To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=82256
84 messages

Songs We're Too Cool To Sing

21 Jun 05 - 03:58 PM (#1506207)
Subject: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

Many years ago at a North Country Folk Festival in the northern penninsula of Michigan, I had a real treat. I was slotted in to a
workshop titled "Songs We All Know But Are Too Cool To Sing." I thought that it was a great idea. Bordering on cool. I sang I've Been Working On The Railroad," but the real topper came from my friend Jerry Rau who sang ABCDEFG, and got everyone to sing along.
Someone did On Top Of Old Smokey, from what I remember.

It was a good reminder that our purpose in singing is NOT to look cool. Just because a song is overly familiar doesn't make you un-cool to sing it.

In the reverse, I was amazed many years ago when I sang Blue Diamond Mines at a gathering in a home and someone else was furious with me. She had "discovered" the song (a little late as Jean Ritchie had already recorded it) and was angry that someone else was doing "her" song. I wonder if she thought it was alright for Jean to do it, as she was the one who wrote it..

Very uncool.

So fess up.. what song would you do in the workshop?

(Another strange workshop was simply titled "Out On A Limb." But that's another story..)

Jerry

Still uncool after all these years


21 Jun 05 - 04:02 PM (#1506210)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Joe Offer

I don't really think of myself as "cool," but even I am too cool to sing "Today" (Randy Sparks) - but I sing it anyhow because women like it.
-Joe Offer-


21 Jun 05 - 04:03 PM (#1506212)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

Aha! Now we know the motivation for your singing, Joe. To get the chicks!

Jerry


21 Jun 05 - 04:04 PM (#1506214)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Midchuck

I credit Ian Tyson, with his performance on his CD, "And Stood There Amazed," with convincing me that it was all right to sing "Home on the Range."

Peter.


21 Jun 05 - 04:09 PM (#1506217)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Wesley S

Rocky Mountain High and Blowing In The Wind


21 Jun 05 - 04:12 PM (#1506221)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Uncle_DaveO

"Eeentsy Weentsy Spider"????

Dave Oesterreich


21 Jun 05 - 04:17 PM (#1506224)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Charmion

If you're happy and you know it, don't clap your hands -- blow a razzberry!


21 Jun 05 - 04:29 PM (#1506234)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Bee-dubya-ell

I draw the line at any song ever sung by a Care Bear.


21 Jun 05 - 04:59 PM (#1506262)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Pseudolus

Wait a minute, I have 20 month old sons, your naming all their favorites!!!!

Frank

P.S. ...uh, and they think I'm cool!


21 Jun 05 - 05:16 PM (#1506277)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Chris in Wheaton

Mark Dvorak sings "What a Wonderful World" with pictures no less. But not It's a Small World, thank God.
Mark aslo does Smile (Chaplin).
Great guy, Mark is.

Chris in Wheaton


21 Jun 05 - 05:27 PM (#1506290)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: PoppaGator

"Kumbaya"

"Michael Row the Boat Ashore"

"Scarlet Ribbons"

Even in 1966/67, when I thought it was pretty cool to play and sing the above, they weren't really all that cool at all...


21 Jun 05 - 05:39 PM (#1506300)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Rapparee

"Little White Duck" and anything sung by Barney, the giant purple Zuccini.


21 Jun 05 - 05:43 PM (#1506304)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: TheBigPinkLad

Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.


21 Jun 05 - 05:46 PM (#1506309)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Le Scaramouche

I'll Tell Me Ma.


21 Jun 05 - 05:53 PM (#1506318)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: DonMeixner

The Teddy Bears Picnic.


21 Jun 05 - 05:53 PM (#1506319)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Jim

Agree w/"Kumbaya" and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore."

How about "Wimoweh," "This Land is Your Land," "Dem Bones," "Skip to My Lou?" There are a bunch that have been done so much that its now 'uncool' to sing them. I'm usually immune to this, as I love to sing the old standards, but I have to admit that "Mary Ellen Carter" (which i once loved) is rapidly becoming unendurable.


21 Jun 05 - 06:20 PM (#1506335)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: PoppaGator

DonMeixner: I've always liked "Teddy Bears' Picnic," and if it was good enough for Dave Van Ronk ~ a definitively cool individual ~ who else could possibly claim to be "above" it?

