This version of Softly and Tenderly is by Cynthia Clawson and is from the 1985 movie "Trip to Bountiful" with Geraldine Page as an elderly woman striking out on her own to take one last trip home before she dies. It's a sad and lovely movie and this is Sheila's favorite version of this song.
We were introduced to Connie Dover's music back during my wife's Irish phase where she dug deeply into Irish music and Irish history. Her family, the Keens have a deep Irish past going back to the Kings of Tara. Connie does a lot of Irish music and cowboy music. The two types of music are deeply kin with a lot of Irish ballads being morphed into cowboy songs by the thousands of Irish cowboys that helped settle the west.
I heard Connie do this song at the North Texas Irish Festival. The longing for some kind of sense of home in this song is very similar to the longing in songs like "The Leaving of Liverpool". Sailors and Cowboys have a lot in common, they just sail over different seas.
Connie does some lovely music. During the summers she works with her husband on cattle drives for tourists. Connie manages the chuck wagon, cooks and sings cowboy music over the campfire. I really love her music.
When I was young and arrogant, I thought Christian hymns were predictable, boring and not very good poetry. I
think I thought that because I'd heard them all my life and the lines
rattled around in my head much to the dismay of my determined
agnosticism. Then I met Christ.
And the old hymns began to mean something to me. This scene from the 20005 movie "Junebug" is a sweet rendition of a hymn that became one of my favorites. The lyrics no longer seemed trite and foolish. This song and its brothers and sisters tucked inside my church hymnal became the echoes of my own heart. My choir teachers in academy taught us to sing four part harmony and how to follow the notes and the parts in the music.
My Sweet Baboo grew up singing hymns and one of the things we did quite a lot after we were married was to break out in old hymns while washing dishes or driving in the car or walking along a path on a Sabbath walk. Old hymns became old friends.
I went to see my first spaghetti western in my teens. Me and my buddy, Richard Hutchins went to see it at the Esquire in Cleburne, Texas one Saturday night after which we cruised up and down Main Street in a VW micro-bus between the Sonic Drive-In and City Park. While doing so we discussed and solved most of the burning issues of the day all the while wondering why no girls would jump in the V-dub with us. We were not great romancers of women in those halcyon days of our youth, but we knew good music when we heard it (Ennio Morricone for instance) and good movies (Clint Eastwood in practically anything he ever did) when we saw them. I like to think we were saving ourselves for the very special women we wound up with.
After seeing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Morricone's iconic Western theme song got stuck in my head big time. I found myself running around randomly going, "Ah-eee-ah-eee-aaaaah!" when I thought no one was listening. Couldn't get that danged song out of my head for years.
Seeing the good folks from the Danish Symphony Orchestra take a run at this massively complex song using instruments ranging from recorders and ocarinas to trumpets and glockenspiels to choirs and soloists. It's no wonder that not a lot of high school bands ever attempt this music.
It's really amazing to watch and it makes you appreciate what a lot of talent someone like Ennio Morricone brings to his music. I'd be doing good to figure out the recorder part, myself, but I'd like to think that in heaven and the new Earth, after several thousand (or perhaps million) years of practice, I might be able to crank out a reasonable facsimile of such a tune.
Stumbled on this little gem on Youtube. A lot of people don't realize what an amazing guitarist Glen Campbell was. He was a member of the famed "Wrecking Crew" of studio musicians who played the instrumentals for a massive number of hit records in the 60s and 70s for groups as diverse as The Monkees, Frank Sinatra, Jan and Dean, The Beach Boys and Ike and Tina Turner. They played backup to Glen Campbell when he began his solo career.
This is Glen's tribute to his first Western heros, Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Here Glen demonstrates his virtuosity on the Lone Ranger theme, better known (maybe) as The William Tell Overture.
It was amazing how long Glen's guitar skills held up even after his Alzheimer's became more advanced. It's funny what survives an assault on the mind is amazing. Campbell was as good as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn, but didn't get the hype by dying young.
This rendition of the old hymn "My Jesus I Love Thee" sounds much like the version the kids at Bible Conference sang on the night I accepted Christ - May 1, 1971. That makes me a 47 year old Christian. It has been a long walk with Him since that night and I have sung this song to comfort myself many times since that night and the subsequent Sabbath morning when Elder John Thurber baptized me in a freshly filled and very cold Jefferson Academy swimming pool. I caught the Spirit. Brother John caught pneumonia.
