zondag 22 april 2018

Under The Bamboo Tree (1902)


This song was written by Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson.

By 1901, Bob Cole and Rosamond Johnson had put together a sophisticated vaudeville act. Dressed in evening clothes, Rosamond played classical works on the piano, then the pair sang their own compositions and ended the act with a soft-shoe routine by Cole. According to Rosamond, they were walking back uptown after a performance one day when he began to hum the African-American spiritual Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen. Hearing the song, Cole got the idea to rearrange it and work it into their act. When Rosamond objected that this was sacrilegious, Cole responded, "What kind of a musician are you anyway? Been to the Boston Conservatory and can't change a little old tune around." By the time Rosamond finally conceded, Cole had already written the words. The resulting song, "Under the Bamboo Tree", sold over 400,000 copies, making it one of the biggest sellers ever.

Described as "the king of ragtime tunes", it was one of the most significant and succesful ragtime songs before 1910. Its setting is an African jungle where a Zulu and a dusky maid become convinced that two men can live as cheaply as one. Even though the lyric was authored by 2 African Americans, it would be found terribly offensive today.

The song was introduced in 1902 by Cole and Johnson. At that time the title of the song was "If You Lak-A-Me" (the first words of the chorus).
Cole's publisher suggested the change of title to "Under The Bamboo Tree"

J. Rosamond Johnson - Wikipedia

Bob Cole (composer) - Wikipedia


Marie Cahill, musical comedy-star, heard the song at a stage party and interpolated it in her musical "Sally in Our Alley" (1902), where she brought down the house with it; from then on this song became basic to her repertory.


Complete sheet music is here:  Under the Bamboo Tree



The first recording of this song was also from 1902

(o) Arthur Collins (as "Under The Bamboo Tree")
Frank P Banta: piano
Recorded  July 1902 in New York City
Released in November 1902 on Edison Gold Moulded Record # 8215.

Edison Gold Moulded Record: 8215.. Arthur Collins. | UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive
 

Listen here:



Or here:  https://cylinders.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/4000/4348/cusb-cyl4348d.mp3


Arthur also recorded a few versions of this song in a duet with Byron G. Harlan.

(c) Collins and Harlan (1902)
Recorded end 1902 in New York
Released on Harvard 970, Columbia 970 and Oxford 970
 




On June 25, 1903 Collins re-recorded the song for the Victor-label

(c) Arthur Collins (1903)
Released on Victor Monarch 1633
 


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(c) Mina Hickman (1903)
Recorded in 1903 in New York
Released on Zon-O-Phone C 5413
 

Zonophone matrix [Zo cat C 5413]. Under the bamboo tree / Mina Hickman - Discography of American Historical Recordings

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(c) Harry MacDonough (1903)
Recorded February 27, 1903
Released on Victor 1993

Victor matrix [Pre-matrix B-]1993. Under the bamboo tree / Harry Macdonough - Discography of American Historical Recordings

On the same day MacDonough recorded a version in a duet with John Bieling

(c) Harry MacDonough and John Bieling (1903)
Recorded February 27, 1903
Released on Victor Monarch 1998







In 1917 Marie Cahill, who initially made this song famous, finally recorded her version of "Under The Bamboo Tree".

(c) Marie Cahill (1917)
Recorded May 29, 1917 in Camden, New Jersey
Released on Victor 45125
 

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/5681

Victor matrix B-20004. Under the bamboo tree / Marie Cahill - Discography of American Historical Recordings

Listen here:



Or here:





(c) Orquesta de Pablo Valenzuela (1906) (as "La Patti Negra")

The songtitle was named after opera singer Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, who was named The Black Patti (La Patti Negra), because she was the African-American counterpart of the famous opera diva Adelina Patti.
Released on Edison Gold Moulded Record 18862

Edison Gold Moulded Record: 18862.. Orquesta de Pablo Valenzuela. | UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive

Listen here:  cusb-cyl16116d.mp3

Or here:






Part of the lyrics of "Under the Bamboo Tree" were used in T.S. Eliot's play in verse "Fragment of an Agon" (1927).

Under the bamboo
Bamboo bamboo
Under the bamboo tree
Two live as one
One live as two
Two live as three
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree

T.S. Eliot – Fragment of an Agon | Genius

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Agonistes



In 1943 Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien perform the song in the movie "Meet Me in St. Louis"

http://www.thejudyroom.com/soundtracks/louislp.html

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(c) Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band (1945)
Recorded August 5, 1945 in Hollywood, CA.

