Week 285 – Shepherds Rejoice

In my previous post, I recounted how a bunch of us used to go out “wassailing” round the more salubrious parts of Ashford, and the distinctly well-heeled area between Saltwood and Sandling Station. As Mike, my chief partner-in-crime, commented last week

Big houses with appreciative, generous occupants. I remember gluhwein and mince pies, and even having the impression on subsequent years that some of our hosts had been expecting us and even looking forward to our arrival.

That’s exactly how I remember it too. It probably helped that we were collecting for charity rather than to line our own pockets. But also, compared to the usual brief, tuneless renditions of ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ which even then were becoming standard fare, we were a pretty good deal. We were mostly singing carols the people had never heard before. We sang them loudly, in harmony, and we sang them all the way through. Mind you that wasn’t always an advantage. I remember one poor gent, who invariably greeted us kindly, patiently waiting while we ground our way through all three verses of our favourite, ‘Shepherds Arise’, and then told us “Well I always enjoy your singing, but I have to say I thought that was dull as ditchwater!”. We were somewhat taken aback by this, but tried to repair matters by singing something rather livelier as an encore.

Other incidents that have stuck in the memory include the youngish man – drunk, or perhaps stoned – who came to the door in his dressing gown and informed us that he was the most entertaining guy we’d meet all night. And the dog with its head in a bucket, who its female owner (a magistrate as I recall) had in consequence taken to calling “Bucket”. Also, some years later (long after your time, Mike) we went singing round Faversham and were invited in by an Irish guy who worked as a buyer for Sainsburys, and had just been given a case of Jamesons – which he proceeded to dispense to us in very generous measures.

And then, of course, there was the house where we were presented with a copy of The Sacred Harp. From October 1979 Mike and I were regulars at the Heritage Society, the Oxford University folk club. We soon became friends with Dick Wolff, a mining engineer who was taking a Theology degree in preparation for becoming a United Reformed Church minister, and Dougal Lee, who I guess was doing English Lit, but whose chief ambition (subsequently realised) was to become an actor. One Monday night after we’d been chucked out of the Bakers’ Arms in Jericho, we went back to Dick’s house in Leckford Road, and there he produced a copy of The Sacred Harp. Now I was aware of Sacred Harp hymns from recordings by the Watersons and the Young Tradition, and from having seen Crows sing ‘Northfield’. But I’d never seen the book before, with its funny shapes, and literally hundreds of songs in four-part harmony just waiting to be sung. Well, we sang them: ‘Russia’, ‘Wondrous Love’, ‘Idumea’, ‘Morning Trumpet’, ‘Northfield’… eventually stopping at 1 o’clock in the morning, when Dick’s neighbours started banging on the walls. We were hooked, and sang together regularly after that (we never had a proper band name, but tended to refer to ourselves either as The Paralytics, or Three Agnostics and a Christian).

That Christmas, Mike and I introduced a couple of Sacred Harp numbers into our wassailing repertoire. So having been invited in to one house, and given sherry and mince pies, we must have sung one of those pieces, and explained where the song came from. Whereupon the man of the house said that he travelled regularly to the States on business and would see if he could find us a copy. One year later, back we went, and were delighted to find that he had been as good as his word, and we were now the owners of a 1968 facsimile of The Sacred Harp, 3rd edition, of 1859.

‘Shepherds Rejoice’ is number 288 in that edition, and it’s presented – as many pieces were in the early editions – in just three parts. The music is attributed to L.P. Breedlove, 1850. That’s Leonard P. Breedlove (1803-1864 according to this source). The song was first published in 1855 in McCurry’s The Social Harp. It’s number 152 in the modern Sacred Harp, where it’s gained an alto part having been “Rearranged by B.S.Aitken, 1908” but lost one of the four original verses. Well, strictly speaking it’s lost two of the original six verses – you’ll see what I mean if you visit https://hymnary.org/text/shepherds_rejoice_lift_up_your_eyes. The words were written by the great English hymnodist, Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and originally published as ‘The Nativity of Christ’ in Horae Lyricae, 1706.

