zondag 30 oktober 2016

Gospel Train (Is Coming) (1867) / Get On Board (Little Children) (1916) / Old Time Cinda (1925) / Cindy (1927) / Get Along Home Cindy (1928) / Git Along (1934)


"Cindy" or "Get (or Run) Along Home, Cindy", was a traditional-based song recorded in many forms under many titles, beginning in 1924 with "Cindy in the Meadows" by Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis.
Artists who have covered this song include Fiddlin’ John Carson, Riley Puckett, Gene Austin, Vernon Dalhart, Ernest Stoneman, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Bradley Kincaid, Gid Tanner & his Skillet Lickers, Milton Brown, Roy Newman, Lulu Belle & Scotty, Bob Wills, and the Delmore Brothers.
It was recorded by Ricky Nelson in 1959, and was a minor hit for Trini Lopez in 1966 as "I’m Comin’ Home, Cindy". Robert Plant recorded a version in 2010.

"Cindy", like "Liza Jane", is a staple in the world of traditional North American play party songs, ballads, and breakdowns.
The earliest reference to “Get Along Home, Cindy” and its variations comes from vol. 28 of The Journal of American Folklore (1915). It shows up as a play party song collected under the title “Ain’t I Goin’?” and is identified as having been “brought from Arkansas to Western Nebraska, 1882″
 



 
Some have connected the melody with the old minstrel piece “Lucy Long” (1842).
As it has journeyed across the delta and over the southern mountains, the song has taken on regional flavors and variations , resulting in great tunes like “Rockingham Cindy“, “Cindy in the Summertime“, “Step-Back, Cindy” (aka Holly Ding), “Old Time Cinda“, "Cindy in the Meadows," "Get Along Home (Miss) Cindy," "Git Along, Cindy," "J'etais au Bal, "Run Along Home, Cindy," "Whoop 'Em Up Cindy,"



The tune of "Get along home, Cindy" is also reminiscent to that of "Get on board, Little Children", also known as "The Gospel Train".





"The Gospel Train" was already contained in "The Jubilee Harp: a choice selection of psalmody, ancient and modern, designed for use in public and social worship" (1867)


It was song #638 in that songbook





 A few years later in "Jubilee songs: as sung by the Jubilee Singers, of Fisk University", under the auspices of the American Missionary Association (1872)
(by Theodore F. Seward,  George L. White  and E. M. Cravath)

 




And here's a sheet from one year later (1873)




Here's another early sheet of "The Gospel Train" (copyright 1881):



The Tuskegee Institute Singers probably recorded the first version of this gospel.

(o) The Tuskegee Institute Singers (1916) (as "Get On Board")
Recorded February 14, 1916 in Camden, New Jersey
Released on Victor 18446
 


Listen here ("Get on Board" starts at 2 minutes in the next YT)




(c) Harry C Browne and Knickerbockerquartette (1916) (as "De Gospel Train Am Comin'")
Recorded December 21, 1916 in New York
Released on Columbia A-2255






(c) Harry C. Browne and the Peerless (or Male) Quartette (as "De Gospel Train Am Comin'")
Recorded July 3, 1919 in New York.
Matrix 78545
Released on Columbia A-2255 and Harmony 5016-H

 


Also released on Silvertone 3824



Or here




And here's the first "Cindy" or "Get [or Run] Along Home, Cindy" in this particular recording using the title "Cindy (In The Meadows)" and using the "Get On Board Little Children"-melody,

(o) Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis (1924) (as "Cindy In The Meadows")
Samantha Bumgarner, fiddle and vocal; Eva Davis, banjo.
Recorded April 22, 1924 in New York
Released on Columbia 167-D
 

On April 22 and 23, 1924, Samantha Bumgarner and her friend and musical partner Eva Davis recorded fourteen songs (four of which were unissued) for Columbia Phonograph Company in New York City. Not only was this one of the earliest recording Country sessions but also it was the first recording featuring the mountain style banjo and the first recording of women in Country Music history. The women from North Carolina entered the NYC studio on April 22 to find the Fisk Jubilee Singers finishing their last number. They waited quietly until it was their turn and then began with a song called “Cindy in the Meadows”, a very different sound than the African-American spirituals performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (although the Fisk Jubilee Singers had introduced the tune as "Get On Board" some 50 years before).
In all, the recordings numbered twelve songs; the first two were released in August of 1924 to suitable sales. Six of the remaining ten songs were released soon after or in the years to follow. Unfortunately Columbia never released (issued) some country standards from that session: “Last Gold Dollar,” “Down the Road,” “Everyday Blues” and “(Foggy) Mountain Top.”

