First Folk Song You Sang in Public

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Stringsinger
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 01:33 PM

A.   Streets of Laredo
B.    Probably Burl Ives
C.    Y.M.C.A. campfire at "Little Green Valley" in Big Bear Lake area California
D.    c1945
E.    12
F.      76
G.    Still do occasionally.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: NaeMairSea
Date: 23 Jan 11 - 04:55 PM

Significantly different to the other thread, this asks of Mudcatters:

A) Paddy and the Bricks

B) Learnt while on a Warship in the South Atlantic

C) Woolston Folk Club, Near Southampton (Now moved to Bursledon)

D) 1998

E) 44

F) 56

G) Yes, as a good Health and Safety Warning.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: GUEST,smuggler
Date: 24 Jan 11 - 03:50 PM

A)For Lovin Me(Gordon Lightfoot)

B) My brother brought back a recording of it from Canada/USA when he was working as a steward on Candian Pacific ships.

C) Rhyl Folk Club, North Wales

D) 1966

E) 16

F) Work it out!!

G) only when someone asks me what was the 1st song you sang (happened at Christmas!)

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: PHJim
Date: 24 Jan 11 - 04:02 PM

A) What was the first song you sung consciously in the name of Folk in a folk club, singaround, festival (or any other Designated Revival Folk context)?
My brother Gary and friend Jim had a folk group called The Rovers Three (named after the song The Gypsy Rover). The first song we sang was Jesse James.

B) What was the source?
We learned it from a Kingston Trio record.

C) Where was it?
-at a Boy Scout Hootenanny in the basement of Binkley Church in Hamilton

D) When was it?
-circa 1959 or 1960, during the great folk scare

E) How old were you?
-15 or 16

F) How old are you now?
-66

G) Is it still in your repertoir?
-My siblings and I still do it occasionally at family get-to-gethers

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 07:50 AM

(A) Hanging Johnny
(B) Sea Songs and Shanties (book)- Hugill
(C) Old Kings Head - Teddington
(D) 1980
(E) 20
(F) 51
(G) I still know it, but as I sing in public on average once a year, it could take 50 or 60 years before I get round to it again!

The very very first folks songs would have been in the school choir when I was 12 or 13.

The location was session run by Michael Black (I've been told more recently it is he of THE Black Family). I remember it well, the first few times I went there I was overheard joining in choruses. On the night in question the dialogue went something like:

Are you going to give us a song?
'Vigorously shaking my head'
Come on sing us a song.
Maybe another time.
If you sing us a song, I'll buy you a pint.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Here's a pint - what are you going to sing?

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 08:07 AM

First sung in the early 70s but the song I sung(The Port Of Amsterdam) was recorded at the Lamb in Preston in the 1980s
Port of Amsterdam... done in the 1980s

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 08:28 AM

Preston, eh? Well I sang Amsterdam in Fleetwood a few years ago but I would never think of it as a Folk Song. As I recall I didn't use the usual translation, but based it on the word for word text of a film of Jaques Brel on YouTube which is a good deal more interesting & colourful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2kkr0e_dTQ

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: GUEST,VirginaTam
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 09:20 AM

A) The Minstrel

B) Graham & Eileen Pratt LP

C) Sing a round session at Rochester Sweeps

D) May 2008?

E) 50

F) 53 (in less than 24 hours)

G) It is my preferred piece and most requested.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Paul Reade
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 07:25 PM

I have no problem remembering the first song - it's the last one I can't remember!

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 12:54 AM

A) What was the first song you sung consciously in the name of Folk?
"Is There Anybody Here?"

B) What was the source?
Phil Ochs, from the "I Ain't Marchin' Any More" album

C) Where was it?
Outside the Riverboat (Yorkville Village, Toronto) - standing in line at 10 o'clock for Gordon Lightfoot's midnight show! I was singing it quietly to a friend by way of trying to introduce him to the work of this amazing songwriter I'd just discovered. Not as quietly as I thought - I ended up with a healthy round of applause from the rest of the lineup!

D) When was it?
196-4?

E) How old were you?
17

F) How old are you now?
63. Please don't make me do the math.

G) Is it still in your repertoire?
Not really. Main Phil Ochs song I still do is "When I'm Gone."

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: GUEST,Charles Biada
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 01:44 AM

A) "Jeff Davis Rides A Grey Horse"

B) Field recording of Oscar Gilbert via the Wolf Folklore Collection

C) Weeknight singaround at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture

D) June 2010

E) 19

F) 20

G) Yes, with an added seven or eight verses

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Max Johnson
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 07:03 AM

A) What was the first song you sung consciously in the name of Folk in a folk club, singaround, festival (or any other Designated Revival Folk context)? The Maid of Fife (with harmony and everything!)