If you believe the potheads, the Peter, Paul & Mary song "Puff the Magic Dragon" is about marijuana. Don't you believe it. The song is about a child and the loss of innocence. That's according to Peter Yarrow, the author his ownself. I got to meet Peter at a concert in Ft. Worth. He was there early and shook hands with fans as we were coming in. My kids got to meet him. He's a sweet guy, despite being a liberal. I respect his beliefs and his music very much. We all want the same things anyway and it's a free country after all.
This song has a little history behind it for me. First of all, it was the theme song to the 1888 Seventh-day Adventist General Conference at which the doctrine of Righteousness by Faith was emphasized and first became a major element of Adventist preaching. In the late 60s and early 70s of the 20th century, the Righteousness by Faith doctrine experienced a resurgence among Adventist Youth, bolstered by a lot of new religious music, not limited to the pages of the Adventist hymnal and even more youthful enthusiasm. This song, "Jesus Paid it All", was one of the few numbers I coaxed my public singing shy wife, Sheila to sing with me. We performed it at the Melrose New Mexico SDA church in 1979 and enjoyed a nice potluck afterward. Sheila hasn't sung publicly with me since, although during her college days she toured with the Arkansas-Louisiana Good News Singers.
Fortunately, my daughter inherited her mother's voice and has blessed many a service with her singing which sounds amazingly like her Mom's. I have a couple of surreptitious, videos of the two of them singing together. Sounds like angels.
We still, on occasion, sing this song together over the sink while washing dishes - the only audience the hummingbirds, wrens and chickadees.
This song is kind of my summer anthem. Five of the best summers of my life were spent as a canoeing instructor, swimming instructor and waterfront direct at Lone Star Camp in Athens, TX. This song by the inimitable Loudon Wainright III, composer of the equally famous "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road". This versions features the also inimitable Earl Scruggs on banjo.
The song takes me back to the warm green waters of Echo Lake and the golden Texas summers of my youth and young adulthood. Enjoy!
This is one of my favorite hymns as interpreted by Chris Tomlin. I still like the original, but there is a kind of reverence and passion to this version that I find compelling. This song was sung the night I accepted Christ. May 2, 1971. My rebirth day.
Happy Sabbath all.
Tom King
Here's a more solemn and traditional version by the Generations Gospel Choir. I really like this one better.
We saw Cathy Ryan and Cherish the Ladies more than a decade ago at the Southwest Irish Festival in Dallas. I even got to perform there once. I think they were desperate. This song is a fun little number that my daughter Meghan learned by heart. We'd sometimes break out in this song while we were riding in the car somewhere. I'd join her on the chorus. My little girl will never know how much those little moment meant to the old man.
I've always thought that life should be like a musical and we should just randomly break out in song at the slightest provocation. I suspect that's what heaven will be like.
This according to some is the definitive version of this song. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band sings a rousing bluegrass rendition of the popular funeral song here with Del and Ronnie McCrory. Lots of country musicians have done this song including Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson below in a concert in Austin, confidently singing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" There's the question if you're a Christian. Will the circle indeed be unbroken?
Apparently not, if you listen to what Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson have to sing about it. Perhaps the song is only some sort of fire insurance for these guys, given the lifestyle they lead, but hey? Even the mighty Elvis Presley put out a Gospel album to make his mama happy.
Meanwhile we get to enjoy this joyful rendering of the old Southern Gospel standard.
This is one of the first songs I learned to finger-pick on my guitar when I was learning. I once heard a recording of Elizabeth Cotten singing this song. This version for clawhammer is different from the one Elizabeth sang with her big dreadnaught guitar or the one I play on my classical guitar.
I love folk music because it's so open to individual interpretation.
Here is the original version as played in her unique style by Elizabeth Cotten playing a left-handed dreadnaught.
Here's a link to the Smithsonian Folkways biography of Elizabeth.
Probably my favorite version of "City of New Orleans' is Arlo Guthrie's. He did , however, get the song from a songwriter named Steve Goodman. He's an odd little guy, but he writes pretty good songs. I looked him up and found this version of Goodman doing his own song.
