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| (Photo: Simon Meeds) |
Remember that our themes are always optional, so while following the theme is encouraged, don't worry if you can't at all or if you can't keep it up all evening. As usual, any type of performance is welcome as long as you keep it acoustic.
We are heading into one of our theme-laden seasons, so here are some dates for your diary:
- 31 October - Halloween (traditions, ghosts, witches, horror...)
- 7 November - Bonfire Night (Guy Fawkes, bonfires, fireworks...)
- 14 November - Remembrance (Remembrance, war, anti-war...)
And so to last week's session: Colin, MC as usual, started the ball rolling with Out in the green fields (roud 2670).
Helen followed with a version of the Skye boat song (roud 3772). Apparently Robert Louis Stevenson rewrote the song in 1885. He judged the lyrics to be "unworthy", so made a new set of verses "more in harmony with the plaintive tune". The version Helen sang (*) was based on this version, adapted by Bear McCreary for the TV series Outlander.
Denny gave us the first of the evening's three versions of John Barleycorn: Hey John Barleycorn (roud 2141).
Paul introduced us to Shiny-o (*). According to Stan Hugill, "this halyard song was saved from oblivion thanks to the daughter of a certain Professor Hatfield who took town several rare shanties her father heard being sung by a black crew in 1886 aboard the 548 ton, three-masted barque Ahkera on an eighty-four day passage from Pensacola to Nice. He collected nine work songs, the rarest being Way down below (roud 11870), Nancy Rhee and the one we have here.
Excuse me here a quick aside. Until I was researching the previous section I don't think I'd ever seen a shanty being used for it's original purpose, whether that's capstan, windlass, or whatever. That is until I saw this video of Hulton Clint singing Across the western ocean "at the windlass". It makes the point often stressed by our shanty-singing friend Mike Starkey that people often sing shanties too fast.
Roger's first song of the evening was Adge Cutler's Twice daily.
Simon finished the first rotation with John Barleycorn (roud 164) to the tune Wir Pflügen (Johann Abraham Peter Schulz).
Helen's second song, Forever Autumn (music by Jeff Wayne, lyrics by Gary Osborne and Paul Vigrass), was already in the Dragon database, but it deserves a bit of an explanation for it's unusual history. Most people know the version sing by Justin Hayward for Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds, but it was previously recorded by Vigrass and Osborne. That however is not the start of the story, because the tune was written by Jeff Wayne for a Lego commercial in 1969, and here it is.
Roger sang Keep right on to the end of the road (*), written by Harry Lauder in 1924. Lauder wrote the song in honour of his son, Captain John Currie Lauder, killed in the First World War, and it was originally published under the name "The End Of The Road".
Helen was surprised that none of us knew The shelter of your eyes (*), written by Don Williams, which was his first single, released in 1972. It's good to introduce us to things we haven't heard before or don't remember.
It was also Helen who sang I'll never find another you (*), written by Tom Springfield and recorded by The Seekers.
Roger sang his own Ukrainian lament (# Roger Stanleigh).
Crows in the Garden (* roud 4505) was Colin's penultimate offering of the evening for it was he who rounded off the session with Take a whiff on me (roud 10062), which of course isn't as innocent as he claimed. Here's the earliest known recording from 1930.
Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.
(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)
In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).
