Recent Letters

Song help?

I remembered another song from my childhood - it was sung on the radio, on a comedy programme, I think, but I cannot remember who sang it.  Can anyone help me out?

"Tell me, Mr Tram Conductor",
The grey haired old lady said,
"If I tread upon the tram lines
Will the current strike me dead?"
"You need have no fear, madam",
The cheeky tram conductor said'
"Unless you raise the other leg and put it
On the power lines overhead!"

Best

Patricia Lovell - 13.4.08

Cyril Tawney recordings?

Thank you very much

Rosemary Tawney - 25.3.08
tawney3@tiscali.co.uk   01392 426 055
10 Sivell Place, Heavitree, Exeter, EX2 5ET, UK.

Folkways podcasts

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there's a stupendous series of 24 one-hour podcasts available to download from Smithsonian Folkways, recounting the Folkways story - Click here.  The information would be well worth posting on the MT site.

All the best,

Geoff Wallis - 19.3.08

Woolworths!

I ordered the new Bobby Casey CD in my local Woolworths at a very reasonable price and it arrived through my letter box only two days later!  I was surprised they even had it listed.  Very useful for someone like me who likes to pay cash on the nail for anything.

Regards

Phil Heath-Coleman - 19.3.08

Re: Lunatic song

Trying to remember a song for a friend, I came across a version on your website.  The following is what I remember from my childhood in the 1940s, with 'buggers' transcribed to 'blighters' for my young ears!

I worked at the lunatic asylum
My job was a-picking up stones.
One day a lunatic says to me
“How-do Mr Jones?
How much a week do you get for doing that?”
“Fifty bob a week’, I cried.
“Fifty bob a week
And a dozen kids to keep?
Come inside you silly blighter, come inside!”

“Come inside you silly blighter, come inside,
I thought you had a bit more sense!
Fifty bob a week and a dozen kids to keep,
Why don’t you come inside and become a lunatic?
You get your meals quite regular
And two new suits beside -
Fifty bob a week and a dozen kids to keep
Come inside you silly blighter come inside!”

Your article about Ruby Cracknell mentions some 'dirty' songs.  I did pick up a few, probably around the piano in the evenings when the family got back from the pub, but I cannot share them with my grandchildren as my daughter would kill me.  One was (to the tune of The British Grenadiers):

There was a little Scotchy boy
Who went to Waterloo
The wind blew up his petticoats
And he showed his cock-a-doodle-doo
His cock-a-doo was dirty
He showed it to the Queen
The Queen was so disgusted that
She had it painted green

I flew up in a penny balloon
The penny balloon went pop
I fell down in the deep blue sea
And a fishy got hold of me
Cock-a-doodle, cock-a-doodle
Lost the leg o' me drawers
Cock-a-doodle, cock-a-doodle
Won't you lend me yours?

The corporation dustcart
Was full up to the brim
The driver he fell backwards
And found he could not swim.
He sank down to the bottom
Just like a little stone,
He heard the fishes singing
There's no place like home!

Best

Patricia Lovell - 18.3.08
Ryde, Isle of Wight

Re: Irish Music Anthology

Hope that's useful,

S Gibbard - 19.2.08

Blind Jim Howard

I just ran across your review of Yazoo's 7 cd set of Kentucky Mountain Music.  You were generous enough to make some kind comments regarding my grandfather Blind Jim Howard.  Mr Lomax recorded "Pappy" on at least two different occasions.  The recordings were made on the front porch of the house with family looking on.  Mr Lomax's highly sophisticated, state of the art sound equipment was having trouble with Pappy's foot tapping on the wooden porch and a pillow was brought in, an attempt to mute the unwelcome added sound effect.  Pappy made a couple of records, and he had a weekly radio program at WHLN radio in Harlan.

Alas, time, numerous floods, and relocation of family members have claimed these tidbits.  I still have one of his fiddles.  It is in pieces, having endured the flood of 77.  The Library of Congress has 9 or 10 of the recordings that Mr Lomax obtained, but as you are already aware the quality ranges from not so good, to down right awful.  Anyways, on behalf of the family, thank you again for your kind remarks.

Jim Howard - 19.2.08

Pub Entertainers

I was very intersted to read the article on your site about the pub singer Ruby Cracknell.  Would you know of anyone who might have photographs of Ruby, and/or know of singers in a similar vein who are still singing regularly today in pubs around England?

Needless to say, any/all info will be printed with full credits, links to your site etc.

Paul Moody - 19.2.08
moodypj@yahoo.co.uk

British Mountaineering Songs

One interesting facet of this tradition were British mountaineering songs, apparently learned by New Zealanders visiting the UK and/or brought by British migrants.  Songs in this category which are known in New Zealand include Oh My Big Hobnailers (Tune: Oh Dem Golden Slippers), The Climbers' Clementine (Tune: Clementine) and The Barroom Mountaineers (Tune: Various).  There were presumably quite a few other such songs.  My father brought a mimeographed songster back from England in the mid-1950s which has another twenty or so climbing parodies, along with various other ditties.