78 RPM - Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band - Panama / Under The Bamboo Tree - Crescent - USA - 7

Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band* - Panama / Under The Bamboo Tree (Shellac) at Discogs





(c) The DeMarco Sisters (1950)
Recorded October 21, 1949 in New York
Released on King 15038

KDP | Song | Under the bamboo tree

KING numerical listing discography - 15000 series

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(c) Ken Colyer's Jazzmen (1959)
Recorded August 5, 1958 in London

Ken Colyer's Jazzmen - Colyer Plays Standards (Vinyl, LP) at Discogs

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(c) Papa Bue's Viking Jazzband (1960)
Recorded May 2, 1960

Papa Bue's Viking Jazz Band - On Tour (Vinyl, LP) at Discogs

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(c) Clinton Ford (1962)

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donderdag 19 april 2018

Ke Kali Nei Au (Waiting For Thee) (1926) / Here Ends The Rainbow (1951) / Hawaiian Wedding Song (1958)


"Ke Kali Nei Au" was written by Charles E. King in 1925 for his operetta, Prince of Hawai'i, first performed at the Liberty Theatre in Honolulu, May 4, 1925.
It was written as a duet for baritone and soprano. It translates as "Waiting Here For Thee."
King's version was not a wedding song in the first place, but one of several tunes written for his 1925 Hawaiian-language opera The Prince of Hawaii, which toured the mainland United States with King in 1926.
Introduced by the Royal Hawaiian Band, this song featured a duet by John Paoakalani Heleluhe and Lizzie Alohikea.



"Ke Kali Nei Au" was first recorded in 1928 in Honolulu as a duet with Helen Desha Beamer and Sam Kapu Sr. accompanied by the Don Barrientos Hawaiian Orchestra.

(o) Helen Desha Beamer and Sam Kapu Sr. (1928) (as "Ke Kali Nei Au")
Recorded in Honolulu on May 22, 1928
Released on Columbia 1583-D




Listen to a sample here: H.Beamer&S.Kapu_KeKaliNeiAu.30Sec.mp3

 

(c) Kalama's Quartet (1929) (as "Ke Kali Nei Au")
Recorded September 10, 1929 in New Yrork
Released on Okeh 41306
 



Listen here:





(c) Joseph Kamakau Hawaiian Orchestra (1935)  (as "Ke Kali Nei Au")
Recorded March 18, 1935 in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Released on Victor 25035




(c) Ray Kinney and his Hawaiians (1939)
Recorded January 1, 1939 in New York
Released on Decca 2349

 




Listen here: 


Or to a sample here:  Ray Kinney_Ke Kali Nei Au.30Sec.mp3



(c) Hal Aloma and his Hawaiians (1944)  (as "Ke Kali Nei Au")
Featuring the composer of this song, Charles King, as narrator.
Recorded February 7, 1944 in New York
Released on Decca 23513 (as part of album # A-429)








In 1951 Johnny Burke wrote the lyrics for the first English cover-version of "Ke Kali Nei Au"

(c) Bing Crosby with Betty Mullin (1951) (as "Here Ends The Rainbow")
(English lyrics: Johnny Burke)
with Lyn Murray and his Orchestra
Recorded February 9, 1951 in Los Angeles
Released on Decca 27595


Listen here:





(c) Andrews Sisters and Alfred Apaka (1952)  (as "Ke Kali Nei Au")
With Danny Stewart and his Islanders
Recorded May 22, 1952 in Los Angeles
Released on Decca 28296
Also on the next album: 






(c) King Sisters (1957) (as "Hawaiian Wedding Song (Here Ends The Rainbow")



Despite the title this is sung in Hawaiian.

Listen here:





In 1958 Al Hoffman and Dick Manning wrote new words for the song and as "Hawaiian Wedding Song".  This version was first recorded by the Mary Kaye Trio

(c) Mary Kaye Trio (1958)  (as "Hawaiian Wedding Song")
English lyrics by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning
Released October 1958 on Warner Bros 5015



Listen here:




In the US, Andy Williams' version was released as a single in 1958 and reached number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 27 on the R&B chart.

(c) Andy Williams (1958)  (as "Hawaiian wedding Song")
English lyrics by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning
Recorded November 1958
Released  on Cadence 1358.



Listen here:





In 1961 Elvis Presley recorded the song for the movie "Blue Hawaii".