You can hear a four-part rendition of the piece as it appears in the modern Sacred Harp at https://soundcloud.com/keillor-weatherman-mose/shepherds-rejoice-cmd-152-sacred-harp

I don’t know if the tune was originally a folk tune, harmonised by Breedlove, or if he just wrote a tune which sounded very much like something that could have come from the tradition. Either way, I’ve always felt that this would go rather nicely with 5-string banjo and fiddle. But failing that, I now realise an anglo-concertina is a perfectly acceptable substitute!

Shepherds rejoice

Andy Turner: vocal, C/G anglo-concertina

Week 281 – King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O

In my previous post I related how, around 35 years ago, I discovered Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in Newcastle Poly library. Now there are certain tracks on those 6 LPs which I consider to be as fine as anything ever committed to shellac, vinyl, or whatever it is they make CDs out of. I’m thinking especially of Buell Kazee’s ‘Butcher’s Boy’, Dock Boggs’ ‘Country Blues’, and Clarence Ashley’s ‘House Carpenter’. I’ve never learned any of those. In fact I think I’ve only ever learned three songs from the whole Anthology, and I’ve not posted any of them here till now.

This song doesn’t reach classic status, but it stuck in my mind and, like Old John Braddalum, I made a point of learning it when I became a parent. Both were a staple part of the Turner family singalong repertoire on long car journeys, so it’s very pleasing that Joe is now able to provide the banjo accompaniment the song really needs.

The version on the Anthology was recorded by Chubby Parker for Columbia Records in New York, August 1928. Parker was a hugely popular entertainer on the National Barn Dance radio show, broadcast on Chicago radio station WLS, between 1925 and 1931.

Chubby Parker – from the My Old Weird America blog.

The song itself dates back to Elizabethan time. According to Wikipedia

Its first known appearance is in Wedderburn’s Complaynt of Scotland (1548) under the name “The Frog cam to the Myl dur”, though this is in Scots rather than English. There is a reference in the London Company of Stationers’ Register of 1580 to “A Moste Strange Weddinge of the Frogge and the Mouse.” There are many texts of the ballad; however the oldest known musical version is in Thomas Ravenscroft‘s Melismata in 1611.

 

 

The Marriage of the Frogge and the Mouse, from Thomas Ravenscroft’s Melismata (1611)

There are several nineteenth century broadside printings of ‘The frog in the cock’d hat’ in the Bodleian Broadside collection, and numerous versions have been collected from oral tradition in Britain and North America.

 

King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O

Andy Turner – vocal
Joe Turner – 5-string banjo, vocal

Week 280 – I saw the light

As a teenager – based on very little exposure to either genre – I had no time for Reggae or Country music. By the time I left university, however, I’d become a Reggae fan. This conversion was largely thanks to my friends Mike Eaton and Chris Taylor, and to certain specific records: Bob Marley and the Wailers ‘Lively up yourself’ (the Live at the Lyceum version), Desmond Dekker ‘The Israelites’, Capital Letters ‘Smoking my Ganja’ and, above all, Chris’ white-label 12 inch of ‘Give me’ by Earth and Fire.

Country music had to wait a little longer. Up until about 1983, if you’d asked me if I liked country music my answer would probably have been “No – of course not”. But slowly I came to realise that the folk = good / country = bad dichotomy was really not sustainable, particularly as in American music the line between folk and country was in no way clearly defined. I discovered Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in the Newcastle Polytechnic library in 1983 or 84. One of the 6 discs was missing, and at least one of the remaining sides was so scratched as to be unplayable. But what I could listen to provided a wonderful introduction to the variety and interconnectedness of American vernacular music: the Carter Family (folk or country?), Blind Lemon Jefferson, Buell Kazee, Dock Boggs, Clarence Ashley, Charlie Patton, and Henry Thomas, to name just a few.

Listening to John Peel and Radio 1 new boy Andy Kershaw also helped to open my ears. Peel was playing a lot of “cowpoke” bands such as the Boothill Foot-tappers (whose ‘Get your feet out of my shoes’ remains a perennial favourite) while much of what Kershaw played wasn’t folk, but was clearly influenced to some degree by American roots music.

