Trad NYS songs in NYC

Subject: Trad NYS songs in NYC - Dave Ruch
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 11:43 AM

I've just been booked for a concert of traditional songs of New York State, and other American regional song traditions, at the CUNY Graduate Center near the World Trade Center in Manhattan. The date is Monday, December 12, 2005 at 7pm. I'm looking forward to it!

If anyone in the area could provide suggestions for a possible house concert, folk series, etc in the days directly before or after this, I'd love to hear from you. I don't know the "scene" there very well. More info on what I do here: www.daveruch.com

Thanks to all - I hope some folks can make it there to sing with me!

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: GUEST,Dave'sWife at work
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 11:48 AM

My fave from when I was a kid was

The Erie Canal (Low Bridge Everybody Down version not the one the weavers sing.) the one that goes .. I've got a mule named Sal.. etc etc. Your audience can join in on the chorus. Great fun!

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: Zhenya
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 02:34 PM

Hi Dave,

This sounds like an interesting concert and I'll try to get to it. By the way, I think the CUNY Graduate Center is actually in Midtown Manhattan, a few miles north of the World Trade Center site which is in Downtown Manhattan, unless they also have concerts at another location.

Here's a link to the local folk music organization, Pinewoods. They often have house concerts and other events of the type you mentioned. There may be some information on their website that would give you some leads. And some of the members are Mudcatters as well.


New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club

Zhenya in Manhattan

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 08:19 PM

Zhenya,

Thanks for the link, and for the geography lesson! How right you are. What I meant to say is "near the Empire State Building", not the World Trade Center. I hope you can make it to the concert.

Dave's Wife at work,

Yes, that seems to be the one that everybody remembers from grade school...and, interestingly enough, NOT a traditional folk song from canal days, but rather a professionally written song from the early 20th century.

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 08:59 PM

You could do worse than lead off with this fine song:

Words and music by Malvina Reynolds
© 1959 by Schroder Music Co.

The Faucets are Dripping

Chorus:

The faucets are dripping in old New York City;
The faucets are dripping and, oh, what a pity;
The reservoir's drying because it's supplying
The faucets that drip in New York.

You can't ask the landlord to put in a washer;
He'd rather you move than put in a washer;
The faucets are dripping; they sound in my ears;
The tap in the bathroom's been running for years.

There's a wild streak of green in the sink in the kitchen;
It comes from the rill trickling out of the plumbing;
The stream from the mountains, the pools from the lea,
All run from my faucet and down to the sea.

The faucets are dripping; the landlord's content;
With every new tenant he raises the rent;
The buildings can crumble; the tenants can cry;
There's a shortage of housing; you'll live there or die.

You can't ask the landlord to put in a washer;
You can't ask the landlord to mend the old stairs;
He takes in the rents and he lives in Miami
Where faucets don't drip and there's sun everywheres. (CHO)

However, it's only 46 years old and may be outside your criteria for "traditional."

Warm regards,
Landlady's Daughter

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: Susan of DT
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 09:49 PM

(dick greenhaus here)
Folk Songs of the Catskills, (Cazden Haufrecht and Studer) is a fine collection. There are a bunch of songs in DigiTrad from this book. Try a search on Catskills.

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: GUEST,Dave'sWife
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 01:45 AM

Hmmm.. I don't know how old something has to be before its considered Trad. The Erie Canal song was always great fun precisely because it was written to express the actual experience of sailing it. When I was a Grad Student working on sites along the Canal, we'd always sing it and then, whenever we actually sailed on the canal, encountering on of the few low bridges still around, always caused people to break out into song.

Pete Seeger has written a number of lovely songs about The Hudson River which might be useful to you. I don't know if that Sloop Clearwater Project is still up and running, but it was at benefits for that where I heard most of those songs.

Here's a link to an earlier Mudcat thread on Hudson River Songs which mentions 'Hicks The Pirate'
Husdon River Songs

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: LadyJean
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 01:55 AM

There's a fine old vaudeville song that has as it's chorus,
"Oh the bowery the bowery, they say such things and they do such things"
"In the Bowery the Bowery, I'll never go there anymore."
I'm afraid I don't know the verses. But they shouldn't be hard to find.

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: GUEST,Dave'sWife
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 01:59 AM

Some more suggestions:

The Battle of Saratoga

which can be found on THIS CD along with other songs about the Hudson during The American Revolution:
Revolution On the RIver

and..