GUEST,Jim: You agree with me on "Kumbaya" and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" but NOT my other nomination?

I can only assume you are completely unfamiliar with the extremely cheesy quasi-folk pop song "Scarlet Ribbons." Well, it was my first fingerpicking piece, playing 6/8 arpeggios, three notes up and three notes down each measure. (I was very young, and not very cool at all.)


21 Jun 05 - 06:25 PM (#1506343)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Janie

Notice the overlap in songs in this thread and the thread "Songs to Get People Singing?"

Janie:>)


21 Jun 05 - 06:27 PM (#1506346)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Peace

Silver Threads and Golden Needles
On Top of Ol' Smoky
Bicycle Built for Two


21 Jun 05 - 06:32 PM (#1506349)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,celtaddict at work

Pseudolus, welcome back; haven't seen you in t-o-o l-o-n-g. And congratulations on the youngsters (which likely explains why we haven't heard from you).


21 Jun 05 - 06:41 PM (#1506360)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,ClaireBear

Well, I always used to feel that way about "Oh Danny Boy," but my somewhat more financially astute/desperate partner amended my "It'll be a cold day in hell before we..." to "We'll only sing that one for a $20 tip." (By the way this was 1976, when $20 was a lot more than it is now.)

Much to my surprise, we got the tip. (Actually I kind of recall that the guy gave us $50, but I could be misremembering that.)

I developed a great fondness for Danny Boy that day!

So...I respectfully suggest a hefty "hokey song surcharge" for such requests. Usually the requester will demur -- whoopee, then you don't have to sing it! -- but if they say yes, the financial incentive can handsomely offset any momentary lapse in coolness.


21 Jun 05 - 06:47 PM (#1506362)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: michaelr

When Irish Eyes are Smiling
I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen
The Unicorn Song

Claire -- I second the "hokey song surcharge". I've been heard to advise punters to write their request on the back of a $50 bill -- no one has yet taken me up on that.

Cheers,
Michael


21 Jun 05 - 06:52 PM (#1506364)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST

The Wild Rover


21 Jun 05 - 06:53 PM (#1506366)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: breezy

'Athenry,' but I do it and it always works cos I treats it with respect.


'Zoo tomorrow' by T P, but I dont do it....yet

Lts facit some of the songs mentioned are naff, but only cos I dont know the chords for Teddy Bear's Picnic

I revived Blowing in the Wind cos not many of our youth know it and its still highly relevant as is Where Have all the Flowers Gone?

bye


21 Jun 05 - 07:00 PM (#1506374)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: sixtieschick

I'm not cool, so it's not a problem.


21 Jun 05 - 07:26 PM (#1506405)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: PoppaGator

RE: "Hokey Song Surcharge"

For many years, this old and by-now-yellowed sign has been hanging in New Orleans' Preservation Hall, home to authentic classic ("Trad") jazz:

Requests: $2
Traditional Requests: $1
"The Saints": $10

Keep in mind that we're talking pre-inflation 1960s dollars here. For traditonal jazz-band players, "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" is the single definitively un-cool piece.

sixtieschick ~ Who are you trying to kid? You're absolutely cool! (I suppose not caring can only help one's coolness quotient...)


21 Jun 05 - 07:31 PM (#1506410)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Jim

PoppaGator:

Well, I am only marginally familiar w/Scarlet Ribbons. I was only 5 years old in '64, so my standards of what was hokey were, perhaps, yet undeveloped.

GUEST:


21 Jun 05 - 07:32 PM (#1506412)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Art Thieme

"Cool Water", "The Frozen Logger", "Cold Cold Heart", anything at all from Cool And The Gang, "Hannah", "The Frozen Charlotte", "On The Wild Moor"---many others.

I hope you had a good birthday, Jerry.

Art


21 Jun 05 - 07:33 PM (#1506413)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

Hey, Poppa: We are all so un-cool that we are the definition of cool. Too cool to be worried that we are un-cool.

Jerry


21 Jun 05 - 07:41 PM (#1506420)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: sixtieschick

Jivin' Jerry and da Big Poppa, I'm hip, daddy-O. Crazy man, crazy!