It was a review by Maggie Holland that prompted me to seek out and listen to some Hank Williams. At least, that’s what I thought, but a little while ago I did some digging around on the fRoots website, and in my back copies of Southern Rag / Folk Roots / fRoots, and it seems that the way I remember it is not how it actually happened. But what one remembers is often more important than what really happened…

My recollection is that Maggie reviewed this cheap and cheerful Hank Williams compilation, in Southern Rag or Folk Roots, along with a similar release featuring either Jimmie Rodgers or the Carter Family. And that the review started along these lines: “Many people say they don’t like Hank Williams or Jimmie Rodgers, yet they’ve never listened to either of them”. I’d never specifically dissed either performer, but in all other particulars this described me, and I determined to do something about it.

Having now looked at the fRoots reviews indexes, I see that this particular album has never been reviewed in the magazine. Although a different Hank LP was reviewed in FR30. And compilations by both Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family were reviewed in SR22. I suspect I may have conflated the two reviews. I’ve just read the one from SR22 – yes it was written by Maggie Holland – and it says something not entirely dissimilar to what I remembered. Annoyingly I can’t find the first couple of dozen Folk Roots – they must be in an as yet undiscovered box in the garage – so I can’t check the Hank Williams review.

Anyway, from the summer of 1984 I was working for Kent County Libraries – at an exciting time when the holdings of all the county’s major libraries were searchable via the new computerised catalogue. This enabled me to sit at my desk pretending to work, while seeking out and ordering up records from all over the county. I think I’d already checked out and really enjoyed Emmylou Harris’ LP Pieces of the Sky (I remembered the final track, ‘Queen of the Silver Dollar’ from my Radio Caroline listening days). But it was Hank that made the greatest impression. It was curiously familiar, yet at the same time like nothing I’d ever heard before. I suppose the Anthology of American Folk Music had started to accustom me to those desperate emotional voices of “the old weird America” and Hank’s singing was in a direct line from those earlier singers. Incredible to think that one man carried so much pain, and brought happiness to so many, in such a short life.

This song, first recorded in 1948, is an original Hank composition, but it fits seamlessly into the American country/folk gospel tradition.

Hank Williams publicity photo for WSM in 1951. From Wikipedia.

Joe and I recorded it at the end of a rehearsal last night. We were practising for a performance this coming Friday at Eclectic Cabaret, at Wootton near Oxford. It’s a free gig featuring, as the name suggests, performers from a variety of acoustic-ish musical styles. These days Joe can most often be found playing at Oxford’s various rock venues, with bands such as Junk Whale and Worry. However, of my three children, Joe is also the only one who spent their first wage packet on an old-timey 5-string banjo.

 

I saw the light

Andy Turner – vocal
Joe Turner – 5-string banjo, vocal

Week 266 – Dwelling In Beulah Land

Swan Arcade recorded this song on their 1986 album Diving for Pearls, and it’s an outstanding example of their exuberant, no-holds-barred approach to harmony singing. I got the words from Hymnary.org (other online hymnals are available) from where I learn that it was written in 1911 by the prolific American hymn-writer Charles Austin Miles (1868-1946). I don’t know where Swan Arcade learned it from, but there are various recordings you can find online, including one by the Sons Of The Pioneers, with Roy Rogers on vocals. It’s OK, but not a patch on the Swan Arcade version.

I worked out some time ago that this would sound great on a C/G anglo – but that I couldn’t actually sing it comfortably in C. So when I asked Bampton Morris Fool Rob Fidler if I might borrow his Bb/F instrument, recording this song was uppermost in my mind. I must confess I still haven’t learned the words properly, but I thought I’d better get it recorded sooner rather than later – one of these days Rob is going to ask for his concertina back!

Dwelling In Beulah Land

Andy Turner – vocal, Bb/F anglo-concertina

Week 258 – Working on the new railroad

I learned this from the singing of Jim Mageean. Jim was a guest at the Heritage Society in Oxford circa 1981, and he was pretty much a permanent fixture at Sidmouth around that time. I thought that this might have been one of the very few songs I’d simply absorbed from hearing it sung. But actually I find that, in my big lever arch folder of folk words and tunes, I have the words neatly typed out, almost certainly on Caroline Jackson-Houlston’s typewriter; so I suppose I must have asked Caroline to look out the words for me on one of her regular visits to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

The typed words, in common with pretty much every version I can see online, have the refrain as “And I’ve been all around this world”. I’m sure I’ve always sung “And I’ve been all over this world”. I think that’s how Jim Mageean sang it; if not, it’s how I thought  he sang it.