Listen here:




Next in line a version with yet another title but the same tune:

(c) The Hill Billies (1925) (as "Old time Cinda")
Alonzo Elvis “Tony” Alderman, f; Albert Green ("Al") Hopkins, p/v; John Rector, bj; Joe Hopkins, g. Recorded January 15, 1925 in New York
Released on Okeh 40294



Listen here:




In 1925 Fiddlin' John Carson also used yet another title

(c) Fiddlin’ John Carson 1925 (as "Run Along Home With Lindy")
Fiddlin’ John Carson, v; acc. own f.; Rosa Lee Carson, g
Recorded June 24, 1925 in New York
Released on Okeh 45001



Listen here:




And Uncle Dave Macon used the title "Whoop ’Em Up, Cindy"


(c) Uncle Dave Macon 1926 (as "Whoop ’Em Up, Cindy ")
Uncle Dave Macon Acc. own bj; Sam McGee, g.
Recorded April 16, 1926 in New York
Released on Vocalion 15323, 5099



Listen here:




(c) Riley Puckett & Clayton McMichen (as "Cindy")
Clayton McMichen, f; Riley Puckett, g/v
Recorded April 2, 1927 in Atlanta, GA
Released on Columbia 15232-D



Listen here:




(c) Bill Collins (ie Gene Austin) (1927) (as "Cindy")
Recorded May 26, 1927 in New York
Released on Victor 20673

Released on Pathe 32307 and Perfect 12386





(c) Ford and Grace (1927) (as "Kiss Me Cindy")
Dewey Grace: guitar and vocals / Oscar Ford: fiddle
Recorded October 4, 1927 in Atlanta, GA.
Released on OKeh 45157


Listen here:




(c) Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1928) (as "Get Along Home Cindy")
Recorded February 6, 1928 in Ashland, KY
Released on Brunswick 228
 


Listen here:




(c) Pope's Arkansas Mountaineers (1928) (as "Get Along Home, Miss Cindy")
John H. Chism, f; J.W. (Joe) McKinney, bj/v; John Sparrow, g/high tv; 
Wallace Chism, g/low tv; Lee F. “Tip” McKinney,v.
Recorded February 6, 1928 in Memphis, TN 
Released on Victor 21577


Listen here:




(c) Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers (1934) (as "Git Along")
Recorded March 29, 1934 in San Antomio, Texas
Released on Bluebird B-5488
 


Listen here:




(c) Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies (1934) (as "Get Along Cindy")
Milton Brown [ld vcl], Derwood Brown [vcl -x/gt], Ocie Stockard [-* vcl//banjo], 
Wanna Coffman [bass], Cecil Bower [fiddle], Ted Grantham [fiddle], Fred Calhoun [piano])
Recorded August 8, 1934 Texas Hotel, San Antonio, TX
Released on Bluebird B-5654


Listen here:




(c) Lulu Belle and Scotty (1936) (as "Get Along Home Cindy")
Lulu Belle Wiseman [vcl], Scotty Wiseman [vcl/gt/banjo]
Recorded October 30, 1935 in Chicago, IL
Released on the Melotone, the Conqueror and the Vocalion label



Listen here:




(c) Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys (1936) (as "Get Aong Home Cindy")
Tommy Duncan [vcl], Herman Arnspiger [gt], Sleepy Johnson [gt/fiddle], Leon McAuliffe [steel], Johnnie Lee Wills [banjo], Joe Ferguson [bass], Smokey Dacus [drums], Bob Wills [fiddle/vcl]], 
Jesse Ashlock [fiddle], Al Stricklin [piano], Everett Stover [trumpet], Ray DeGeer [clarint/sax], 
Zeb McNally [sax])
Recorded September 29, 1936 in Chicago, IL
Released on Okeh 03451 and Vocalion 03451


