LOVED AND LOST 2020
This is the 8th of the series of annual CDs I have put together. Each one has had a theme; it makes it easier to choose the songs.
Previous offerings have been:
Love, Lust and married bliss, Skulduggery, True Stories, Time to go?, Wild Boy, Out of the Mouths & Unpolitic.
All fairly self-explanatory, as I hope is this one: ‘Loved and Lost’, stories of romance gone wrong!
1, Calico Printers Clerk Roud 13210.
Originally a music hall song written by Harry Clifton (1832-1872) which circulated widely as a street ballad. His best known song was 'Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green' The Calico Printers Clerk is a similar tale of woe with some quaint period references. Harry Clifton wrote more than 500 songs including 'Watercress Girl' and 'Country Carrier' both of which have also passed into the folk tradition.
2. Matty Grove Roud 52
A 'Child ballad' - also as a 17th century broadside. However, this is an Appalachian version (hence I am accompanying it on the Appalachian Dulcimer) which is pared down to the bare essentials of the story. The only thing missing is the final verse of the Child ballad in which Lord Barnard orders a grave to be dug and 'My lady to be laid on top, because she is of noble kin' - a sentiment probably lost on Americans!
3. Black is the colour Roud 3103
Probably originally Scottish, but collected by Cecil Sharp in the Appalachians in 1916
4. Bold Grenadier Roud 140
Dating from the late 1600s, this song was often collected in England, Canada and the USA but frequently deemed unsuitable for publication by Victorian collectors The chorus is a later addition but everyone knows it from the recordings by the Dubliners and Clancy brothers.
5. Cruel Lowland Maid Roud 307
Published as a street ballad in early 1800s and 'collected' by Lucy Broadwood in 1896. Classic story of the betrayal of a sailor home from sea, but the perpetrators of the crime get their just desserts!
6. Darling Cora is gone Odell McLeod (1959)
Recorded by the Foggy Mountain Boys. (Flatt & Scruggs) Classic country song.
7. Going to a wedding (Trad)
I guess that this was originally a Victorian Music hall song, but it was collected several times in the early 20th century from country singers. I learned this version from the singing of Alex Campbell who recorded it in 1965 and with whom I shared a convivial evening when he ended up sleeping our sofa!
8. Johnny Todd Roud 1102.
19th Century sailors ballad which became a Liverpool children's street song. I first heard Ewan McColl sing it in the late 60s
9. Little Bitty Tear
Written by Hank Cochran and an unlikely hit in 1961 for Burl Ives.
Ledbury Clergyman
A true story!
The Rev. John Jackson, the Rector of Ledbury in Herefordshire, was suspended in 1869 for having fathered one of his servants children. He refused to surrender the living and another church (the Iron Church) was built in Ledbury to enable to parishioners to avoid Rev. Jackson The scandal received nationwide recognition and 150 years on we are still singing about his misdeeds. The cook, Elizabeth, so enjoyed the notoriety that she had her photo taken with the child —a huge expense in those days.
11 Lucy Wan Roud 234
Many versions of this song exist, but this is a very dark one collected in 1904 by Percy Merrick from Mrs Charlotte Dann in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire.
Mrs Dann, a housekeeper, was overheard singing it as she went about her household chores. Nothing like a bit of incest and gratuitous violence to help pass the day!
12 .One cold morning in December. Roud 1745
A song from Walter Pardon, recorded in his home in Knapton, Norfolk in 1978. I love it’s wonderful rural Norfolk ‘innocence’.
13. The ballad of Stanton Drew
Often cited as 'traditional' - and of course, prehistoric standing stones will always spawn legends, but it was written by Muriel Holland, a childrens storywriter, published by EFDSS in 1971 and recorded by the Yetties .
14. Long Black Veil
Originally written and recorded in 1959 by Lefty Frizzell but made famous by Johnny Cash and many other country singers. I have reverted to the original version
.
15. The banks of the Ohio
A 19th century murder ballad …. Turning down a suitor is fraught with danger.
16 The Grey Cock (Roud 179) A supernatuaral twist on ‘night visiting’. The Irish version—’I’m a Rover’ loses the spooky element completely—this is closer to the Child ballad.
17 The Whitby Tailor Often sung in other parts of England as ‘The Tailors’ britches’ This unfortunate beau makes three basic errors in his courtship…. He gets very drunk, he shows off to the girl and very importantly, he went out on the pull for the evening without any underpants.