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27 Jul 01 - 02:13 PM (#516121) Subject: what do you think.... From: GUEST,djh I have made up my mind , but, I am curious what other folks think or would do. I have rewritten a version of Woody Guthrie's "I Aint Got No Home" . I believe it is probably the greatest American song about disenfranchisement, But, it is also forever tied to the depression with it's original lyrics. I left the chorus, chords,melody, many of the words and most of the rythm scheme in tact. I just changed it to speak to the present. I don't intend to record it, so I don't have any copyright issues to contend with, but , I have already begun performing it.Is this folk process of crime against folk? Would Woody approve? What do you think? |
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27 Jul 01 - 02:25 PM (#516133) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: Wesley S I think it's fine as long as you tell folks upfront that you've updated Woody's song. From everything I've read Woody did a lot of that himself. Some people even call it the "folk process". |
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27 Jul 01 - 02:31 PM (#516144) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: Tedham Porterhouse Woody would probably have approved because taking old songs and changing them to suit his purpose is something that Woody did himself. BTW, Woody's "I Ain't Got No Home" is itself a rewrite of the old gospel song, "This World Is Not My Home." |
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27 Jul 01 - 02:33 PM (#516146) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: GUEST Wes, I'll tell em if they ask. I don't normally explain any songs to the audience, I play 'em. My last line should have read "is this folk process OR crime against folk" not OF. thanks |
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27 Jul 01 - 02:38 PM (#516150) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: catspaw49 Do it and explain it if you like. I added in a verse to Woody's about the fact that the situation is still the same over 60 years later ("The homeless are still on the streets, they got no place to go"--2nd line). Folk process...... Spaw |
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27 Jul 01 - 02:41 PM (#516153) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: GUEST,djh Glad to see folks agree. |
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27 Jul 01 - 02:46 PM (#516164) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: Mountain Dog Wasn't it Woody who said, "Plagiarism is basic to culture"? and "I steal from everybody"? From all I've read, he was primarily interested in delivering his message in words and tunes his audience could readily access...and he was usually generous and forthcoming with acknowledgments to his sources when he knew them. |
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27 Jul 01 - 03:37 PM (#516208) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: Tedham Porterhouse Mountain Dog, Pete Seeger attributes that line about plagarism to his father, the musicologist Charles Seeger. |
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27 Jul 01 - 03:45 PM (#516218) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: Mountain Dog Dear Tedham, Thanks for correcting my attribution...Now I'm wondering who Chas stole that great line from? |
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27 Jul 01 - 04:05 PM (#516237) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: GUEST,djh Ok since everyone agrees here is my variant- Chorus, same as always
My Brothers and my sisters, we're all stranded on this road
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01 Aug 01 - 07:52 PM (#519400) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: John Kidder I too tried to "update" this song a couple of years ago - then I sang it a few more times. I decided that, except for the "farming on the share" verse, the original was perfectly appropriate to current circumstances. When I decided that I couldn't improve even on that outdated verse, I just kept the whole song as she was wrote. I didn't know that the "brothers and sisters" verse was intended as a chorus. Thanks. |
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01 Aug 01 - 07:57 PM (#519403) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: John Kidder But I completely agree with everyone about the process, old songs to new. We must keep on writing new verses, modifying tunes. |
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02 Aug 01 - 08:03 AM (#519581) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: RangerSteve Woody's career was cut short early, so we'll never know for sure, but I have no doubt he would have updated his own songs to fit the times. |
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02 Aug 01 - 01:44 PM (#519799) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: GUEST,djh John Kidder, Brothers and sisters .... is not the chorus I was just to lazy to write the famous chorus stanza. I aint got no home , I'm just a ramblin' round I'm a hard workin ramblin' man and I roam from town to town Police make it Hard, everywhere I go And I aint got no home in this world anymore Sorry didn't mean to confuse you.
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02 Aug 01 - 02:10 PM (#519821) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: GUEST,djh John, I also agree about the strength of the original. I certainly don't think I have improved upon the song. I just wanted to speak to what a dissident like Woody would see wrong with our times. I think the Farming on the shares verse is the best verse of the song, But , who is farming on the shares today? Not Many, if any. I also am not as politically motivated as Woody, so mine is more about the overall complection of our times and not about the political issues Woody probably would have attacked. |
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02 Aug 01 - 02:29 PM (#519837) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: GUEST,Celtic Soul So long as you give credit where credit is due, and do not record without permission from the parties needing to give it, I think you are more than safe. Especially considering (as noted by so many) that the man himself did this very thing. My group does a lot of alterations on traditional pieces as well as hacking to bits some newer ones to suit our needs. So long as respect is part of the equation, no harm, no foul.
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02 Aug 01 - 04:27 PM (#519909) Subject: RE: what do you think.... From: John Kidder GregF: is there a way to change the name of this thread to include the name of the song, like the one you started, or to include all these messages in yours? djh: I sang the song for a friend last night. He is a physicist who has been out of work for a while. He thought the sharecropper verse was totally appropriate to the so-called "knowledge workers" of our times. They farm their minds instead of farming land, and are treated just the same way when times get hard. Also, your verses do sound pretty political to me. You don't sound much like a fan of the new world order. Isn't it wonderful how a tune can be a hymn, a topical song, another whole bunch of derivative topical song and then a basis for topical talk. |
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11 Jun 19 - 10:22 AM (#3995966) Subject: ADD Guthrie's I Ain't Got No Home Trump rewrite From: wysiwyg Woody Guthrie Wrote of His Contempt for His Landlord, Donald Trump’s Father "...Guthrie, in writings uncovered by a scholar working on a book, invoked “Old Man Trump” while suggesting that blacks were unwelcome as tenants in the Trump apartment complex, near Coney Island. “He thought that Fred Trump was one who stirs up racial hate, and implicitly profits from it,” the scholar, Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain, said in an interview. Mr. Kaufman said he came across Mr. Guthrie’s writings about Fred Trump while he was doing research at the Woody Guthrie Center’s archives in Oklahoma. He wrote about his findings last week for The Conversation, a news website. In December 1950, Mr. Guthrie signed a lease at the Beach Haven apartment complex, Mr. Kaufman wrote in his piece. Soon, Mr. Guthrie was “lamenting the bigotry that pervaded his new, lily-white neighborhood,” he wrote, with words like these: I suppose Old Man Trump knows Just how much Racial Hate he stirred up In the bloodpot of human hearts When he drawed That color line Here at his Eighteen hundred family project Mr. Guthrie even reworked his song “I Ain’t Got No Home” into a critique of Fred Trump, according to Mr. Kaufman: Beach Haven ain’t my home! I just can’t pay this rent! My money’s down the drain! And my soul is badly bent! Beach Haven looks like heaven Where no black ones come to roam! No, no, no! Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!... " https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/25/woody-guthrie-sang-of-his-contempt-for-his-landlord-donald-trumps-father/?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR3f5-pvCGMHFmE4b-s7PfYosv1XF2u5tdHG4n8y_k61-qdheTNYeY95KXQ |