In the UK, a single version by Julie Rogers went to number 31 on the UK Singles Chart in 1965.

(c) Julie Rogers (1965) (as "Hawaiian Wedding Song")



Listen here:




More versions here:







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maandag 16 april 2018

Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (1852) / Grey Selchie of Sule Skerry (1957) / Silkie of Sule Skerry (1960) / Silkie (1962) / I Come and Stand at Every Door (1962)


The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry or The Grey Selkie of Suleskerry is a traditional folk song from Orkney. The song was collected by the American scholar, Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century and was published in 1886 as Child ballad number 113 in "The Child Ballads Vol 2"




Francis James Child owed the belated recovery of this extraordinary ballad to his friend and co-worker William MacMath, who spotted it on page 86-89 in Vol 1 of the "Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries" of 1852. Communicated by the late Captain F.W.L. Thomas, R.N.; written down by him from the dictation of a venerable lady of Snarra Voe, Shetland.




See also: Hibbert's "Description of the Shetland Islands" (1822) (pp. 566-571)



There are many different versions of the song, one of which is a part of the epic ballad, "The Lady Odivere".



The Sule Skerry is a rock in the Atlantic about fifty miles southwest of Orkney. Within living memory it was frequented by large numbers of seals. Some of the verses of the ballad are still remembered in the islands of Orkney and Shetland, but the tune was very nearly lost. It was first noted down in 1938 by Dr. Otto Andersson, who heard it sung by John Sinclair on the island of Flotta, Orkney.
Dr Andersson said, “I had no idea at the time that I was the first person to write down the tune. The pure pentatonic form of it and the beautiful melodic line showed me that it was a very ancient melody that I had set on paper.”



A full version of the words was sent to Dr Andersson by Miss Annie G. Gilchrist.
First published in 1947 on page 115 of the Budkavlen magazine #XXVI.
Reprinted on page 39 of the Budkavlen magazine #XXXIII, with a slightly different text, taken from an Orkney newspaper: The Orcadian June 11, 1934
 





In 1955 John Sinclair of Flotta, Orkney Islands, sang "The Grey Silkie" in a BBC recording made by Sean Davies on the anthology "Sailormen and Servingmaids - The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 6" (Caedmon 1961; Topic 1970). The album's booklet lists the date of recording erroneously as June 1964, three years after the album was released.


(o) John Sinclair (1961)  (as "The Grey Silkie")
Recorded in the Orkneys, July 1955.
 





Listen here:




(c) Paul Clayton (1956)  (as "Silkie of Sule Skerry")


From the liner-notes of Paul Clayton's album:

SIDE I, Band 6: THE GREAT SILKIE OF SULE SKERRY (Child #113) (Ballads of the Supernatural - see pages 27 to 30 ) The inhabitants of the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides tell numerous tales of the "silkies" or seal-folk. These enchanted creatures dwell in the depth of the sea but occasionally doff their sealskins and come upon land where they pass as ordinary men. Upon such occasions they are said to accept human partners (as in this ballad) and it is for this reason that many families in the islands trace their ancestry to "silkies". The silkies share in common with other enchanted folk the ability to forecast future events (see stanzas 12 and 13 in which the silkie foretells the marriage of the maid to a hunter who will shoot both the great silkie and his offspring). Except for some slight dialect changes, the version sung here by Paul Clayton is essentially that reported by R. M. Fergusson in Rambling Sketches in the Far North, 1883, page 140;


The tune was collected in Orkney by Professor Otto Andersson of Helsinki.


Listen here:




(c) Cynthia Gooding (1957) (as "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry")


Listen here:




In 1954 a new tune was written for this traditional song by Dr. James Waters of Columbia University in 1954.
Child was interested only in the texts of the ballads he collected, and Jim Butler explains that the Waters tune was "just the best I could do as a way to get a fine ballad sung".
Over the next 2 years, Butler introduced the ballad to the Boston area at a time when "hootnannies" filled the Great Court of MIT on a weekly basis (before recorded folk songs were widely available).
Jim Butler added the song to his repertoire, according to his notes, in October 1954, on a page labelled "MITOC Supp.", being the MIT Outing Club addition to his typewritten Child Ballads.
Jim Butler taught the song to several people, including Bonnie Dobson. This is the tune that Joan Baez popularized as "Silkie" in the early 1960s.



