Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads (1951)

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AUDIO FIDELITY AFLP 1906

Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads
OSCAR BRAND, Folk Singer

To all tosspots and gay seducers — greeting! To all who like to
tip a stein and troll a lay — skoal! To all who deem drink, women,
outlawry, sin, sex and sentimentality worthy of a verse, song, or bal-
lad—hail!

May you find in this recording something to tickle the senses,
astound or wring the heart. For here is a gallimaufry of ballads, lyrics,
songs of soldiers, sailors, Elizabethan and modern poets, cowboys.
Here are tough, hard-living and hard-drinking men and their whole-
some, winsome wenches.

If your appetite is good and your stomach strong, you cannot help
but find here something to suit your taste. The belly laugh, the gentle
tear, the irony of fate, the thrill of derring-do — the fuel for all of
these will be found within these grooves.

If there be any who chance to hear this essay of lusty balladry
and collection of tales of fallen virtue and who expect to find herein
some of the best and bawdiest of ballads, such as "The Bastard King
of England" or "Colombo " they shall be doomed to disappointment.
It is, sad to relate, impossible to reproduce with impunity the unex-
purgated versions of these fine old folk songs.

However, all the sallies into the realm of trusting ladies and das-
tardly men recorded here have sufficient flavor and body to render
rare entertainment to all who taste thereof.

"It is a pity," observed an English poet named John Wesley, "that
the devil should have all of the good songs." But this opinion was voiced

many years ago, when boys were not compelled to take refuge from
"G-men" behind back doors. Much as they might have deplored the
fact, foes of the liquor traffic were never able to complete lyrically
with the boys in the backroom. Their impeccable refrains somehow
lacked the sparkle and spark that characterized many a roundelay
dedicated to the "demon rum," or to virtue betrayed as a result of the
"demon rum."

There are today sources of folk songs in America that have come
to be appreciated by collectors only in recent years. While it is good
for our literature that such awakening has taken place, prudishness
has kept many of these songs confined to back rooms and consequently
unpublished.

There is a bitter irony in all of these backroom ballads. Their
theme, while tragic, is developed in such a uniformly similar manner
and is touched with so much humor that one can hardly take them
seriously. There are surprises which come about as a result of sudden
twists of words, and resultant twists of fate.

So, beware all of you who are idealists — you who cherish pure
love, untainted virtue, you who hold men aloft and regard women as
creatures of eternal modesty. Fortify yourselves, ladies and gentlemen
of the poetry circle. You may be pained to discover, after listening to
these ditties, that some of our unsung bards possessed feet (and vital
organs) of human clay.

May this record bring you much lasting enjoyment, and may it
prime many an imagination well.

SIDE 1

No. 1—ROLL YOUR LEG OVER—

Like many ballads of European origin,
this owes its generation to a British tune of the 17th century whose
rude quality was neatly concealed under a chorus of "Whack Fol De
Deddle Di Do." There are hundreds of verses to this ditty.
No. 2—NO HIPS AT ALL— There's very little moral responsibility in this
song, which served as the model for a popular song recently. Beneath
the wicked, neat story is a theme of real tragedy, if one has the time
or interest to think about it.

No. 3—ONE-EYED REILLY—

 Here is the prototype of the real tough — the
hard-drinking, easy-loving scoundrel who doesn't know the meaning
of sensitivity or consideration. In some of the old versions of this song
One-Eyed Reilly is the great lover. But here he's the landlord, and
receives the treatment specially reserved for landlords in merrie olde
England.

No. 4—BLOW THE CANDLE OUT—

This is a real, cuddly little number which
displays some of the nostalgia reminiscent of French movies about
young love. Like The Sergeant (Side 2, No. 3), this song is typical of
early English folk songs which survived the rough crossing to Amer-
ica and can still be heard around the Southern Appalachians.
No. 5—SAM HALL— This is practically a classic and has been sung from
saloon to western frontier barroom to boys' camps and back again.
The song tells of the unrepentent sinner, and expresses the thought
that when a man's committed a crime that deserves punishment in
the extreme, he has a right to a few well-chosen, strongly-uttered
words.

No. 6 — LIMERICKS —

Here is a collection of delightful trivia sung in time
honored style and represents the most popular form of folk-poetry.

No. 7-THE CHANDLER'S WIFE—

Antecedent to the popular song, "The
Thing," this tune was also used for Britain's favorite "Lincolnshire
Poacher."' It has a kind of child-like whimsey edged with the hard,
bare facts of life that turn up when promiscuity rears its ugly head.

SIDE 2

No. 1—HER NAME WAS LIL—

Oscar Brand confesses he can't remember
where he learned this song. He says he "found it in his head" one day,
although he knows he didn't make it up. The origin is recent, the rowdy
idea ages-old.

No. 2—BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS— Like "Sam Hall," this one is a near-
classic. The tune, of course, is a rollicking one, and it has a few surpris-
ing twists to round out its humor.

No. 3—THE SERGEANT—

This is a sprightly English madrigal, one of liter-
ally thousands in similar form. According to Oscar Brand it dates back
to the 18th century.

No. 4—OLD JOE CLARK— Many square dance tunes, likes this one, have
short refrains and long lives. The fiddler sings a verse, then fiddles a
verse. The best fiddler rarely repeats a fiddle break, and can sing the
dancers into a stupor without repeating a line.

No. S—AROUND HER NECK SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON— This is an exam-
ple of what soldierly singing can do to a mild, gentle English song
whose original title was "All Round My Hat." There's very, very little
gentility left in the contemporary version.

No. 6—OUR GOODMAN— This is one of the oldest ballads in the English
language, an aged tune, youthfully active. The version sung here dates
back to old English, and is somewhat Chaucerian in style.

No. 7—THE FIRESHIP —This is what happens to all jolly lads who follow the
sea sooner or later.

No. 8-ROLLIN'DOWN THE MOUNTAIN—This has the flavor if not the
authenticity of the real mountain song. It carries the usual moral
about mademoiselle surprised, although satisfied, but it has a lightness
that makes for more humor than the moralistic tragic ballad,

OSCAR BRAND—Balladeer Oscar Brand has a singing acquaintance with backrooms,
and barracks, and ballads from San Diego to San Pietro. Born in Winnipeg, Canada,
and borne through America's midwest, he caught many a shady shanty out of the corner
of his ready ear — a very musical and keen ear.

In the big, wicked metropolis of New York he has been collecting folk songs for
about ten years as director of folk music for New York City's Municipal Station.
In this album, he gets an opportunity to sing some of the real words to tunes he has
aired over Station WNYC, and he apparently enjoys it, as you will too.

PRINTED IN U. S. A. COPYRIGHT 1955 BY AUDIO FIDELITY, INC.


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