I liked this song when it first came out, though I never was one much for the hippie lifestyle. I don't just hear the melody. I listen to all the words. It's a problem when your verbal IQ is 10-15 points higher than your performance (math) IQ. It means you can't help but hear the words. I hadn't thought about this for years until Me and Sheila and a Dog named Daisy drove 2300 miles in a U-Haul from Texas to Washington State. Seemed kinda appropriate for the trip.
Sheila, the boys and I once spent a Sunday at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas. One of the performers was a perky little woman named Christine Lavin. While she's aged some since we saw her live, she's still funny and odd even with white hair. One of my favorite of her songs is a tribute to men without hair and as a man who is losing his hair with startling rapidity, I find myself quite fond of this song. She also did a version some years ago with five other women who called themselves "Six Bitchin' Babes", a nom de plume somewhat at odds with their collective feminism.
Great song, though. Christine can be forgiven for her politics if she keeps writing funny songs.
Once again, my second favorite singer in all the world (her Mama is
still my #1 favorite) with a song for Sabbath. I tell people Meghan got her singing ability
from me because her Mom still has hers. Actually, she got her perfect
pitch and lovely voice from the gene pool on her Mom's side. On my side
we play guitar and kind of hum along in the background because we've
been told not to sing too loud. It throws the others off. We tend to wander off key a lot. I've
gotten better at it, but Miss Sheila still has to stop up her ears
whenever I get musical.
Not so with Miss Meghan. I have a few
brief clips of the two of them singing together. One day I'll post them
on Youtube and here. In the meantime here's Meghan singing a lovely song
call Do They See Jesus in Me? Knowing my daughter, I think they can.
This Steve Martin/Edic Brickell song is an untraditional traditional murder ballad. Usually the girl dies by strangulation, stabbing or drowning at the hands of her evil lover and left for dead somewhere. Sometimes she turns into a swan or something. It's all very tragic. Often the killer is caught and hanged. The country gal in this song, however, has a Daddy who taught her how to take care of herself. Probably comes from one of those families that "cling to their guns and religion." The ending of this murder ballad is rather different from the way most of these things turn out. You will smile, I promise.
Steve Martin, Edie Brickell and The Steep Canyon Rangers perform this lovely song about an unwed mother who decides to keep her child. This one made me cry, which, of course, was what the writer intended. I was listening to my monster eclectic music collection today and it popped up and as many times as I've listened to it, it still got to me. Edie Brickell does such a lovely job with Steve and the boys.
I found this fun thing on Youtube. I like Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up". I drove our supervisor nuts when I worked at Brandom's Cabinet Mfg. back home in Keene. I think I've already told this story, but it bears repeating. I only worked at Brandom's a few months during a brief time of desperation and unemployment. Our lady foreman for the framing department wouldn't allow us to listen to the radio while we were working so the guy next to me and I taped the words to Elvis songs on our work boards and merrily framed cabinets while singing Heartbreak Hotel and All Shook Up. She tried to force us to stop, but management wouldn't allow he to stifle our creativity. They noticed we worked faster when we were singing.
This is the slower original version which I think was way better than the one he sang during his later years where he rushed it and always seemed to be in a hurry to get through it. I liked it better when he sang it like he wasn't tired of the song. Maybe he figured he was running out of time. Turns out he was.
I love this Petra song. It's been a standard for youth song services where I've played. It's not hard to play and the words are quite lovely. My Primary Sabbath School kids requested The Coloring Song almost every week. We even got a bunch of rhythm band instruments and they used to do this drumbeat/cymbals sort of thing in time with the song. It gave it a Celtic kind of sound. All we needed was for someone to learn the recorder line for the opening and chorus.
This cherubic Swedish-American gospel singer, Evie Tornquist, introduced me to this lovely little song. I've played guitar for other singers for church services over the years and it was a favorite we sang for youth song services. This is another one that makes me all weepy. Here's "Give Them All to Jesus".
This old folk song shows up a lot in the folk singer community, especially among Irish folk singers. But sometimes pop singers pull up an old folk tune and red-headed comedian Danny Kaye used to sing songs like Molly Malone in his movies and radio appearances. He had that lovely Irish tenor voice that set these songs perfectly.
I especially like poignant sweet melodies like this one. I think it probably inspired The Beatles song, Obla Di, Obla Da which also features a barrow wheeling daughter of fish-mongers. Danny Kaye movies are some of my favorites, but I love listening to him sing too. There's another Danny Kaye melody by his wife Sylvia Fine called Darlin Meggie. I had to go to the Library of Congress to get that video. Enjoy these two beautiful songs.