Re-released in 1947 on Columbia 20222 and 37623




(c) Delmore Brothers (1938) (as "Git Along")
Alton Delmore [vcl/gt], Rabon Delmore [vcl/gt], Smiley O‘ Brien [gt], Joseph Zinkan [bass], 
Chuck Maudlin [fiddle])
Recorded September 29, 1938 in Andrew Jackson Hotel, Rock Hill, SC
Released on Bluebird B-7913






(c) Pete Seeger (1943)  (as "Cindy")
Recorded in 1943
Released in 1945  on Asch 432 (4A)



Re-released on Stinson SLP 5


Listen here:




(c) Johnny Duncan (1957) (as "Get Along Home Cindy")


Listen here:




(c) Kingston Trio (1959)  (as "Oh Cindy")


Listen here:




The song is also performed in the 1959 John Wayne movie Rio Bravo. It is performed by Ricky Nelson. with Dean Martin and Walter Brennan.

Watch it here:




The song was also a minor hit in the US for Trini Lopez in 1966 as "I’m Comin’ Home, Cindy".

(c) Trini Lopez (1966) (as "I’m Comin’ Home, Cindy")


Listen here:




Benjamin Weisman, Dolores Fuller and Fred Wise wrote a version of "Cindy" called "Cindy, Cindy", that was recorded by Elvis Presley.

(c) Elvis Presley (1970) (as "Cindy, Cindy")
Recorded June 4, 1970 in Nashville, TN



Listen here:




(c) Johnny Cash and Nick Cave (2003)  (as "Cindy")
Johnny Cash (Johnny Cash [vcl/gt], Glen Campbell [gt], Norman Blake [gt], Nick Cave [hmny vcl], David Rose [bass], Laura Cash [fiddle] + more unknown musicians]. Producer: Rick Rubin)
Recorded in the year 2000 in the Cash Cabin Studio, Hendersonville, TN/Akadémie Mathématique of Philosophical Sound Research, Hollywood, CA –
Released on the 4CD "Unearthed" (American B0001679-02)


Listen here:




(c) Roger McGuinn (2005) (as "Cindy")





(c) Robert Plant (2010) (as "Cindy, I'll Marry You Someday")
Released on "Band of Joy"


Listen here:






More versions

zondag 16 oktober 2016

Falcon Carol (1913) / Corpus Christi (1927) / Down in Yon Forest (1927) / Corpus Christi Carol (1933)


"Corpus Christi Carol" is a Middle English or Early Modern English hymn (or carol), first found by an apprentice grocer named Richard Hill in a manuscript written around 1504.
Richard Hill's commonplace-book   It's on page 352 of that book: 



The original writer of the carol remains anonymous. The earliest surviving record of the piece preserves only the lyrics and is untitled.

It has survived in altered form in the folk tradition as the Christmas carol "Down In Yon Forest".




The structure of the Corpus Christi carol is six stanzas, each with rhyming couplets. The tense changes in the fourth stanza from past to present continuous.
One hypothesis about the meaning of the carol is that it is concerned with the legend of the Holy Grail. In Arthurian traditions of the Grail story, the Fisher King is the knight who is the Grail's protector, and whose legs are perpetually wounded. When he is wounded his kingdom suffers and becomes a wasteland. This would explain the reference to "an orchard brown".
One recent interpretation is that it was composed about the execution of Anne Boleyn, wife of Henry VIII, whose badge was a falcon.




"The Falcon Carol"
Earliest Version with music of The Corpus Christi Carol
Words: Traditional English, c. 1400 Balliol College, Oxford. MS. 354. XVI Century.
Music: Martin Shaw

In 1913 it appeared in "The English Carol Book"
Sheet Music from Martin Shaw and Percy Dearmer,


 

The English Carol Book, Second Series (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1913,





The carol is also found in Edith Rickert, Ancient English Christmas Carols: 1400-1700
London: Chatto & Windus, 1914, p. 193.


She adds this additional note at pages 299-300:

This carol, of which the one following is a modern version, is interesting as showing the persistence of a lyric for four hundred years (the first version is probably of the fifteenth century, the second was taken from a recital of a boy who came with morris-dancers, some years before 1862, cf. Notes and Queries, third series, ii, p. 103); and also because it seems to have been suggested by some form of the legend of the Holy Grail. The Bleeding Knight is Christ, the "may" is His mother, the "falcon" is introduced apparently to suggest that the body of the person is a vision. It is interesting to note that the modern version is the more specific of the two, adding the hound which licks the blood (the Church?) and the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury, which is intimately associated with the Grail story.  