21 Jun 05 - 07:47 PM (#1506427)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Sidewinder.

My least favourite song of all time is "In The Year 2525" by Zager and Evans and I have been fortunate in never hearing anyone, other than the aforementioned, perform the song.However, if I were to enter into a hostelry and hear some guitar playing goofball attempt to perform this travesty I would have to disembowel the unfortunate soul with his instrument. I myself refuse to perform anything by Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Steeleye Dan,Uriah Heep,REO Speedwagon, Styx, Emerson Lake and the other one, Genesis and/or Phil Collins. Because "it don't move me".How anyone can rubbish a Woody Guthrie classic is beyond me!Refer to previous posting on that one.

Regards.

Sidewinder.


21 Jun 05 - 07:58 PM (#1506430)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

Gee sidewinder... I'm with you... I'm never tempted to do songs by any of the above. :-)

Add I had a dog and his name was blue (which I still can enjoy singing, loving dogs and all.

There's A Tavern in the Town is another one I still can sing.

Birthday was fine, Art. Thanks. Your's is coming up, in case no one else has noticed yet.

Jerry


21 Jun 05 - 08:32 PM (#1506449)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Sidewinder.

Thank you for your kind words Jerry and keep up the good work.

Best Wishes.

Sidewinder.


21 Jun 05 - 08:50 PM (#1506459)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Stephen R.

"Happy Birthday to you"

"Jingle Bells"

Anyone remember "How much is that doggy in the window?"?

Generally, the more people that know it, the less cool, I suppose. I'm happy to say that I don't hear "Mary Ellen Carter" often enough to be tired of it.

(To my fellow Orthodox: I won't discuss the way Russians sing troparia of Tone 4, which includes the great majority of festal troparia, other than to ask: Why not a tune?)

Stephen


21 Jun 05 - 09:33 PM (#1506487)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Uncle_DaveO

To the contrary of Art's preferences, I love The Frozen Logger, and I confess that I sing it too much.

Many years ago, when I was young and callow, my brother's 10 kids, who constituted my biggest (in size and frequency and enthusiasm) audience, when I'd sing for them for two and three hours at a time, would request certain songs over and over and over and over and--well, you get the idea.

As a result, for many years thereafter I couldn't bring myself to sing Big Rock Candy Mountain or Froggie Went A-Courtin'.

Only of recent times, after a lapse of (what? 45 years?) am I able to sing those songs again.

Dave Oesterreich


21 Jun 05 - 10:28 PM (#1506524)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: sixtieschick

There's also "Cool" from West Side Story, and "Cool Water" by the Beach Boys, containing the immortal lines,

In an ocean or in a glass
Cool water is such a gas


21 Jun 05 - 10:47 PM (#1506541)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,.gargoyle

HAPPY BIRTHDAY    (standard American version)



Sincerely,

Gargoyle



not to mention to dowdy old sisters.


21 Jun 05 - 11:35 PM (#1506583)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: DonMeixner

Nuts! I don't know what brain drain I was sucked into. I completely miss read this thread. I still do "Teddy Bears Picnic", usually at the drop of a hat, or no hat at all.

I guess I'm not too cool at all then. I won't do "The Voyage" or "The Old Man" unless I'm paid to and then I still bitch about it.

Maybe I'm too cool to do "Honey" for straight.

Don


22 Jun 05 - 01:28 AM (#1506612)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: PoppaGator

Gawd, I hope you're too cool to sing "Honey" with a sraight face!


22 Jun 05 - 02:58 AM (#1506631)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Matt_R

Cast's arrangement of "Auld Lang Syne"

Oh yeah

The Beach Boys' "Cool Water" is awesome, as is all of Surf's Up.


22 Jun 05 - 03:45 AM (#1506652)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Dave Hanson

If ' The Teddy Bears Picnic ' was cool enough for the late Jerry Garcia........it's COOL

eric


22 Jun 05 - 03:46 AM (#1506653)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST

Oh no, the Fields of Athenry,
If I hear it one more time I think I'll cry


22 Jun 05 - 05:39 AM (#1506699)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Kaleea

I most definately remember "Scarlet Ribbons" as it was one of my alltime favs when I was a little girl.
   
    Nobody is too cool to sing Hank Williams!

    Think you're too cool to sing . . .

          Rubber Duckie (a vodie oh doh!) Jeff Moss sold over a million copies of this hit single!