(c) Bonnie Dobson (1960) (as "The Silkie of Sule Skerry")


 

Listen here:




(c) Oscar Brand (1960) (as "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry")


Listen here:




(c) Joan Baez (1961) (as "Silkie")



Listen here:




(c) The Highwaymen (1962) (as "The Great Silkie")


Listen here:




(c) Judy Collins (1962) (as "Great Selchie of Shule Skerry")




Listen here:




(c) The Homesteaders (1962) (as "The Silkie")




The members of The Homesteaders are not identified on the record or the jacket, but the voice of Judy Collins is unmistakable, and the source for this, John Ross, indicates that Judy has confirmed being on it.

Listen here:




(c) The Halifaxx Three (1963)  (as "The Great Silky")


Listen here:




(c) The Big 3 (1964) (as "Silkie")



Listen here:




(c) Gram Parsons (1964) (as "The Great Silkie")
Unreleased solo performance.


Listen here:





(c) John Denver (1968) (as "The Great Silkie")



Listen here:





(c) Trees (1970) (as "The Great Silkie")







(c) Corries (1971) (as "The Great Silkie")



Listen here:





(c) Jean Redpath (1975)  (as "The Grey Silkie")


Listen here:




(c) Maddy Prior (1999) (as "Great Silkie of Sules Skerry")



Listen here:




(c) Eyeless In Gaza (2000)  (as "The Silkie")


Listen here:




(c) Roger McGuinn (2007)  (as "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry")





(c) Steeleye Span (2009) (as "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry")





(c) June Tabor (2011)  (as "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry")


Listen here:




(c) Angelo Branduardi (2013)  (as "The Silkie")


Listen here:


In 1981 Angelo Branduardi has already recorded an Italian and a French adaptation of the Jim Waters tune, for his album Branduardi '81. 
(SEE ON THE BOTTOM OF IN THIS POST)



American folksinger Pete Seeger set the poem "I Come and Stand at Every Door", originally written as "Kız Çocuğu" in 1956 by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, to the 1954 James Waters tune of "The Great Silkie".
According to Seeger, Jeanette Turner did a loose English "singable translation" of the poem under a different title, "I Come And Stand At Every Door", and sent a note to Seeger asking "Do you think you could make a tune for it?" in the late 1950s. After a week of trial and failure, this English translation was used by Seeger in 1961 with an adaptation of "an extraordinary melody put together by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student James Waters, who had put a new tune to a mystical ballad "The Great Silkie" which he couldn't get out of his head, without permission."


(c) Pete Seeger (1961) (as "I Come and Stand at Every Door")



Listen here:




The American rock band The Byrds sang it on their third album "Fifth Dimension"(1966).

(c) The Byrds (1966) (as "I Come and Stand at Every Door")


Listen here:




The song was covered in 1991 by This Mortal Coil. on their album "Blood".

(c) This Mortal Coil (1991) (as "I Come and Stand at Every Door") 


Listen here:




In 2012 Joan Baez also sang "Kız Çocuğu" with its original Turkish lyrics by Nazım Hikmet to a different tune, composed in 1978 by Turkish musician Zülfü Livaneli.
Livanelli's original composition with the Nazim Hikmet lyrics was on the album: "Nazım Türküsü"


Joan Baez' version was released in 2014 on the next various artists album:


Listen here:




The Breton folk band Tri Yann penned a French adaptation of the James Waters tune.
 "Le Dauphin" (the dolphin) was on their 1972 album Tri Yann an Naoned.

Listen here:




In 1981 Angelo Branduardi recorded an Italian adaptation of the James Waters tune for his album Branduardi '81. The song is titled "La cagna".

Listen here:



In the same year Branduardi also recorded a French adaptation of the same tune for the French market.
That version was titled; "Les Enfants De La Chienne".

Listen here;





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maandag 9 april 2018

Texas Rangers (1910) / Texas Ranger (1926) / Come All You Texas Rangers / Come All You Coal Miners (1937)


"The Texas Ranger", another ballad of the trail, is of the familiar "Come, all ye" pattern. It introduces an incident that is a reminder of the fact, that in the middle of the 19th century, the cowboys were useful to the on-coming settlers in repelling Indian attacks and in pushing the frontier westward.





The words of this song were published in books by Mellinger Henry, Louise Pound, John A. Lomax, and others, but the tunes seem to be rare.