While I've been able to gather some information from older climbers in New Zealand, I am curious about what is known of such mountaineering songs in Britain.  There is a chapter by Robert A Lambert in the book The Ballad in Scottish History (East Linton, 2000), dealing with Scottish mountaineering balladery of the 1850-1960 era.  Lambert describes how climbers in the Cairngorms during the 1930s would sleep rough in caves, barns, bothys and 'tramp's howffs', holding lively sing-songs and storytelling sessions in the evenings.  But, apart from this chapter, I can find little else in the way of published work about the Scottish tradition.

Nor have I found much about the English and Welsh mountaineering song traditions, which appear to have been going at least into the 1950s.  I would be grateful for any leads.

Best regards

Michael Brown - 8.2.08
New Zealand School of Music, Wellington   Michael.Brown@vuw.ac.nz

Re: Lizzie Higgins review (2)

James Porter and Herschel Gower (Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995, 169-170) note that Lizzie adapted those lines from Walter Scott's English-language verses, originally written for Alexander Campbell's Albyn's Anthology (II, 1818, 54).  I quote the original half-stanza here from The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1858.

Macleod's wizard flag from the gray castle sallies,
The rowers are seated, unmoor'd are the galleys;
Gleam war-axe and broadsword, clang target and quiver,
As Mackrimmon sings, "Farewell to Dunvegan for ever!"

'MacLeod's wizard flag' is presumably an allusion to the famous 'Fairy Flag' of Dunvegan.

Best regards

Malcolm Douglas - 26.1.08

Re: Chris Holderness' review of Keith Summers in Suffolk 1972-79

For the record, although the singing and step dancing in the small Public Bar was overwhelmingly male, it did not need a 'special event' for women to attend.  I clearly recall there being at least two women who would be there, but they did seem to be considered as rather on the fast and disreputable side (one with bright red dyed hair).

My regards

Brian Felton - 25.1.08

Re: Echoes of Erin database

First, a big thanks for the publicity for the discography in MT - got quite a few responses as a result.  Best one from Keith Chandler who supplied me with masses of information.

An updated version is now on the OaC website (www.oac.ie), plus a preliminary draft of the US-recorded UK/Ireland re-releases - would apreciate a mention.

Thanks again for your help.

Barry Taylor - 15.1.08

Re: Ballad of Willie Cumming

I learned this weekend of the death of Helen Cumming at the hand of her father on December 20, 1910, and the folk song that arose from it, from your article (article MT 165).  It was most interesting.

One of the 'bairnies' that witnessed the gruesome murder, ran to warn the police, then testified against his father was George Cumming, was my maternal step-grandfather, who died in 1988 at the age of 87.  He and his four brothers were sent to Canada in 1913 as part of a Quarrier's party of 'orphans' indentured to farmers in Canada.  Three of the boys remained in Canada, and one emigrated to the U.S.

My grandfather never spoke about this episode in his life.  He only said that his mother had died, and his father could not keep them, so committed them to the Quarrier's orphanage nearby.  My aunt only discovered this story after her father's death.  She will find your article interesting as the original articles that appeared in the Huntly Express in 1910 and 1911.

Regards,

Jamie Trimble - 12.12.07
Ontario, Canada

Research help?

Looking forward to reading your responses,

Fay Hield - 4.12.07
f.hield@sheffield.ac.uk

Drumming help wanted

Am looking for online (links) or offline (books) sources on ECD percussion kit setup and playing.  I have good familiarity with both traditional and more modern bands (Plain Capers to Tiger Moth, say) and have the sound of ECD percussion in my ear, but would welcome specific information about drum setups and playing techniques.  I have a young drumset and drumline player with good skills but who needs direction in ECD playing.

Thanks for any info, offlist at christopher d o t smith a t ttu dot edu

Chris Smith - 3.10.07

Re: Field Recordings in NZ

Even recordings of such traditional gems as the wonderful Kokatahi Band are now unobtainable.  This was and still is a loose knit group of ex-miners and friends from Hokitika in the South Island which has been going for very many years.

In the past I understand that Radio New Zealand used to have a vast collection of disk recordings of interviews from such people as old-time bullock drovers.  Like the BBC archival records were of little interest to RNZ and as far I understand it they junked the lot in the 1960/70s.  I did hear that Phil Garland rescued some of these recordings.  Perhaps he needs encouragement to publish these onto the web?

Some of the surviving NZ folklore was in bush ballads or recitations.  These were published in vast quantities.  Many of these collections are still available.  These were poems of local life and events in the 1800s/1900s.  They were recited at logging camps and in local shanties (pubs) to earn a drink for the night.  They were performed at social gathering of all kinds.  They were the real folk tradition of New Zealand.

