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| Kitty Cheatham |
Last week's Dragon Folk Club session saw a good turnout of six regulars sing a wide variety of songs, some from their regular repertoires, some not and seven not previously recorded in "the database".
Colin as MC asked Bob to start the evening. He gave us Jes' like John (roud 12109), a traditional African-American spiritual hymn which was first recorded by Kitty Cheatham in 1916.
Sue's first was Ukulele, written by Guy Snape as a parody of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah.
Colin followed Bob down the spiritual route with Jordan is a hard road to travel (roud 12153 - Dan Emmet) although it was written for an 1853 blackface minstrel show. Emmet founded the first troupe in the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. Blackface minstrels are one of those things which many people may recoil from these days, but they are a historical fact and in any case many of the songs have since moved on from that environment. In this case the song was recorded in 1927 by Uncle Dave Macon, an early Grand Ole Opry star. The song was later included on the Smithsonian Institution's Folkways collection, Classic Country Music: A Smithsonian Collection. Peter, Paul and Mary sing this song on their Moving album in 1963 as "Old Coat".
Denny sang of Good English ale (roud 1512), mentioning "fatty bacon" among other foods. This later led Simon to sing Buttercup Joe (roud 1635): "Those nobby swells they laugh and chaff to see I eat fat bacon".
Paul's contribution to the first round was Cicely Fox-Smith's First World War poem Homeward to the familiar tune by Sarah Morgan. Simon suggested Paul might like to listen to our friend Tom's parody of the song, Home lass home.
With the first round out of the way Colin's next contribution was Don't let me be misunderstood. Although written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus for Nina Simone, I suspect that Colin was thinking of The Animals' hit version from 1965. In any case this was a new song for the Dragon database.
It was also Colin who introduced another new song to the database with something by one of his favourite bands, and a fairly local one as well: Stackridge. The song on this occasion was Marzo Plod (James Warren).
As usual there were a few minor themes that developed during the evening. Sue gave us Sting's Fields of gold, and it was her partner Bob who brought out You've got gold (John Prine, Keith Sykes), another song new to the database.
Paul helpfully provides the roud numbers for some of the songs he or Denny sings. This led Simon to sing The handweaver and the factory maid (roud 17771) simply because it's the only one whose roud number he knows off the top of his head. Paul noticed that Simon's next song, Nancy Whisky (roud 883) was also about a weaver. Denny was interested that the character in the song had some potential similarities to her sister who is a weaver, appreciates whisky and lives in Carleton, Lancashire (not Calton, Glasgow as in the song). I hope though that she doesn't emulate the song in drunkenness.
Paul was a little premature singing Dave Webber's The parting song in that it was not yet the end of the evening. This again was a new song to the Dragon database.
The final song new to the database this week was Donovan's Mellow yellow sung on this occasion by Colin. There are apparently two theories about the background to this song: it could relate to a later debunked idea that smoking banana skins could have hallucinogenic effects, or far more likely, as apparently stated by the Donovan, it could allude to a sex toy which he had seen advertised.
There were two songs sung in the evening which do not appear in the usual YouTube playlist linked below. Both were written and sung by Sue: her autobiographical version of The house of the Rising Sun, and Recycled teenager which is about people of a certain age at ukulele jams.
Simon finished off the evening with Claudy banks (roud 266, laws N40).
Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.
(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)