In 1919 Peter Warlock (1894-1930) re-worked it as a carol for Soprano and Tenor Soloists with SATB chorus by. It was dedicated to Thomas Strong, later Bishop of Oxford, who had been Dean of Christ Church College during Warlock's brief time studying there, and who is better known for encouraging William Walton's musical career.
In 1927 Peter Warlock made a new arrangement adding a string quartet accompaniment.


Complete Score is HERE: Corpus Christi (score)



The earliest recorded version I could find:

(c) The English Singers (1928) (as "Corpus Christi")
Recorded between October1927 and April 1928
Matrix 3012
Released as part of 12 record album on the Roycroft-label (Roycroft # 157)



Or here:





In 1934 Leslie Woodgate conducted a version with a new arrangement by Benjamin Britten (see further on in this post), which was performed as a BBC radio broadcast.
But strange enough later on he didn't record the Britten arrangement.
But in 1936 he did record the Warlock arrangement !!

(c) BBC Chorus (1936) (as "Corpus Christi")
Ann Wood, contralto
Peter Pears, tenor 
Leslie Woodgate, conductor
Recorded June 24, 1936 in Thames Street Studios, London
Released on Decca K827 (TA2256)


Or here: 


Or here:




(c) Flora Nielsen, René Soames and the Festival Singers (1950) (as "Corpus Christi")
Conducted by Leslie Woodgate
Flora Nielsen, contralto
René Soames, tenor
Recorded March 31, 1950
Released on HMV C7934 (2EA14568)
 



Or here: 


Or here:





Benjamin Britten incorporated the Corpus Christi Carol in variation 5 "In the Bleak Mid-winter" of his choral work "A Boy was Born" (Choral Variations For Mixed Voices), Opus 3, in 1933.


SEE f.8r on the next link: The British Library MS Viewer

The Choral variations for men's, women's and boys' voices, unaccompanied (organ ad lib) was originally composed from 1932 to 1933.
It was first performed on February 23, 1934 as a BBC broadcast.

(c) Wireless Chorus and choirboys of St Mark's, North Audley Street, London (1934)
Conducted by Leslie Woodgate
Performed on February 23, 1934 as a part of "A Boy Was Born", in a BBC radio concert of contemporary music.


(c) John Hahessy (1961) (as "Corpus Christi Carol")
Benjamin Britten : A Boy was Born - Corpus Christi Carol
John Hahessy (Alto) Benjamin Britten (Piano)
John was the 14 year old head chorister at Westminster Cathedral, later to become John Elwes. Britten dedicated this to him. It's a new arrangement of the Fifth Variation on his Opus 3 (from 1933): A Boy Was Born. Lyrics are an anonymous 15th century poem depicting Christ as a fatally wounded soldier. Became a lament for all the victims of both World Wars.
Recorded 1961/01/12 & 1962/02/11 - Kingsway Hall, London, England



Originally on EP "Songs from Friday Afternoons". 


Or here:




(c) Janet Baker (1967) (as "Corpus Christi Carol"


Listen here:




Singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, inspired by Janet Baker's version here above, included his interpretation of Britten's work on his 1994 debut album, Grace.
About his version Buckley said, "The Carol is a fairytale about a falcon who takes the beloved of the singer to an orchard. The singer goes looking for her and arrives at a chamber where his beloved lies next to a bleeding knight and a tomb with Christ's body in it."

(c) Jeff Buckley (1994) (as "Corpus Christi Carol")


Listen here:




English guitarist Jeff Beck performs his interpretation on his 2010 album, Emotion & Commotion. In the album liner notes, Beck states that Jeff Buckley inspired his cover of this piece: "When I heard Jeff Buckley's album, the simplicity and the beauty of the way he sounded amazed me."

(c) Jeff Beck (2010) (as "Corpus Christi Carol"


Listen here:


As I said at the beginning of this post this carol has survived in altered form in the folk tradition as the Christmas carol "Down In Yon Forest".

In 1927 baritone John Goss recorded this alternative version, oddly enough using the "Corpus Christi Carol" title.

(c) John Goss and  the Cathedral Male Voice Quartet (1927) (as "Corpus Christi Carol")
Recorded early 1927
Released around June !927 on His Master's Voice B-2483