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12 Jun 16 - 07:34 AM (#3795034) Subject: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Phil Cooper My spouse, Susan Urban, and I are developing a UU service based on color, symbolizing someone's sense of independence and style. The song that inspired it was Zoe Mulford's I'm Gonna Wear Red Today. I was thinking of traditional songs that feature color and clothing as statements and had trouble thinking of some. I ruled out Lord Thomas & Lady Margaret (red scarlet robes lady margaret wore never could be mended again) as not on the point we want to make. Also Lang a-growin' is out (made my love a shroud of linen o so fine). Any ideas about songs where the clothing, or colors can symbolize a personal liberation? We are also considering a couple Dave Carter songs (either Disappearing Man or Frank to Valentino). I trust I'm not being too vague on what we're looking for, but any insights will be appreciated. |
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12 Jun 16 - 10:17 AM (#3795066) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jack Campin Colours as badges of political allegiance go back a long way. The blue and grey of the opposing sides in the US civil war; the colours of cockades in Britain when the Jacobites and Hanoverians were slogging it out; colours associated with Irish politics. There was a series of songs that may have made an oblique comment on those. "The Black Jock" was a bawdy Anglo-Irish song from Dublin in the 1730s; a jock is female public hair. The followups included The White Jock, The Grey Jock and The Blue Jock (maybe also a Green Jock). Google image search will tell you what they had in mind, but I didn't think blue was chemically possible in the middle of the 18th century. Maybe closer to what you have in mind, what's that song about the kid who likes to draw things in his own personal choice of colours until the art teacher beats it out of him? |
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12 Jun 16 - 10:36 AM (#3795071) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: GUEST The Wearing of the Green? |
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12 Jun 16 - 10:39 AM (#3795072) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Effsee Jack,"Flowers are red" by Harry Chapin is the one you're thinking of I think. |
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12 Jun 16 - 10:44 AM (#3795073) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: GUEST,Ebor Fiddler Little Tim Maguire. |
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12 Jun 16 - 01:36 PM (#3795097) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: mkebenn or the visual and virtual "Black Velvet Band" Mike |
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12 Jun 16 - 04:44 PM (#3795124) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Joe Offer Hi, Phil - Well the first two that struck me were "Lavender's Blue" and "Jenny Jenkins" - but making either of them fit your service, might be a stretch...
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12 Jun 16 - 06:06 PM (#3795146) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: GUEST,Phil Cooper on the iPhone Thanks. I Should also mention that we are going to do is the rolling stones, she comes in colors. |
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12 Jun 16 - 06:34 PM (#3795152) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: GUEST,Ebor Fiddler I hope I'm not being dense, but what is "UU" please Phil? Thanks, Chris B. |
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12 Jun 16 - 10:06 PM (#3795189) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Joe Offer "UU" is the Unitarian Universalist Association. |
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13 Jun 16 - 12:58 AM (#3795196) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Mrrzy My dad was appalled that I knew that the people who wore grey had lost and the people who wore blue had won the US Civil War, but didn't know which side had worn which color... the songs all had the boy in blue limping home and the boy in grey in the coffin, but never mentioned the geography. There is the purple heather, too. And the purple moor, looped by the ribbon of darkness. But that was a poem first... |
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13 Jun 16 - 01:27 AM (#3795200) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Megan L Three came to my mind, only one is trad Lassie wie the yellow coatie Dylans Yellow is the colour and Nina simone does a lovely one Black is the colour of my true loves hair |
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13 Jun 16 - 02:16 AM (#3795205) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: MGM·Lion "Black Is The Colour" was traditional before the egregious Niles went to work on it: beautiful version in Sharp & Campbell's Appalachian collection. ≈M≈ |
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13 Jun 16 - 03:47 AM (#3795214) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: GUEST Dylans Yellow is the colour Donovan's? |
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13 Jun 16 - 04:42 AM (#3795230) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jack Campin How about: I'm just a country boy, Money have I none. But I've got silver in the stars, And gold in the morning sun. A hit for Don Williams but maybe it had a trad origin? |
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13 Jun 16 - 09:11 AM (#3795298) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Phil Cooper Thanks again for the suggestions. I was thinking a possible idea which I did not articulate well initially was how the clothes one wore could help one's sense of well being, or self esteem. Also how drab or uniform type clothing can be designed to stifle that. |
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13 Jun 16 - 11:19 AM (#3795333) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jim Carroll We have a memorable recording of Ewan MacColl working with a singer, Gordon MuCulloch, using the colour and surroundings in the opening verses of the ballad, The Beggar Laddie. "It was in the pleasant month of June When gentle ladies walk their 'lane When woods and valleys a' grow green And the sun it shines sae clearly." A masterful scene-setter. Macoll suggested that it was possible to give your narrative ballds their own colour in order to visualise them Jim Carroll |
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13 Jun 16 - 11:44 AM (#3795337) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jack Campin Clothing colours: in Scottish songs, the combination of yellow trousers and blue socks was a Masonic symbol (from the brass shanks and steel points of a stonemason's compass). For a modern equivalent maybe there are songs about biker gang patches? |
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13 Jun 16 - 02:00 PM (#3795374) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Mottsnave Not clothing specifically, but Green Grow the Lilacs has quite a bit of color symbolism: there's "I wrote my love a letter in rosy red lines" symbolizing affection/love, and of course "And by the next meeting I hope to prove true/And change the green lilacs to the red white and blue," changing allegiance as an Irish immigrant to the US. |