Such a writer of these was one Charles Thatcher; see: http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/T/ThatcherCharlesRobert/ThatcherCharlesRobert/en

As far as recent folklore is concerned the RNZ programmes 'Open Country' by Jim Henderson related tales from ordinary folk and their experiences in the early and mid part of the 1900s.  Some of the stories were published in book form, but none are available on-line.  I suspect that these have been wiped.  These programmes would have been a cornucopia of stories of life in pioneering days.  As an aside I purchased and still have vast numbers of 5¼" reels of audio tape from RNZ - all wiped before being sold.  I hate to think what gems were on them.

However all is not lost - one singer-song writer - Mike Harding - has been instrumental in researching native folk song.  See: http://www.mikeharding.co.nz/

And somewhere there is a complete collection of ALL performances at Devonport Folk Club.  See: http://devonportdirectory.co.nz/realmusic.htm  They must have vast archive of contemporary NZ folk song and singers.

Kiwi Pacific has a CD of performances at Poles Apart folk club.  See: http://www.kiwipacific.com/product_info.php?products_id=173&osCsid=38543bca79cb95f62a1b8aa67fe84cfb

As for step dancing - the few old references we have is of one Ned Slattery otherwise known as The Shiner - see the wonderful book by John A.  Lee called 'Shining with the Shiner.' Ned Slattery was an Irish itinerant in the mid-1800s.  He was work-shy, lived on inspired trickery, and the stories John A Lee relates are very amusing.  Slattery was also an expert Irish step dancer and winning competitions provided him with a small income to further his interest in Irish whiskey.  It is known that Irish step dancing - and presumably competitions - was seen in the late 1800s/early 1900; as was maypole dancing!! See: http://chrisbrady.itgo.com/morris/nzdance.htm

English Country Dancing a la Sharp was strong in the 1930s/40s promoted by John Oliver from Cambridge Morris Men.  (Try Googling 'john oliver morris') At that time there were more English Country Dance Clubs throughout NZ than there were Scottish.  The Christchurch ECD Ladies were still dancing in the mid-1990s.  See: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1875905643098222729

As an aside, in Australia researcher and collector John Meredith was instrumental in saving many songs and tunes from the past.  See: http://www.bushmusic.org.au/JM_Tribute.html  I had the great pleasure to meet him in the 1980s.  Quote: "From the 1960s, John increasingly concentrated on writing books.  'Folksongs Of Australia' and the men and women who sang them, volume 1 is one of the major works of the Australian canon and the second volume, published by the University of NSW in 1987 continued John's excellent work."  In these two volumes are a number of step dance tunes, jigs and hornpipes, but when I questioned him about step dancing he said that it had all gone.  But he did show me an old photograph of an itinerant 'rat catcher' who was also known as a step dancer.

Step dancing is known to have been a form of home / camp entertainment certainly in Australia and presumably in New Zealand.  There is a delightful story from the late 1880s of a bullock drover up in Queensland who has his dancing board strapped to the side of his bullock cart for use during the long evenings at camp.  And step dancing was a feature of pub life in the Rocks area of Sydney during the late 1800s/early 1900s.  Many of the pubs there had (still have) trap doors over the cellars, and the locals were recorded as finishing a step dance with the 'Sydney Three Crack Whip' - that is a stamp, stamp, stamp.  This was a special cracking of a bullock whip.

But back to New Zealand.  The 20th century collectors of folk song and music entirely neglected folk dance.  Yet this must have been extant in the pioneering communites.  In the north there were large migrant camps from Yugoslavia who were the main kauri gum diggers.  In the South Island the itinerant Irish labourers also formed large communities digging for gold.  And it is known that step dance competitions featured as part of their evening's entertainment - apart from drinking whisky.  Many local museums have melodeons on display hanging up with their bellows stretched out.

Meanwhile, in the late 1800s, the Government was holding huge costumed balls in Wellington and Auckland - the dance engagement cards are still extant.  The dances were mainly quadrilles.  See: http://chrisbrady.itgo.com/morris/nzdance.htm

Thinking about all of the above I seem to remember that one Frank Fyfe made a number of field recordings of New Zealanders singing and playing music from the 1950s onwards.  I seem to remember him at a folk festival relating a story of a man in Palmerston North (I think) who played a one string 'cello' - this was made out of a rectangular oil can, a broom handle, and a bowden cable (motorbike brake cable).  Frank played some recordings of him, but apparently the man had 'found religion' and wouldn't play anything that wasn't a hymn tune.  There is an article about him in an old EFDSS magazine (1980s?).

I understand that Frank Fyfe passed away in 2003.  Re: http://folksong.org.nz/greatfolk.html # http://folksong.org.nz/bright_fine_gold/brfigold3.html His archives of field notes and recordings must be somewhere.

Chris Brady - 29.8.07

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