This lovely old song by Charlotte Elliott with music by William B. Bradburywas originally written in 1835 and published in 1836 in a hymnal she edited. Charlotte related later that she was troubled about her own salvation. She often comforted herself by writing verse. She took pen and paper from a nearby table and deliberately set down to write what she later called "the formulae of her faith." In this familiar altar call hymn, Charlotte restated the Gospel of pardon, peace, and heaven.
I remember this hymn fondly from the ministry of former Voice of Prophecy Quartet singer, John Thurber. Brother John taught his Adventist Youth in Action (AYA) teams and the kids who came to youth meetings how to sing this song. He always got amazing harmony out of us. This song in particular used to really reach me.
On May 1, 1971, Brother John baptized me in the swimming pool at Jefferson Academy - Just as I was. Here's Michael W. Smith's rendition of this lovely hymn at the funeral of Billy Graham. This song was the altar call at the 1934 revival meeting at which Billy Graham came forward and was converted. The song became Graham's traditional altar call song throughout his career as an evangelist.
This unusual song by John Mayer flies in the face of the romantic poets. Love to Mayer is something you do, not something you can hold on to or something that just magically pop up in your heart. It's not a feeling that you can capture like you could scoop up a butterfly with a net. CS Lewis captured this idea in his book Mere Christianity. “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’
your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of
the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you
will presently come to love him.”
About the only iteration of love as a "thang," that I think is accurate, is something the apostle John pointed out in one of his letters. "God," he said, "is love". All love springs from the author of love and is the wellspring of all love in the universe. There are some preachers and romantics who will argue with you that love is a "thang," but I think they miss the point. Love it seems springs from an act. It's not some magical thing that occurs when a pretty girl in a skimpy bathing suit walks by on the beach or a muscled up young man removes his shirt while repairing your porch. I think they're thinking of another "L" word besides love.
It's kind of ironic that one of the last of John Lennon's songs was this lovely ballad, "Grow Old Along With Me" in which he prays "God bless our love." This is the same guy who wrote the anti-religion "Imagine". One hopes John was able to work it all out with his maker at some point. That said, Grow Old is a very beautiful song. This version is by Mary Chapin Carpenter. The only versions we have of Lennon singing it, are some home recordings which suffer a little from the poorer quality of home recording equipment of the day.
This is a beautiful song. Perfect for weddings. It's sad that Lennon was looking forward to growing old along with his wife and died very soon after he wrote it.
My son, Micah introduced me to this Nickel Creek song. The lyrics are beautiful and this song always makes me mist up a little bit. I'm not sure even now, as many times as I've listened to it, that I could sing it all the way through without getting all choked up. The Hand Song is one of those poignant folk songs that is beyond the typical murder ballad, folk hero song or the "I love her so much I want to lock her up inside a box and not let her out" sort of twisted love songs you find in mountain music. This song is lyrical and beautiful.
This one is one of my favorite Ray Stevens songs and that's saying something given that he also wrote the hilarious Shriner's Convention. We've all known a Sister-Bertha-Better'n-You in our time and the spectacle of her standing up in meetin' and confessing about her "love life" and "namin' names" is just too appealing an image. This thing is funny right here, I don't care who you are. This is also on my phone.
The first time I heard this song, my daughter and her friend performed this for a Sabbath morning service in Tyler. It's a driving Southern Gospel Number that makes you want to stand up and shout, "Hallelujah!" I found out the original version of the song is done by The Martins, a family Southern Gospel group. I looked them up on Youtube and got an Mp3 of them for my phone. I only got half of the version my daughter sang on video, so I went with the Martins.
The first time I heard this David Bowie song, I felt like he was singing
it to me. This was my song. I wanted to be an astronaut, but
unfortunately being an astronaut is HAAAAAAARD! That and God had other
stuff for me to do so I've put off going into space for when we get
carried off to heaven. If there's an orbital lab around the new Earth I
plan to be on the construction crew - either that I want to be on the
crew of a star ship. I'm certain there will be stuff like that. After
all, we are an exploring species and those of us who survive the old
Earth should be trustworthy enough to turn loose to explore the stars
and there are an awful lot of those out there, so we likely won't be
bored with it all since we're living forever.