         The chairman of the board (MISTER Sinatra to you) sang:
         "It's Not Easy Being Green" also from Sesame Street


22 Jun 05 - 06:07 AM (#1506717)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Crystal

She'll be conin' round the mountain
Plus any other verses to the same tune, clean or not!


22 Jun 05 - 06:57 AM (#1506751)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: jacqui.c

Scarlet Ribbons is a great song and so is Silver Threads.

I think I've got too old to worry about cool.


22 Jun 05 - 08:08 AM (#1506812)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Janie

I'm with you, Jacqui! And when I was young enough to worry about cool, I never seemed to "get it" anyway!

Janie who was a nerd before the word was invented.


22 Jun 05 - 08:16 AM (#1506820)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: An Englishman Abroad

We must be that cool we are frozen here in Columbus Ohio.

I'll Tell Me Ma.
Fields of Athenry
'Zoo tomorrow'
The Wild Rover
Mary Ellen Carter

all regular parts of sets in this area. Makes me think we are in the backwoods.

Must admit to doing a stupid version of Streets of Laredo

all the best   John


22 Jun 05 - 08:36 AM (#1506831)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman

All the silly songs from camp, from A Is for Aardvark to Ye Cannae Push Yer Granny Off a Bus. I did the big turnaround and made a collection of the things, Baby Owlet, Itsy Bitsy, Floating Down the Delaware, Gopher Guts, Mister Moon Moon Moon, etc. etc. Wretched once, but now I love 'em.

Many of the Burl Ives "standards" from before we all discovered Authenticity. Some have already been mentioned. You know...Molly Malone...Blue Tail Fly...hundreds. The whole contents of the Burl Ives Songbook, Burl Ives Sea Songs, etc. And they're wonderful songs!

Spider John Koerner was one who early on said, Hey, these songs are great. Casey Jones...sing it. Cindy...sing it. Aunt Rhody...sing it. The Fox? Sure. (And better and slower than Nickel Creek, too.) That was liberating for me. I could reclaim what is, after all, our common folk heritage, even if ol' Burl did sing it to death.

I sing whatever song I like now, familiar or unheard-of, and I'm usually able to hear them all as if for the first time. (But then, some people would say I never did have any taste.)

Bob


22 Jun 05 - 08:39 AM (#1506833)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: harpgirl

If it's not too cool for Bob Coltman, it's not too cool for me!


22 Jun 05 - 09:16 AM (#1506871)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Gadaffi

In the late 1970s/early 1980s, thanks to the Bracknell Folk Festival's (aka Handsome Mouldiwarp) policy of finishing the Saturday night with a 'Rough Music' session where each artiste had to do something 'they wouldn't normally do/have never done' in their act. Remarkable performances ensued.

Similar sorts of recitals were tried at local folk clubs. At Fleet, I recall Maggie Holland singing 'Streets of London', Rebecca Over performing 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone', with myself responding with Chuck Berry's 'My Ting-a-Ling'. Public decency and poor memory denies me passing on what other appalling ditties were performed that evening although I shall doubtless be racking my brain on the train home later today!


22 Jun 05 - 09:34 AM (#1506890)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

I'm with you, Bob:

I can still enjoy singing Froggie Went A Courtin' and the Fox. What great lines in those songs.. Old Blue, too.

Uncool comes in many flavors. Sometimes, if you approach a song that may be generally thought of as "un-cool" as if you'd never heard it before, you can give it a fresh start and breathe new life into it. As an example, I must admit that I am terminally bored with Burl Ives version of Froggie Went A Courtin', yet Almeda Riddle's version is as whimsical and charming as the day I first heard it. Same song, some different verses and for me, a much fresher approach by Almeda. I still find myself singing King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-meo without warning, driving in the car.

Another example: Wade Mainer's version of John Henry... another chestnut roasted too long. Just the line "When the people out West heard of John Henry's Death, they couldn't hardly stay in bed," makes that song a perennial favorite of mine.

Now there's an idea for a workshop... Resuscitating old standards. I'm not quite sure how you could do that with Michael Row the Boat Ashore (Maybe a bluegrass version?) but we all could give examples of worn-out songs that sound brand new because of a different version someone came up with.

