.............................................. The ORIGINAL versions of famous songs and songs covered by famous people.
donderdag 16 mei 2013
On Top Of Old Smok(e)y (1925) / Little Mohee (1926) / Great Shining Light (1938) / Pizza Song (1961) / On Top Of Spaghetti (1962) / Ich geh' noch zur Schule (1963)
"On Top of Old Smoky" is a traditional folk song and a well-known ballad from the United States. As recorded by The Weavers, the song reached the pop music charts in 1951. Their rendition (Decca 27515) became one of their biggest hits in 1951, when it became the number-two song for many weeks on the Billboard charts. Old Smoky may be a high mountain somewhere in the Ozarks or the central Appalachians, as the tune bears the stylistic hallmarks of the Scottish and Irish people who settled the region. Possibilities include Clingmans Dome, named "Smoky Dome" by local Scots-Irish inhabitants, but exactly which mountain it is may be lost to antiquity.
1 complete text and reference to 6 more versions of "Little Mohea" were collected in 1940 in Henry M. Belden's Ballads and songs collected by the Missouri Folk-lore Society
As I just said the tune of "On Top of Old Smoky", familiar to most people today, was also paired with a completely different set of words in a folk song called "The Little Mohee", about a frontiersman who falls in love with an Indian maiden (or, in some versions, a sailor who falls in love with a South Seas maiden).
This tune of "Little Mohee" was collected by the American fieldworkers Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway in Pine Mountain, Kentucky on May 8, 1916 from a singer named Mary Ann Bagley, and published by them in 1916, in their collection Lonesome tunes, song ballets and love songs of the Kentucky Mountains
So only 2 months later the same tune, this time coupled with the lyrics of "On Top of Old Smoky" was collected by Cecil Sharp, as sung by Miss Memory Shelton at Alleghany, N.C., July 29, 1916. As you can see below, with the same familiar "Little Mohee" tune.
But as you also can see this version from 1916 is (wrongly?) titled "Wagoner's Lad", which is in fact a different song with still another distinctive tune. They only share some floating verses.
"Old Smoky" seems to be first collected in 1913 in North Carolina by Edward Perrow
and then also published in his Songs And Rhymes From The South in the
Journal of American Folklore 1915
The 2nd and 3rd verse in "On top Of Old Smoky" show astriking resemblance to the 1st and 2nd verse of Ballad # 261B "The Young Man's Lamentation"from Douce Ballads 2 (between 1690 and 1696)
Containing His Passionate Complaint of his Unconstant
Lover;
Together with his Resolution to leave her who scornfully slighted
him.
To an Excellent New Tune, or, Over Hills and High
Mountains Licensed according to Order.
Meeting's a pleasure,
But parting's a grief,
An
Unconstant Lover
Is worse than a Thief;
A Thief he can Rob me,
And take
what I have,
But an Unconstant Lover
Will bring me to the Grave.
It is unclear when, where and by whom the song was first recorded. Pete Seeger modified a version that he learned in the Appalachians, writing new words and banjo music. He said that he thought that "certain verses go back to Elizabethan times." The sheet music for the song credited Seeger for "new words and music arrangement". The liner notes identify an early recording as the first, saying, "It was first recorded by George Reneau, "The Blind Musician of the Smoky Mountains," for Vocalion (Vo 15366) in 1925".
However, this first version doesn't use the familiar "Little Mohee" melody yet.
(o) George Reneau (1925) (as "On Top Of Old Smoky")
As you can hear this re-recorded version doesuse the common melody as we know it from the hit-version of The Weavers, which on his turn is clearly derived from the traditional "Little Mohee".
If the tune isn't original, even the words aren't. 2 months before, Herald Goodman and his Tennessee Valley Boys already recorded "The Great Shining Light" as the B-side of "New Lamp Lighting Time In The Valley".
(c) Herald Goodman and his Tennessee Valley Boys (1938) (as "The Great Shining Light")
Recorded February 11, 1941 in Columbia Recording Studio, New York
Okeh Presents Burl Ives: the Wayfaring Stranger (Okeh K-3) issued in August, 1941 marked Ives’ recording debut. It comprised twelve songs on four 10-inch 78 RPM discs (oddly, not including the eponymous "Poor Wayfaring Stranger")
Elvis Presley sang a few lines of "On Top of Old Smokey" in the movie Follow That Dream (1961), but the recording wasn't made in the studio, but on the movie set, sung to Joanne Moore on the beach.
In September 1962 this version, coyrighted by Sharon Ruth, was covered in Sweden by a trio of girls named Snopporna (concisting of
Ann-Louise Hanson, Anna-Lena Löfgren and Siw Malmkvist)
In 1963 Little Eva, singer of "The Loco-Motion", recorded a version called "Old Smokey Locomotion", with lyrics describing how the residents of Old Smokey caught on to The Locomotion.
(c) Little Eva (1963) (as "Old Smokey Locomotion")
(c) John Lennon sang a version as "Old Smoky Mountain" on his 31st Birthday on October 9, 1971 in Syracuse, NY,
with Yoko, Phil Spector, Klaus Voorman, Allan Ginsberg, Jim Keltner,
and ? (2:00)- LHAP JL31
(c) ABBA sang a medley of "Pick A Bale Of Cotton/On Top Of Old Smokey/Midnight Special"
Recording began on May 6, 1975 at Glen Studio. It remains ABBA's only
release of material not written by themselves, and was originally
released on the 1975 German charity album "Stars Im Zeichen Eines Guten
Sterns". In 1978, it featured (with a slight audio tweak, for many years
mistakenly referred to as a 'remix') as the B-side of the "Summer Night City" single.
Listen here:
(c) Bruce Springsteen performed this traditional song only once, during The River tour, on October 25, 1980 at
the Memorial Coliseum, Portland, OR, in honor of Mount St. Helens eruption.
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Hoi Joop, ik wil graag het ORIGINEEL van On Top of Old Smoky downloaden. Maar het lukt mij niet. Groet,
BeantwoordenVerwijderenGerard van Moorst.
Mooie blogspot overigens!
Dag Gerard,
BeantwoordenVerwijderenSorry voor de late reaktie.
Hoe is het ? Nog muzikale aktiviteit op het internet ?
Die MP3 is gewoon te downloaden door in de Boxplayer op het pijltje rechtsboven te klikken.
En anders kun je beide kanten van die 78 toerenplaat hier downloaden:
http://allensarchiveofearlyoldcountrymusic.blogspot.nl/2015/01/sid-harkreader-george-reneau-vocalion.html
Joop groet