The Voice of the Hudson
by Paul Dresser
Date: 1903

Found the chorus referenced online as..:


We shall stroll by the Hudson,
the great mighty river
The Hudson, majestic and grand,
With its crooks and its bends,
as it silently wends its ways
'mid the scenes of the Master's hand,
But a voice cries aloud:
"The Hudson am I! why come you alone, where is she?
Go bring her, you loved her, and she loved you too
And I know thay you both loved me!

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 07:55 AM

Thanks for the song suggestions, everyone. Most of the songs I like to do are songs collected from the oral tradition, a la, the Camp Woodland collection that Dick mentions as "Folk Songs of the Catskills". Songs that ordinary people sang, and passed along, in older days of NY State. I'll be doing lumbering songs from several regions of the state, songs from the Great Lakes, songs of a pioneer Western NY family from the 1830's, Adirondack and Catskill traditional songs, Erie Canal ditties, etc.

Any leads on additional performance opportunities while in the Big Apple would be greatly appreciated.

Subject: LYR.ADD.: End of Old Bill Snyder, The
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 10:43 AM

Dave-

Even though this protest song goes back to the 1840's, it's probably of little interest to you but I'll post it anyway in case some other readers of this thread may be interested. The notes are from my working draft of THE HOUSING & NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZING SONGBOOK:


THE END OF OLD BILL SNYDER

(Words by S.H. Foster, 1841,
In American Folksongs of Protest
Tune: traditional "Old Dan Tucker")

The moon was shining silver bright;
The sheriff came in the dead of night;
High on a hill sat an Indian true,
And on his horn, this blast he blew –

Chorus:

Keep out of the way, Big Bill Snyder;
We'll tar your coat and feather your hide, Sir!

The Indians gathered at the sound,
Bill cocked his pistol, looked around,
Their painted faces, by the moon,
He saw, and heard that same old tune – (CHO)

Says Bill, "This music's not so sweet,
As I have heard, I think my feet
Had better be used;" and he started to run,
But the tin horn still kept sounding on – (CHO)

"Legs! Do your duty now," says Bill,
"There's a thousand Indians on the hill;
When they catch Tories they tar their coats,
And feather their hides, I hear the notes" – (CHO)

And he thought that he heard the sound of a gun
And he cried in fright, "Oh! My race is run!
Better had it been, had I never been born,
Then to come within the sound of that tin horn." (CHO)

And the news flew around, and gained belief,
That Bill was murdered by an Indian chief;
And no one mourned that Bill was slain,
But the horn sounded on, again and again – (CHO)

Next day the body of Bill was found,
His writs were scattered on the ground,
And by his side a jug of rum,
Told how he to his end had come. (CHO)

Notes:

Concern about land reform in the 19th century was hardly unique to Great Britain. As late as 1840 tenant farmers in the southern Hudson River area of New York were protesting a leasehold system which had its roots in the colonial charter of the Dutch West Indies Company. For decades the "Down-Renters" fought to achieve reforms through legislative action only to meet with frustration. Others responded to the landlords' efforts to enforce their leases with more direct action tactics. In his introduction for an anti-eviction song drawn from this period, folk music historian John Greenway states:

"The End of Big Bill Snyder," the most popular of the Anti-Rent songs sung throughout the period of violence, was written by a sympathizer named S.H. Foster, and celebrates the discomfiture of Big Bill Snyder, a universally despised deputy sheriff who was imported by the landholders in 1841 to serve writs. While on one such foray into the hills he was captured by a band of "Indians" and soundly threshed. In recording Snyder's death the song is faithful to poetic rather than factual truth.

Cordially,
Landlady's Daughter

Subject: RE: Trad NYS songs in NYC
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 11:41 AM

Thanks Charlie. I know it well, from the singing of Hudson Valley folk singer Rich Bala (www.richbala.com). Rich is also one half of the duo that recorded the "Revolution on the River" CD that Dave'sWife mentioned above.

One report has it that those "Indians" were actually farmers in disguise, and that they developed ways of signalling to each other using tin horns (from Harry Oster in the Delanson Manuscript of Songs). Edith Cutting, another NYS folklorist, has it that old Bill did not meet his demise during the revolt, but rather, "returned to Albany....in a rather worn condition".

The song was, indeed, popular in oral tradition in 19th century (and into 20th cent) New York State.