This is the coolest version of the song ever done. It's Canadian ISS
astronaut Chris Hadfield singing with NASA footage in a monumentally
marvelous music video. Hadfield has a really good voice too. So enjoy
the first space-based music video with actual astronauts and footage
shot in space. I still think they're singing my song, though.
I first heard this song back in college on a recording by folksingers
Ian & Sylvia. The song was in French; an old voyageur song that used
to be sung by early French traders in America and Canada. I'd been
looking for a song to sing on long canoe trips. I wasn't able to
memorize all of it, but I got enough of it to help me keep up my
paddling rhythm on summer canoe trips with my canoe classes. It's a fun
song with a driving rhythm and really odd words. But then folk songs are
not noted for their Shakespearean intricacies. Here's Miss Lizzy's version followed by the lyrics in
both English and French.
Chorus: Here's the good wind, here's the pretty wind, Here's the good wind! My friend is calling me. Here's the good wind, here's the pretty wind, Here's the good wind! My friend is waiting for me.
Behind our place there is a pond. Behind our place there is a pond. Three fine ducks are bathing there.
Chorus:
The king's son goes hunting there, The king's son goes hunting there With his big silver gun. Chorus: Aimed at the black one, killed the white, Aimed at the black one, killed the white, And all its feathers went with the wind.
Chorus: There are three ladies picking them up. There are three ladies picking them up. And we will make a camp bed. Chorus:
The two of us will sleep in it, The two of us will sleep in it, To have some little children there. Chorus:
I need to learn the last two verses yet. I really like Lizzy's gentle version of the song. It's on my phone now so I should be able to practice it a little.
My wife says I'm just a big kid. Listening to my Mp3 list is probably evidence of that. It tends to lean heavily toward Disney songs and old folk music suitable for kids. I'm a big romantic. I've got a dozen or so Doris Day songs, some things from Aladdin, Tangled, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Camelot and clips from Danny Kaye movies. This one I have no excuse for. I'm a six year old!
I just love these guys. I'll most likely post a whole bunch of these before it's over. Then there's this song from the wedding scene - "I Swear!" It just brings tears to my eyes (I'm laughing so hard).
This old hymn was one of the first songs that Great Grandma Doney taught to my Grandpa King when he was just a little boy. It remained a favorite all his life. My Grandpa was a praying man and I have no doubt at all that there will be some stars in my grandpa's crown. He'll get at least part of one for me. I introduced my own son to the song when he was little.
Above is one of my favorite folk singers, Burl Ives singing "Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?" Below is my first favorite folk singers, Thomas Adolph King....
So, have you ever wondered how Cowboys ever got into yodeling? It's not the sort of musical style that one would expect to find out in the Wild Wild West. So far as we know, yodeling is only common in the Swiss Alps - a rather long way from the plains of Texas.
Let us offer an alternative explanation. Here are Riders in the Sky with the story of how the Cowboy Yodel was born - a song guaranteed to make even the toughest CowBOYS cringe.
This song always makes me tear up. I've tried singing it and it always gives me trouble. This beautiful song is here delivered by two of Ireland's finest singers from two of Ireland's finest musical families. The Dutchman was written by Michael Peter Smith, who was a nice discovery through this song. You may not know Michael but you may have heard some of his songs. Look him up. He's really good. Get yourself a hankie first.
I love this song. It's one of my favorite Irish folk songs and best of all it's sung by two members of my favorite Irish music families - the Makems and the Clancys. I've actually seen both these guys and their dads performing at the North Texas Irish Festival. First I got to see the Clancy Brothers, then Tommy Makem performing solo. Then I got to see Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy performing together. After them, I got to see the younger Clancys performing together and the Makem Brothers performing as a group.
Since we've lost Tommy Makem and all the the elder Clancy Brothers, Tom, Liam and Paddy, it's nice to know their voices live on in their sons. I could listen to those guys all day, especially singing those ballads like "The Leavin' of Liverpool" and "The Parting Glass".
For this post I've included Rory Makem and Donal Clancy singing "The Leavin' of Liverpool" and The original Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem singing "The Parting Glass". I am so happy the sons have carried on their fathers' musical tradition. Maybe if I can find an Irish festival up here in Washington State, maybe I can see the tradition live on.
Here's Rory and Donal:
And here's Tommy Makem, Liam, Tom and Paddy Clancy
Love these lovely Irish voices. What I would give to jam with them.