 

Working on the new railroad

Week 218 – Roll Jordan Roll

In the summer of 1980 my friend Adrian Russell put together a harmony quintet, performing under the name of Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard. The group consisted of Adrian, myself, Gill Harrison, Alison Tebbs and Tim Bull. The following year Richard Wren was drafted in as bass, to replace Tim, who was unavailable. We performed exclusively American religious music, including at least a couple of Sacred Harp numbers, and several from the camp meeting repertoire. Songs I particularly remember are the stomping ‘Hard Times’ (“Ain’t it hard times, tribulation, Ain’t it hard times, I’m going to live with God”) and the gloriously repetitive ‘I’m a witness for my Lord’. The group’s name came from this song, which in fact was not one we ever sang.

I’m not entirely sure we sang ‘Roll Jordan Roll’ as a group piece, but I certainly learned it from Adrian around this time. He found it in a Fisk Jubilee Singers’ Song Book – possibly this one.

‘Roll. Jordan, Roll’ from ‘Jubilee songs: as sung by the Jubilee singers, of Fisk University, (Nashville, Tenn.) under the auspices of the American Missionary Association’. From the Internet Archive.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were a well-known vocal ensemble in the late nineteenth century, and they are still going strong today. They were formed in 1871 to raise money for Fisk University, which had been founded after the Civil War to provide higher education for freed slaves. The Singers sang spirituals, as well as some Stephen Foster numbers, and they toured not only the States but in Britain and Europe.

You can hear a 1927 recording of them singing this very piece on the Internet Archive.

Fisk Jubilee Singers, about 1905. From the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Roll Jordan Roll

Week 187 – Brown To Blue

A slight departure, this, from my normal repertoire. But I sing it unaccompanied, so it must be a folk song – right?

The song was originally recorded in 1963 by George Jones, but I learned it from Elvis Costello’s country record Almost Blue.  From the Elvis Costello Wiki I learn that the song was written by George Jones, Virginia Franks and Johnny Mathis. That’s Johnny “Country” Mathis, not Johnny “When a Child Is Born” Mathis, in case you’re wondering.

I’ve always been taken by the line “The judge pronounced the words the way you wanted him to do”. I suppose that would be with a strong Texas accent.

LP sleeve – George Jones “Trouble In Mind” (1965)

Brown To Blue

Week 183 – Poor Wayfaring Stranger

When I sing songs like this, or ‘Idumea’, it is purely for the power and beauty of the tune, and the words as poetry; not because I have a belief in any kind of life hereafter. However, at the end of a week in which we buried my mother, this seems an appropriate song to post.

I first heard it sung by Cathy Lesurf, with the Oyster (Ceilidh) Band in the early 1980s. Subsequently I’ve heard powerful recordings by singers including Emmylou Harris, Natalie Merchant and Norma Waterson. But the version which really made me want to learn the song was the one which Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins recorded in October 1959 from the Arkansas singer Almeda Riddle. Their recording was included on the CD Southern Journey Volume 4: Brethren, We Meet Again – Southern White Spirituals. I then found the words and audio for a fuller four-verse version, recorded from Almeda a few months earlier in August in 1959 by John Quincy Wolf, Jr., on the website of the John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection.

Almeda Riddle at her home, 1959, photographed by Alan Lomax.

All the versions I had heard previously were resolutely in the minor key. One thing I like about Granny Riddle’s version is that it is essentially in the major key, but with plenty of flattened and – better still – ambiguous notes. These tonal ambiguities are very much a part of the singer’s vocal style, and the power of the performance overall, but I have found it difficult to reproduce them without it sounding like I’m trying to do an impression of an Arkansas grandmother. So I’ve tried to sing the song in a way that captures the spirit of Almeda Riddle’s version, while staying true to the way I normally sing. Not sure how successful I’ve been in this, but it’s too good a song not to sing.

Incidentally, I recently stumbled across this fine solo performance of the song by Bill Monroe which, it strikes me, is in very much the same vein as Almeda Riddle’s.

And here’s one of several Sacred Harp performances you can find on the web.

The history of the song is covered on this Mudcat thread: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=23495 . It seems that the words at least date back to the mid-nineteenth century.