Jerry


22 Jun 05 - 09:49 AM (#1506906)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Leadfingers

Like Jacqui c I am too old to be cool - In fact even more so 'cos she's but a slip of a girl - So I dont give a damn about what I should or shouldnt sing ! Last weekend we 'did' Wild Rover at a farmers market and someone dropped a Fiver in the case !!


22 Jun 05 - 10:04 AM (#1506918)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,cluthabloke

It's now uncool to be cool...so my daughters tell me then in the same breath say I can say "cool" but not their Mum...she doesn't say it right! Anyway, enough of that rubbish. Some of my favourite songs are listed. Many have put a coin in my pocket! Streets of London though ...well mibbe sometime in the faaar future. Never say never.
A Pizza Hut A Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut...with actions of course then make up your own verses:-)


22 Jun 05 - 10:04 AM (#1506920)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: JulieF

I do very well received version of the hippopotamus song.   Great fun to sing when you are in the right mood, especially if people don't know that you do it.   In keeping with my usual repotoire I introduce it as one of the few happy love songs that I sing !

J


22 Jun 05 - 10:26 AM (#1506945)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Amos

My mum-in-law and I have conspired to develop a playlist for my next amateur CD production, of all sloppy sentimental numbers. The CD will be called Hoke Springs Eternal.

A


22 Jun 05 - 10:29 AM (#1506947)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Art Thieme

Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight-----originally inspired by the Chicago Fire of 1872.


22 Jun 05 - 10:59 AM (#1506969)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Little Hawk

Me and Bobbie McGee
The Unicorn Song
Song Sung Blue
Ay! Calypso
Que Sera, Sera
Blue Velvet (and anything else by Bobby Vinton with "blue" in the title! Aaargggh!)


22 Jun 05 - 12:26 PM (#1507070)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Sorcha

You Are My Sunshine
Red Wing
Arrrggghh!!! I hate them, but have to do them!


22 Jun 05 - 01:12 PM (#1507097)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Uncle_DaveO

Let's talk about the psychology of why we don't want or are uncomfortable with singing some of these "uncool" songs.

Some that work with my psyche are these:
1. I want a song I sing to come across as my own, without too great preconceptions on the listener's part--"That's not the way Joe Blow does it," or "That's not the way I learned that, back in the 60s, from PP&M. How can I sing along with you when you don't do the 'standard' version I know?" Frankly, I don't want the listener, Joe Blow, or PP&M singing in the listener's head when I'm singing.

2. The song may seem infantile, or at least juvenile, and thus my presentation dismissed. Various examples might be "Eentsy Weentsy Spider" on the one hand, or some song which was adopted (and sometimes adapted out of recognition) by the writers of grade school song books.
Recently I sang "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill", and my wife, a school teacher, dismissed it, saying, "Oh, that's a junior high school song!"

3. Singing such a song as "Eentsy Weentsy Spider" to an adult audience, because it's such a simplistic, babyhood song, is likely to seem a put-down to the adult listener.

I am assuming in the above that the given song was originally, in its own terms, a good song, "cool" enough in its own time and to its intended audience. If it's a lousy song to begin with, the concept of coolitude doesn't even apply, seems to me.

I expect others can track some other mental/emotional reactions that make for discomfort in singing certain songs.

Dave Oesterreich


22 Jun 05 - 01:32 PM (#1507113)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

ego, Dave

Jerry


22 Jun 05 - 01:51 PM (#1507127)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Le Scaramouche

Some songs I plain don't like, Kumbaya, for instance.


22 Jun 05 - 02:12 PM (#1507147)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

And there are songs that might be thought of in some situations as "cool" but are decidely un-cool in other situations. At the workshop, I did Lone Star Trail as close as I could to the original recording on the Folkways Anthology by Ken Maynard. Even though this was at a folk festival, singing very nasaly, and playing a simple, clunky guitar accompaniment for many folks was "un-cool." But, I just like the way that Ken Maynard sang it, and it was a song I'd originally learned in Grade School as a kid. Doubly un-cool.

That's why I did it..

And I still like doing it..

singing that song, that is..

Jerry


22 Jun 05 - 02:43 PM (#1507175)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GLoux

59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)

-Greg


22 Jun 05 - 02:54 PM (#1507179)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: kendall

If I like it, I'm secure enough to sing it.