B) What was the source? The Clancy Brothers' Carnegie Hall album.

C) Where was it? Les Pope's White Horse Folk Club, Ripon.

D) When was it? 1966.

E) How old were you? 18.

F) How old are you now?. 2011 -D +E -10

G) Is it still in your repertoir? I no longer sing in public and only sing with friends nowadays, but, yes.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Brian May
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 07:10 AM

A. Colours

B. Donovan

C. Ashley House Folk Club, Bognor Regis

D. 1967 ish

E. 17 ish

F. 60

G. Yes, and an objectionable parody too (which my wife hates)

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 07:27 AM

A- The Drovers Dream
B-from album Presenting the Iam Cambell Folk Group, which
I later gave to Ian & Lorna cambell as oddly they hadn't a copy!
Comes from a 50's Oz musical Reedy River, on the album by
John Dunkerly with Dave Swarbrick on fiddle
C-At The Old Bush Folk Club, Daisy Bank near Bilston
D- 1982 ish
C- 32
D- almost 60
E- Very much still in my repertoire as an Acapella song

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: kmbraun
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 09:59 AM

A) Foggy, Foggy Dew

B) A Dulcimer instruction book bought when I got my dulcimer.

C) The Rack 'n Sack Society in Little Rock, AR

D) 1973 or so on a Sunday evening.

E) about 29

F) 67

G) Yes, but with concertina, not the dulcimer.

Kurt

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: tritoneman
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 12:41 PM

The first 'folk' song I sang in public was 'Danville Girl'. I learnt it from an album called 'Rambling Boys' by Ramblin' Jack Eliot And Derroll Adams. This happened at Farnborough Folk Club held at the Old Ford pub at North Camp, Hampshire (UK). It was in 1965 and I was 14 years old. I'm about to turn 60.... This song is no longer in my repertoire but maybe it should be !

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Richard from Liverpool
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 02:04 PM

A She's Like The Swallow
B Vaughan Williams, Folksongs from Newfoundland
C At a music festival in Liverpool
D 10 and a half years ago
E 18
F 29
G In theory, yes, although I can't actually remember the last time I sang it (overdue for another go), and having seen other sources I've shifted away from the words that Vaughan Williams gives.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Rebecca Fox
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 02:39 PM

A. Either The Gardener or The Bold Fisherman (did them both but can't remember in which order)
B From a my parents' Tim Hart & Maddy Prior album (Folksongs of Old England 2)
C. As part of a 'folk music' week at the Othona Community in Dorset.
D 1995
E 19
F 34
G Yes, but not all that regularly as I have always had my father accompany me on guitar for both those songs. Maybe about time I rearranged them so I can accompany myself or just sing them a capella occasionally.

Sang folk songs for many years prior to that, but only in general musical gatherings... that was the first time with a specifically folk oriented audience.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 02:57 PM

The cuckoo, she's a pretty bird, sung at the Herga folk club.
As far as I can remember, the words for the version I sang were learned from a book shown to me by my German penfriend in Ludwigsburg during a school exchange in the Easter holidays in 1968, when I was 16, so you can work out how old I am now. And I still sing it occasionally.

Kitty

PS the first song I sang in public was Que sera, sera, at my infants school, when I was about 5...

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 12:13 PM

Out of interest - score so far:

16% learned their first song from books/publications, 47% from recordings, 15% from other people, 22% other/did not say.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 09:04 PM

A) Solidarity Forever
B) An unknown singer at a Young Socialist Weekend School in Tonbridge, Kent, on the Common Market (as Europe used to be called)
C) Heart & Hand Folk Club, Brighton
D) Sometime in September 1962
E) 16
F) 64
G) Yes

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 15 Apr 11 - 06:16 AM

A) Hanging Johnny
B) Either Great Big Sea's Road Rage album, or Boden's Folk Song A Day. I think I heard GBS's first.
C) Raise The Roof folk club, above the Red Deer pub
D) Last month, 16th March I think
E) 19
F) 19
G) Hell yeah. A nice shanty which is great for a crowd song, even if they aren't folkies.

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: doncatterall
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 06:02 AM

A) Lucy Wan (I think)

B) Byker Hill LP (Carthy & Swarbrick)

C) probably in a pub in North Cheshire with Adlington Morris Men

D) mid 1970s

E) mid 20s

F) 61

G) yes, but rarely sung

Subject: RE: First Folk Song You Sang in Public
From: threelegsoman
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 09:58 AM

A)       Going to the Zoo by Tom Paxton
B)       City of Leeds College of Education Folk Club
C)       1966
D)       21
E)       65
F)       Yes, but not often