Hey Folks
Inspired by the Three tune Tuesday idea started by @ablaze I thought I would try singing you guys a few old folk songs this week.
Back before Covid hit I was at college here in Perth, Scotland doing the first year of music school. As part of that course we had a module called music appreciation.
For this module we had to pick 2 genres of music to study for around 3 months and prepare a powerpoint presentation on each genre.
I went with Folk and Celtic music as my 2 genres and on the 3 month journey down that musical rabbit hole I was exposed to a hell of a lot of old songs.
The 3 I have chosen to sing this week are all songs I sing with the capo on the 7th fret.
The first song is "Dirty Old Town" a classic folk song by Ewan MacColl.
MacColl was his stage name, his birth name was James Henry Miller, he is credited as being one of the instigator's of the 1960's folk revival.
He was born in Salford in Lancashire England to Scottish parents in 1915 and died in 1989 aged 74.
"The song was written about Salford, Lancashire, England, the city where MacColl was born and brought up. It was originally composed for an interlude to cover an awkward scene change in his 1949 play Landscape with Chimneys, set in a North of England industrial town,[2] but with the growing popularity of folk music the song became a standard. The first verse refers to the gasworks croft, which was a piece of open land adjacent to the gasworks, and then speaks of the old canal, which was the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal. The line in the original version about smelling a spring on “the Salford wind” is sometimes sung as “the sulphured wind”. But in any case, most singers tend to drop the Salford reference altogether, in favour of calling the wind “smoky”. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Old_Town
The song has also come to be unofficially associated with the city of Dublin in Ireland due to being sung by Ronnie Drew and Luke Kelly of The Dubliners as well as Shane MacGowan of The Pouges.
The second tune I sing in the video above is called "The Lakes of Pontchartrain"
I was inspired to learn this song after seeing Paul Brady play a version of it as part of a BBC documentary on the history of Folk music.
Here is Brady's version played in a beautiful open G Irish tuning. My version uses a much simpler standard tuning.
Lake Pontchartrain forms the Northern boundary of New Orleans. The song is a ballad from the United States which tells the story of a man who is given shelter by a Louisiana Creole woman. He falls in love with her and asks her to marry him, but she is already promised to a sailor and declines.
Brady would have likely encountered this song while traveling around America in the early 1970s.
The last song in my 3 song set is "The Parting Glass"
This is a Scottish traditional song, often sung at the end of a gathering of friends or at pub closing time. It has also long been sung in Ireland, again made popular by Irish musical icons like Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners and Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem. It was apparently the most popular parting song sung in Scotland before Robert Burns wrote "Auld Lang Syne" in 1788.
I love closing my sets with this one, its a great way to say farewell to the audience.
I will leave you guys with a beautiful version sung by Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem.
Until next time......"Goodnight and joy be with you all!"
▶️ 3Speak
This was absolutely fantastic 👏 👏
Three great songs, a history lesson, lovely preamble before each song and then each song performed in your own unique way. I must say I really really enjoyed that now, and you saved the best till last. I buried my uncle this year and my brother in law played the Parting glass at his graveside. It was so fitting. There is power and beauty in that song and you played it with gusto.
Cheers bro Im glad you enjoyed it.
I'm trying to work up the courage to go busking for the first time this weekend, feedback like this is really encouraging.
Ill try another little 3 song set next week.
Ah yes, auld stock, get yourself set up on a nice friendly street and play some of these tunes and you will be appreciated, there's no doubt about it. You are very natural in how you speak before each song, which brings extra charm and charisma to the performance. This is something I admire in guys like Christy Moore or Rodrigo Y Gabriella for example - that interaction and inclusion with the audience. Wishing you the best of luck with the busking, not a bother to you..
I'm looking forward to next week's set now..
Great quiz question to ask the Irish. Noone says Salford.
Ewan MacColl was born in England but his parents were Scottish and one of his most famous tunes is an Irish anthem .... :) Id bet hardly anyone knows Dirty Old Town was written to fill time during an awkward scene change in a play written by MacColl in 1949 called Landscape with Chimneys...
I did not know that. We like adopting the Scots. Mike Scott also for fishermans blues