22 Jun 05 - 03:20 PM (#1507196)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Don Firth

If everyone is singing a song and it seems to be overdone, you might want to shelve it for awhile, but don't fall in with the "everything is disposable" mentality that modern society seems to be lumbered with. No matter how many times a good song has been sung, it's still a good song. It's not like a worn-out ball point pen. There is an infinite number of performances left in it.

When I first started singing folk songs in the early Fifties, it took awhile to find sources of songs. The first song book I picked up was a copy of A Treasury of Folk Songs compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb (drug store paperback), a nice collection of about ninety songs, including Barbara Allen, Lord Randal, Careless Love, Streets of Laredo, Froggie Went a-Courtin'—you get the idea. All old war-horses that you don't hear sung much anymore, of if you do (say, the ballads in particular), they're usually sung in some far-out, exotic version. Next was Lomax's Folk Song U.S.A., Sandburg's American Song Bag, and Dick and Beth Best's Song Fest. That was about all that was available, unless one started to dig in the local library, which I did.

Back in the Mists of Antiquity (in the early Fifties, well before the 1958 Kingston Trio recording of Tom Dooley kicked off the Great Folk Scare), in this area, a couple of folk music nuts like Sandy Paton and Walt Robertson, plus three or four others like me—whom other folks regarded as a bit weird—were constantly grubbing around trying to find songs to learn. One of our main sources was the folk music bin at Campus Music and Gallery. It contained about a dozen records, all 10" LPs:   mostly Burl Ives, one or two by Susan Reed, a Josh White or two, a couple by Richard Dyer-Bennet, one by Cynthia Gooding (wow!!), Pete Seeger's Darling Corey album on Folkways, and one by Kathleen Ferrier (opera singer) with piano accompaniment. That was what one had to draw upon for building a repertoire of songs.

I would say that about 80 or 90 percent of the songs that were being sung back then, I never hear anymore. Most of the better known ballads back then (the aforementioned Barbara Allen, for example) just aren't done anymore and a lot of the younger singers don't know them at all, and may have never even heard them (except maybe if they saw "Songcatcher").

This declaring songs "uncool" is really kinda dumb! Some time back, I came to the conclusion that, "uncool" or not, if I like a song and feel impelled to learn it and sing it, I'll go right ahead. The principles I operate on are to use my own arrangements but don't do anything freaky or cute with the song to try to make it "new and interesting;"   just sing the standard version and try to do it the best I can. Put it across as is. Just sing it well.

I got all five of the Mudcat "Blue Plate Special" CDs some time back, and, among other things, I took special note of Sandy Paton's beautiful, straight-forward rendition of When You and I Were Young, Maggie—which is an old "parlor song." And it got me noticing other songs of that general type, such as Home, Sweet Home. I also started taking a good look into Stephen Foster songs. Good stuff, really. And although there have been threads here trashing such songs as The Fields of Athenry, as far as I know, nobody around here does it, so I learned it and I sing it. And people ask me to sing it. So there!!

Declaring songs "uncool"—now that's really uncool! If a few self-styled super-sophisticated snobs sit there and roll their eyes, that's their hang-up.

If you like it, sing it!!

Don Firth


22 Jun 05 - 04:07 PM (#1507233)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Uncle_DaveO

Jerry Rasmussen said:

ego, Dave

Jerry, I'm not really sure what you meant by that, but if you're suggesting that my ego involvement is showing, you're pretty damn close to right.

Singing for an audience is life's-blood to me, and there's no question that it's an exercise of the ego. I make no apologies for it.

Dave Oesterreich


22 Jun 05 - 04:35 PM (#1507262)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Hamish

Johnny Silvo does loads of "uncool", but, because he means it, it's great!

And, hey, Poppagator, I've done Michael Row the Boat Ashore lots of times. And recently. It works. Just about. Usually.

I did a phase of Seekers kitsch, but I'm cured now, although they used to go down well. But they were definitely camped up and not meant.

I did Don't it Make my Brown Eyes Blue (great song!) and Stand by your Man last night. But only in the break. I don't think that counts.

I hate "cool". There were those of my generation who were too cool to like The Sweet's Ballroom Blitz. And then there were those who transcended cool to know a good song when it smacked them around the place!