Poor Wayfaring Stranger

Week 138 – Idumea

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down!
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

My mate Bob, a man of many and varied musical enthusiasms, recently contacted me with the following:

I was knocked sideways by the unexpected sound of Shirley Collins’ voice on a recent Freak Zone, Stuart Maconie’s late night celebration of the exotic, esoteric and the little heard end of the popular music spectrum. And yes, much of it is little heard for very good reason.

She was singing a Methodist hymn called Idumea on an album called Black Ships Ate the Sky by an experimental music group called Current 93, the creative vehicle of a man called David Tibet since the 80’s.

[…]

Black Ships Ate the Sky features several versions of Idumea, each with a different vocalist but Collins’ version is the pick…  It is clearly not the voice of a young woman but she holds the tune effortlessly and, more importantly, delivers a huge emotional hit. In this regard, I was reminded of the first time I heard the aged Johnny Cash singing Hurt.

I’ve had a listen to most of the album on Spotify, and I have to confess that Bob was spot on when he predicted that much of it would not be to my taste. But I can well understand how David Tibet (or indeed anyone) would be very taken with this powerful hymn.

I have a facsimile of an 1860 printing of The Sacred Harp where the source of the words is given as the Methodist Hymn Book p231. More modern editions of The Sacred Harp credit the author of the words, the great English non-conformist poet and hymn-writer Charles Wesley. You will find the full words as printed in The Sacred Harp at http://fasola.org/indexes/1991/?p=47b  but Wesley wrote more than four verses – you can see a further two four-line verses under Hymn LIX in Wesley’s Hymns for Children, 1763 (Hymns for Children! with an opening line “And am I born to die” – they didn’t pussyfoot around with children in those days!) while the version printed in the Wesleyan Hymn Book of 1779 has six eight-line stanzas.

And Am I Born to Die? Hymn 41 in the Wesleyan Hymn Book. From the Internet Archive.

The composer of the tune is given as Ananias Davisson, 1816 (Although it’s possible he just harmonised a traditional tune – and it’s worth pointing out that in the nineteenth hymn books the arrangement of this song, as with many others, has only three harmony parts: the alto was added in the twentieth century). The index of composers at http://fasola.org/indexes/1991/?v=composer suggests that this is the only Ananias Davisson composition in The Sacred Harp, although there are others, no doubt, in the Kentucky Harmony, which he compiled.

Idumea, from The Sacred Harp.

I think I first heard Idumea  on the Watersons’ LP Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy, then a little later on the Young Tradition’s Galleries Revisited. Unlike the Watersons, the YT sing the proper harmonies (i.e. those in the book), but they don’t get the rhythm quite right. These days, of course, you can find countless versions of Idumea on the web. Here it is in its natural habitat, recorded by Alan Lomax in 1982 at Holly Springs, Georgia.

Note how many of the participants are clearly suffering somewhat in the sweltering Georgia heat, but the man in the suit and tie in the front row seems impervious to everything but the singing.

Elsewhere on YouTube, there’s a less impressive vocal performance, but with the added benefit of Lego:

(Thanks to Adrian Russell for alerting me to that one)

Clearly there are many ways this song can be interpreted. Here’s Cordelia’s Dad, live at Sidmouth in 2010:

That won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Some might even think it sacrilegious, or disrespectful, or gimmicky. But that would be a mistake: lead vocalist Tim Eriksen and bassist Cath Oss are vastly knowledgeable about this music, and have been immersed in Shape Note singing for years. If you have the Cold Mountain soundtrack, you’ll have heard Tim singing Idumea solo, to his own fiddle accompaniment. And if you’ve seen the film (and frankly, if not, why not?) you will surely remember the way Idumea is used early in the film as a wonderfully effective musical backdrop to the scenes of post-battle devastation at Petersburg. Tim Eriksen coordinated the Sacred Harp singing on that film, and insisted that the recording should be made at a real Sacred Harp singing, at the Liberty Baptist Church in Alabama.

I believe it is the recording from Cold Mountain that has been used once again to provide a moving accompaniment to images of Native Americans on this final YouTube video:

Did I say final YouTube video? Let’s have one more performance full of emotion before you get to hear me sing Idumea.

Idumea