bare Naked Ladies from 1992, "If I Had A Million Dollars". If that had emerged in 1963, which I can well imagine, it would be a long-forgotten novelty song by now, but the kids that were imprinted with it in '92 are now old enough to listen to CBC radio.

The late Peter Gzowski, as I recall, did a similar, less structured exercise twice. I think he did it twice, because I recall two separate grand winners: "Four Strong Winds" and "Northwest Passage".

The cream always rises.

W-O

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Midchuck
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 09:48 AM

Guest Clay T. beat me to it...

If I were Canadian, I think I might vote for Northwest Passage purely from that standpoint.

But I think FSW has more universal appeal.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Clay T.
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 09:31 AM

I agree that "Four Strong Winds" is an incredible song. It was written and recorded to memorialize their divorce, a thing, I suspect, that only folk musicians would have the sentient sensitivity to do.

You can't believe everything you read on Mudcat Cafe.

Ian & Sylvia met in 1959.

They recorded "Four Strong Winds" in 1963.

They got married in 1964.

They got divorced in 1975.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: paddymac
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 08:31 AM

I agree that "Four Strong Winds" is an incredible song. It was written and recorded to memorialize their divorce, a thing, I suspect, that only folk musicians would have the sentient sensitivity to do.

I've only seen one "split up" more effectively done. In that case, both parties were home brewers. They easily settled division of all the "things," but could not find resolution to the terrible problem of dividing the beer. Finally, a friend suggested "why not have a party and drink it all?" They quickly agreed, the party was had two weeks later, and they parted as good friends.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Severn
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 08:07 AM

For "Best Canadian Rap Song", The winner is..........

(TA-DA!!!!)......


"RINGO" by Lorne Greene


Severn


(Who, if anybody, came in second?)

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Peter T.
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 07:47 AM

Canadian Railroad Trilogy is far and away the greatest Canadian song. Mon Pays is probably number two. They have a majestic quality that captures some essence of the whole beast.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: GUEST,Obie
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 07:43 AM

I loved the music of the Tysons and I think that Four Strong Winds was a great song, but it would not be my first choice. If my memory hasen,t faded too bad that song crossed from folk/country to pop and became an international hit but it was sung by Bobby Bare, an American.
                  Obie

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: burntstump
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 03:22 AM

No mention of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Lightfoot,I also think that Canadian Railroad Trilogy should be number one.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: DonMeixner
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 01:33 AM

Hmm... one song by Stan Rogers and Ron Hynes, none by Wade Hemsworth or Ryan's Fancy. I am surprised "Western Boat" and "The Last Battle" isn't on the list.

Don

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: cptsnapper
Date: 27 Mar 05 - 12:42 AM

What about Joni Mitchell's "A Case Of You?"

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 05 - 11:30 PM

Hmmm. I would pick "Four Strong Winds" as number One too, although the competition for that position is really fierce. Not surprising that Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen logged in the top 10.

I'd add Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Piney Wood Hills" and "Until It's Time For You To Go" (which has never been sung right by anyone except her) to the list.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Pauline L
Date: 26 Mar 05 - 11:23 PM

I don't understand why some of the songs, including Both Sides Now and Suzanne, would be considered essential Canadian.

Subject: RE: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 05 - 11:20 PM

I'd think the Canadian Railroad Trilogy beat the others hands down, but maybe that's just me.


A

Subject: Four Strong Winds Top Canadian Song
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 26 Mar 05 - 10:04 PM

Ian and Sylvia's 1963 hootenanny classic Four Strong Winds has been selected as the most essential Canadian pop song since the year 1900. The winnowing process, begun several months ago on CBC Radio, was flawed from the point of view of selecting actual essential songs but was useful in spurring thoughtful (and/or emotional) discussion among Canadians who care about songs. Of the top ten songs, eight could be classified in the folk genre:
'Four Strong Winds' by Ian and Sylvia
'Heart of Gold' by Neil Young
'Northwest Passage' by Stan Rogers
'Canadian Railroad Trilogy' by Gordon Lightfoot
'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell
'Suzanne' by Leonard Cohen
'Big Yellow Taxi' by Joni Mitchell
'Early Morning Rain' by Gordon Lightfoot
See the complete list here:
50 Tracks