- Mellinger Henry in "More Songs From the Southern Highlands" (1933)  p. 349, no tune


- Louise Pound in "American Ballads and Songs" (1922), p. 163, no tune


John A. Lomax in "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads" (1910), pp. 44-46, no tune



But even before that, Henry Marvin Belden published the song in 1904.
In 1904, Harry Fore, one of Belden’s students from Gentryville, lent him a song manuscript dating from the 1870s in Gentry County. This included a 10 stanzas version of "Texas Rangers".
 

And already in 1903 Emma Simmons sent Belden thirteen songs from her native Carroll County, Arkansas, ao."Texas Rangers".






In an article in "The Journal of American Folklore" Vol. 25, No. 95 (Jan. - Mar., 1912), pp. 14-15, H. M. Belden states that "The Texas Rangers", despite its mention of Indians and the Rio Grande, is surely an echo of the great fight at the Alamo on March 6, 1835.


Belden also states that certain resemblances suggest that this was modelled on the British Ballad "Nancy of Yarmouth".



Albert H. Tolman and Mary O. Eddy in "The Journal of American Folklore" Vol. 35, No. 138 (Oct. - Dec., 1922), pp. 417-418

Sung to Miss Eddy by Mr. Summer, Canton, Ohio, learned by him about 1869.



In February 1939 in an article by Myra E. Hull in #1 of volume VIII of the Kansas Historical Quarterly the version has both words and music contributed by N.P. Power, Lawrence, February 18, 1938. He set the song down from memory as he heard it in 1876, while a cowboy on the John Hitson cattle ranch, eighteen miles north of Deer Trail, Colo. Mr. Power says that he has never seen the song in print and has no knowledge of the author. His version is much the earliest that Hull has found. This John Hitson is doubtless the one mentioned by T. U. Taylor (op. cit., p. 70) who drove cattle in 1868. Mr. Power thinks that the song here recorded was sung by Frank H. Long, whose father owned a ranch in Texas.



In 1939 the song is published in "Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan"



In 1940 the song is published in "Ballads and Songs of Indiana"



In 1944 the song is published in Vol 57 of the Journal of American Folklore (pp 72-76)



Volume 2 of the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore gives us 4 versions:


The lyrics were set to various tunes in the folk process. But the tune most often used nowadays, was probably introduced by the Cartwright Brothers in1929.



HERE ARE SOME RECORDINGS:

(o) Ernest V. Stoneman (1926) (as "The Texas Ranger")
Recorded April 1926
Released on Okeh 45054 (as the B-side of "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down")





Listen here:




(c) Harry "Mac" McClintock (1928) (as "The Texas Rangers")
Recorded March 1, 1928 in Oakland, CA
Released on Victor 21487 and Montgomery Ward M-4784
 

 





Listen here:



As you can hear above the first three versions didn't use the familiar melody.
The Cartwright Brothers were probably the first act to use that familiar melody.
Most of the versions here below also use the melody of the Cartwright Brothers version


In 1937 Alan Lomax recorded Sarah Ogan Gunning singing a miner's version of the song.

(c) Sarah Ogan (Gunning) (1937) (as "Come All You Coal Miners")
Recorded on November 13, 1937 in New York City by Alan Lomax









In May 1939 Alan Lomax also recorded Sarah Ogan's sister, Aunt Molly Jackson, singing a version for the Library of Congress

(c) Aunt Molly Jackson (1939) (as "The Texas Rangers")
Recorded in May 1939 in New York City by Alan Lomax


Listen here: AFC19390122556B.mp3



(c) Sloan Matthews (1942) (as "The Texas Rangers")
on the album "Cowboy Songs, Ballads and Cattle Calls from Texas",
Library of Congress AFS L28, LP (1952), cut#A.05
Recorded in Pecos, Texas in 1942 (John A. Lomax)





(c) Paul Clayton (1957) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here: 




(c) New Lost City Ramblers (1960) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here:




(c) Ian & Sylvia (1964) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here:




(c) Hedy West (1967)  (as "The Texan Ranger")


 

Listen here:




(c) Almeda Riddle (1977) (as "Come All You Texas Rangers")


Listen here:




(c) Michael Martin Murphy (1990) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here:




(c) Cordelia's Dad (1992) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here:




(c) Jerry Douglas and Peter Rowan (1996) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here:




(c) Katy Moffatt (2001) (as "Texas Rangers")


Listen here:






Part of the tune and the lyrics of "(Come All You) Texas Rangers" were used in 
the traditional song: "(Come All Ye) Tramps And Hawkers" 




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