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| Stanton Drew (Photo: Simon Meeds) |
Last week's Dragon Folk Club session had the theme of Halloween. Happily we were back to reasonable numbers with five singers. We didn't all slavishly follow the theme, but that's fine.
While I think of it, this Friday's theme is variously "Bonfire Night", "Guy Fawkes" and "Campfire Songs", so that is a fairly large target to aim for, but as always the theme is optional. You are welcome to sing, play or otherwise perform anything as long as it's acoustic.
The five at last week's session included two first-timers, Bob J and Sue. In line with tradition I will aim to mention everything that they performed through the evening.
Colin, in his usual MC role, started us off with Chris Hoban's Hallows Eve, a song from the singing of Show of Hands. Steve Knightley says:
It came from socialising with Chris [Hoban]. He’s a Topsham resident, he’s about my age. He’s actually a music teacher. He’s possibly the best unknown songwriter I know, and he’s able to research a topic like this because he’s quite an intellectual guy and from a devout background. His father was seriously high up ecclesiastical figure in London in the Catholic church.
Chris knows his religious history, and in the course of just hanging out he played me this song, and I said “Wow, I love that!” We haven’t really changed the arrangement from how he originally played it to me. There was some debate when we recorded it about the lyric: “the worlds that part us now are twain”, about what that actually means.
I thought it should be “the worlds that unite us now are twain”, but you’d need to talk to Chris about that! It’s a great song, and you’ve just reminded me that it’s one that we should be playing round about now.
Simon gave us another theme-appropriate piece with The Souling Song (Roud 304).
Last week brought a welcome return for Rob who has been busy the last few weekends including singing with Eagle Alley at Mevagissey Shanty Festival. His first song of the evening was The wife of Usher's well (roud 196, child 79). It's always good when it's possible to link to our own singer performing a song.
And so to our welcome first-timers at the Dragon Folk Club... Bob hit the theme with Ghost Trains, written by Famous Lashua. Sue, unable to find what she was looking for to match the theme, gave us Big Rock Candy Mountain (roud 6696), believed to have been originally written by Harry McClintock. Sue's version seemed to be closer though to the Burl Ives, family friendly, version - which is absolutely fine by us.
Colin took us to Somerset to meet the devil in Dancer's of Stanton Drew (Jim Parker, Muriel Holland).
Simon offered With her head tucked underneath her arm (RP Weston, Bert Lee - roud 37117) with mentions of "King Henry", so Rob followed up with King Henry (roud 3967, child 32).
Bob, who variously sings blues and bluegrass it seems, said that his next song had been sung by various rockers, but that his version was from a blues-man whose name I didn't catch. Blind Lemon Jefferson wrote and recorded a song entitled Match Box Blues in 1927, possibly based on Ma Rainey's 1924 Lost Wandering Blues. From the snatches that I noted down of Bob's song it more closely matched Carl Perkins' Matchbox released in 1957. Carl Perkins's father Buck suggested that he write a song based on snatches of lyrics that he remembered. Buck knew only a few lines from the 1927 song from the recordings by Jefferson or the Shelton Brothers. As Perkins sang the few words his father had suggested, Jerry Lee Lewis, who was at that time a session piano player at Sun Studios, started a boogie-woogie riff. Perkins began to improvise on his guitar and with lyrics. Perkins maintained that he had never heard Jefferson's song when he recorded "Matchbox". Of course the Jerry Lee Lewis link is appropriate on the day of his death. Sorry if I've misrepresented Bob's intentions.
Next Sue sang us House of the Rising Sun (roud 6393). It seems that the popular tune made famous by The Animals was first put together by Dave Van Ronk. Van Ronk had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. Van Ronk put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps.
After this Simon couldn't resist sharing Mary McCloud's parody of the same song, House of the Rising Damp (sorry no recording yet).
Colin was still battling away on the theme, singing A Lyke Wake Dirge (roud 8194)
Bob and Sue joined forces to perform In other words (Fly me to the moon) written in 1954 by Bart Howard. At this point, Sue's potential Halloween song turned up among the "Fly me" sheets held by Bob so she went on to sing Riders in the sky (Stan Jones), better known as "Ghost riders in the sky".
Bob's next contribution was Fireball Mail written by Fred Rose and Floyd Jenkins. Sue's last contribution before they both left for the evening was Don't fence me in. Cole Porter received the original writing credits for tune and lyric of this song which was to be used in the film Adios, Argentina which was never made. porter had been asked to write a cowboy song for the movie. He bought a poem by Robert Fletcher for $250 and reworked it. Porter wanted to give Fletcher co-authorship credit, but his publishers did not allow it. After the song became popular Fletcher hired attorneys who negotiated his co-authorship credit in subsequent publications. Although it was one of the most popular songs of its time, Porter claimed it was his least favourite of his compositions.
In the rest of the session we were treated to a couple of "rare songs". The first was from Rob, who sang White dog of Yockenthwaite, a poem by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe set to music by Brian Bedford of Artisan fame. The other was Great Uncle Frank, a song sung by Colin from his own pen.
The penultimate song of the evening, sung by Simon was The Lambton worm (roud 2337) which by coincidence Rob was at that very moment considering singing. Instead Rob finished the session off in theme with Ballad of cursed Anna, written by Jonathan Kelly.
Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.
(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)