Now I'm old enough to not care if I'm cool. Does that count as cool? (And I don't want any replies from people who actually know me!)

Hamish


22 Jun 05 - 06:08 PM (#1507366)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan

To my ageing and often irrational way of thinking, there are few musical joys more worthwhile than sneaking a version of an "uncool" song up on people, when they´re not looking (or listening, more correctly). It´s a question of shifting the angle of the prism slightly so that the light comes from a different direction. Good parodies of great songs are one way of doing it - but often, in fact, its just a matter of tune, time or voice selection. Hearing the silence develop is the reward.

Regards.


22 Jun 05 - 06:12 PM (#1507371)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Bill D

hmmmm.. maybe "Done Laid Around" and "Home on the Range" and "Banks of the Ohio" and "Katie Cruel" and "Farther Along" and........ ahem..."Managua, Nicaragua".......no doubt 40 more.


22 Jun 05 - 06:33 PM (#1507402)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Jim

Matt R:

Cast's version of "Auld Lang Syne" UNcool? No, no, no. (Although their rendetion of "Kilkenny" can get tiresome.) Guy Lombardo's version is the uncool one, although as I get older, I'm a lot more inclined to cut old Guy a little slack.


22 Jun 05 - 07:01 PM (#1507433)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T

My choice for burnt fingers uncool?

Tommy Steel's   "Little White Bull"


No contest.

Don T.


22 Jun 05 - 07:03 PM (#1507439)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: mandoleer

Saints was regarded as cool by a bunch of young Liverpool girls playing it on recorders (two playing tambourines at the same time!) and a snare drum when they brought the house down at St George's Hall in a BBC Music Live concert. The other schools taking part didn't know you could SWING with recorders... (Another fond memory of that concert is asking the bus driver for 'One and eleven halves' on the way down...). Apart from which, I regularly join in with Athenry and don't care. In my opinion (very far from humble), those who worry about being cool aren't. Those that just don't care what people think are far cooler. Cool is what you can get away with. Cool is being a leader not a follower. Cool is doing what seems cool to you at the time - and not worrying about it. (My bike has been described as 'cool' by kids with very modern shiny machines - it's of uncertain age, is lime green and day-glo orange and has a grey and purple luggage compartment at the rear - which amuses me somewhat.)


22 Jun 05 - 07:58 PM (#1507494)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Jerry Rasmussen

No, no, no, no,no,no,no Dave. You asked what others reasons there are that people don't do "uncool" songs. Ego is certainly one of them. I didn't mean you. 'SFar as I know you are not at all an egotistical person. There was a time in my life when I would have avoided certain songs because I thought that I wouldn't look good performing them. My ego. When most of us start out as a performers, we're insecure enough that we don't do songs that we feel might make us look bad. Some of that is healthy... a recognition of the audience and their taste. But some of it is fragile ego. As the years go by, most of us realize that we are pretty much who we are, and there's no need to try to impress anyone, our present ourselves as someone we aren't. The "cool" becomes irrelevant.

A reminder... I started this thread because of a workshop I was in. I thought it was a good reminder that a good song is a good song, and there's no sense in trying to appear cool.

Either you got it or you don't got it, baby!

Jerry


22 Jun 05 - 08:29 PM (#1507532)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Snuffy

I do lots of "uncool" stuff, just because I like the songs and it feels good to sing them:
Wild Rover
Athenry
Black & White
Nobody's Child
She Wears Red Feathers
Barbara Allen
Where Have All The Flowers Gone
I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen

etc, etc ad nauseam


23 Jun 05 - 02:21 AM (#1507722)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Hamish

Oh, and Nellie the Elephant. That works!

But who said Katy Cruel? That's a staple of mine and others of greater renown. It never occurred to me that that might be uncool   ~8^?


23 Jun 05 - 06:24 AM (#1507809)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Dave Hanson

Listen pal, if you sing ' Little White Bull ' I shall be forced to kill you.

eric


23 Jun 05 - 09:20 AM (#1507943)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Snuffy

Oh yes, Nellie The Elephant. And what about Lily The Pink?


23 Jun 05 - 09:31 AM (#1507952)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Le Scaramouche

Recorder and tambourine, is that like a modern pipe and tabor?


