D-Day 75 - Dragon 50

Commando Memorial, Spean Bridge
(Photo by Simon Meeds)

We're continuing the Dragon Folk Club 50th anniversary celebrations through to the end of June, so please come along and celebrate with us. Everyone is welcome but if you've been at the club any time during its long life you may like to perform something you performed on previous visits. We'd certainly love to hear it.

Last week's session was the second in the series of 50th anniversary events and was time also to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day with a variety of war and anti-war songs, some of which had specific relevance as did MC Colin's first, Shores Of Normandy by folk singer Jim Radford, the youngest known D-Day veteran (aged 15 years and 8 months at the time). The song, sung by Jim not Colin, went onto top the Amazon and iTunes download charts.

Geoff took a random dip in his repertoire and came up with Marty Robbins' Big Iron.

Simon went for a song about the war rather than D-Day with Liz Padgett's Plover Catcher which left the goal open wide for Mike to score with Lance-Sergeant Harry Pynn's D-Day Dodgers (Roud 10499), remarking that his father was one of them.

Derek sang a very abbreviated mondegreen he had come across of the Battle Hymn Of The Republic (Roud V17636 - Julia Ward Howe):

My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He has trampled on the village where the great giraffe is stored.

During the evening Colin set a number of D-Day poems to music. The first was The Commando Memorial (Archie McLellan). Later he combined two poems written by Tony Chapman: Keep Moving and A Quiet Place.

Mike's second and final D-Day song was Normandy Orchards by Keith Marsden and that was before he moved on to the also topical Whitsun. In fact he also shot for the target set for our 50th anniversary session because he said that he had not sung Dancing At Whitsun (Austin John Marshall) since the club was at The Lamb at Iron Acton in the 70s and 80s (I'm not sure when he last sang it).

Colin went all highbrow (there's a word you don't hear much these days) with Bertholt Brecht's The Wife Of The Soldier (tune by John Scott). While we're here, let's mention the more generally known, though differently translated, version sung by Marianne Faithful, and for completeness, here's one in the original German (tune by Kurt Weill).

When it came to Mike's final turn before he took canine chum Indy home for the evening we will never know what he was going to sing because for some reason we ended up getting him going with Hitler Has Only Got One Ball (Roud 10493 - Attributed to Toby O'Brien). It doesn't really make much of a listen, though there are apparently plenty of add-on verses but I managed to dig up this comedic explanation of its writing. It seems though that if O'Brien was indeed the author, the truth is at least as strange as the fiction, since he was "an Anglo-Irish journalist and propaganda expert, involved in espionage, who spearheaded Britain's efforts to counter Nazi Germany propaganda ".

Colin gave us a good join-in-able chorus when he finished off the evening with George Papavgeris' Friends Like These, and not a bad way to finish off it is too.

Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5, of whom 5 performed)