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13 Jun 16 - 02:05 PM (#3795377) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: GUEST,Mike Yates "The Colour of Amber". |
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13 Jun 16 - 02:17 PM (#3795382) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: MGM·Lion Nobody seems [unless I have missed it] to have mentioned Jennie Jenkins! ≈M≈ |
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13 Jun 16 - 02:43 PM (#3795387) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: MGM·Lion Sorry -- Joe had indeed mentioned it in an early post. Apologies, Joe¡ ≈M≈ |
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13 Jun 16 - 03:02 PM (#3795394) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Richard Mellish In one of the versions of Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor/Ellender/Annet, when she set off to go to the wedding "She dressed herself in scarlet red". Admittedly she comes to a sticky end, along with the other leading parties, but when she is setting off she is asserting herself. Then there are some blues where someone has died and their friends and relations "re-ragged in red". Was that a colour of mourning or again asserting something positive? And how about The Green Wedding? Whether any of these are remotely suitable for the OP's purposes is another question. |
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13 Jun 16 - 05:11 PM (#3795413) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Phil Cooper They're all in consideration at this point. I appreciate everyone's comments. |
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13 Jun 16 - 05:32 PM (#3795419) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: MGM·Lion Green Wedding indeed. I published an article in OUP's 'Notes & Queries' literary journal for Dec 1987, continuous series Vol 232 No 4, called Married In Green: a common source for Scott & Dickens, which drew attention to the use of superstitions against wearing green for weddings in Scott's lengthy poem Marmion, & the relation of its interpolated poem about the Laird of Loch Invar {"Young Lochinvar"} to the 'Green Wedding' ballads, esp 'Katharine Jaffray', Child #221; & Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, in which the miser Gride wears his suit of bottle-green to marry the young & beautiful Madeline Bray by blackmail and bribery of her venal father — only to have her carried off by the hero from under his very nose, "Just like Young Lochinvar". ≈M≈ |
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13 Jun 16 - 05:44 PM (#3795422) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Joe_F There are a fair number of songs mentioning orange. But they, too, tend to be political. Likewise (since we are creeping up on 4 July), "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" ("Three cheers for the red, white, and blue"). |
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13 Jun 16 - 05:51 PM (#3795425) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jack Campin Matt McGinn: On the beach at Portobello Maggie met up with a fellow His hair was black, his teeth were yellow Down on Portobello beach... (tune: "Torna a Sorrento"). And Paul Mauriat's late 60s hit "Love is Blue" but now we're getting silly. |
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14 Jun 16 - 08:14 AM (#3795527) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Phil Cooper We are going to use Jenny Jenkins for the intergenerational moment. We're looking at the other suggestions, too. I can't say thanks enough for your input. |
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14 Jun 16 - 08:32 AM (#3795536) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jack Campin From one of the versions of Shule Aroon/Shule Agra/Gone for a Soldier/whatever... I'll dye my petticoats, I'll dye them red Through the world I'll beg for bread... but it isn't all that clear what she had in mind. And in "Her Mantle So Green" there is absolutely nothing to indicate what statement the colour was meant to make, if any. Green is hunter's camouflage in the Robin Hood stories and probably in e.e.cummings's take on it all in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn... set to music by Peter Schickele and sung by Joan Baez on her "Baptism" album. |
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14 Jun 16 - 09:15 AM (#3795545) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jim Carroll Wouldn't mind a copy of that Mike, if we're still friends The Green Wedding was one of the great surprises we found while recording elderly Clare singers - we recorded it last a couple of years ago from a 94 year-old farmer here. Jim Carroll |
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14 Jun 16 - 09:28 AM (#3795546) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: eftifino New Christie Minstrels 1963 - Green, Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfxgbsXeTdE Donovan - Colours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoEle04qu_U |
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14 Jun 16 - 10:24 AM (#3795573) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: MGM·Lion Of course we are still friends, Jim. email me your steam mail address to mgromyer@yahoo.co.uk & I will mail a copy off to you. Cheers ≈Michael≈ |
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14 Jun 16 - 11:12 AM (#3795585) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jim Carroll Thanks Mike - will do. Jim |
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15 Jun 16 - 07:03 AM (#3795844) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Ged Fox "how the clothes one wore could help one's sense of well being, or self esteem. Also how drab or uniform type clothing can be designed to stifle that." There may well be more songs to suggest that uniforms enhance "one's sense of well being, or self esteem." The "Rout for the Blues" is such a one: "They're as gallant young fellows as ever you'll see, Though you search bonny Britain all through. When dressed in His Majesty's suit you'll agree There's none can compare with the Blues." There's a nice verse in "Richard of Taunton Dean" where he dresses up to go courting: "Young Herchard put on his Sunday clo'es, his buckskin britches and silken hose, A brand new hat upon his head As were bedecked with ribbon so red." Whether or not his wooing was successful depends on the version you prefer. |
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15 Jun 16 - 08:41 AM (#3795862) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Phil Cooper I had thought of Rout of the Blues. Thanks. |
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20 Jun 16 - 07:52 PM (#3796770) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Trad songs featuring color From: Jack Campin Just remembered: a couple of years ago I met a Brummie woman at a klezmer event who was so taken with the Gogol Bordello song "Start Wearing Purple" that she had (a) started wearing purple clothes herself, (b) dyed her hair purple, and (c) invested in a purple accordion to accompany herself singing it. I doubt there are two such people in Birmingham so if anybody knows her, say hello. That act was a blast. |