23 Jun 05 - 11:02 AM (#1508006)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Huw Richards

In one of Terry Prachett's Discworld books he describes the final test for Novices to become fully fledged 'Monks of Cool". They are taken into a place with all possible types of clothing and to say which is the coolest. The correct answer is "Whatever I choose to wear".

Mind you, I refuse to sing "swallowed a peanut" and one or two other songs - but generally it is because for me they are linked with some unpleasant memory.


23 Jun 05 - 12:08 PM (#1508067)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Janice in NJ

Almost all the songs made the "uncool" list because they have been done over and over again so many times, and for a very good reason: they are good songs!

I am not afraid to say that among the songs I often perform are...
Long Black Veil
The Midnight Special
Sloop John B.
Charley on the MTA
Irene, Good Night
If I Had a Hammer
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Blowing in the Wind
The House of the Rising Sun

and horror of horrors...
This Land is Your Land.
I guess that makes me very uncool.


23 Jun 05 - 12:31 PM (#1508087)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman

Yes, Kumbaya and Michael Row the Boat Ashore are real challenges. I happen to like "Michael" very much. Not easy to sing though. I go back to the Bahamian original and it's still hard to fight the rompin', trompin' Pete Seeger-led cliche. I like Pete a lot and it's not his fault, but everyone has imitated him and it's very difficult to subtract the banjo swing from the song. A capella is one way into it, but I still have to get the arrangement out of my mind. Which for me means I must sing it differently. Not easy.

Sometimes it's possible to break a song arrangement cliche by using an unfamiliar instrument such as thumb piano, bodhran, or hell, sweet potato. Or just banging on a bucket or a salad bowl upside down. (Gee maybe I should try "Michael" on a slide whistle.)

Kumbaya: first time I heard it, it was no cliche. It's hard to remember now, but I was entranced by the mysterious syllables and the tune I'd never heard before. It quickly became cheesy and drippy-sounding to me (largely through really bad monotone group-singing, which causes the song to sag like a Dali watch). But though I admit I don't sing this one, really never did, still I can partly recapture the initial feeling.

Every song---yes, EVERY song, no matter how banal---has a mystery at its core. If you can penetrate to that mystery, that song will sing itself for, and through, you. Or at least that's my experience.

Hey you guys, great discussion of an intriguing topic, and harpgirl, thanks... it's getting more fun to be uncool every minute.

Bob


23 Jun 05 - 12:47 PM (#1508105)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman

One related thought...

I have, I'm sure we all have, felt the sag in spirits when the clamor arises for some song everybody dotes on and it's pretty unworthy. Especially if it's off my personal song map.

I used to hate people saying "Sing Tell Me Why" (as in "the ivy twines"). Of course the perverse comeback is to sing the Stoneman Family version of "Spanish Merchant's Daughter" (Oh No John variant), which starts with the same three li'l wordz.

It can be unbearable, as noted above, when "Tom Dooley" is all the rage, to be asked to sing that. Ugh ugh ugh, drags me down just to think of it. I love Tom Dooley, without the cutesies...I sing it in the Grayson and Whitter version. But to be asked to blat out what everyone else is blatting out at this very moment is just degrading to any singer.

Maybe that's why it's so great that folk just now is the farthest thing from pop exposure, and the better for it.

That is nothing, though, against the song. "Tom Dooley" survived the Kingston Trio, and "The Fox" will survive Nickel Creek, and so on and on.

So maybe the real question isn't necessarily "Songs we're too cool to sing," but "How to elude getting trapped in a song craze while it's going on, so you can survive to sing the very same song in a new context after the hoopla dies down."

Um...having said all those brave words in previous messages, I gotta admit "Scarlet Ribbons" makes me ill. But that may be because a college roomie played it to death and I couldn't get away from it. (In other words, it's tied to a bad experience, to quote a comment above.)

La la la la.

Bob


23 Jun 05 - 02:33 PM (#1508188)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: Pseudolus

Exactly right celtaddict, it even took me two days to respond to the welcome back!! HA!

Frank


23 Jun 05 - 03:19 PM (#1508210)
Subject: RE: Songs We're Too Cool To Sing
From: GUEST,Clutha

The "Tom Dooley" post is most un-cool ; listen to Doc Watson's version & description of the original.