Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads Vol.4 (1954)

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AUDIO FIDELITY AFLP 1847

Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads Vol. 4
Oscar Brand, Folksinger with Guitar and Banjo

This collection of folk songs is as valid a manifestation of America's culture as any other. They've been sung around the country for hundreds of years while the nation was being built, and some of them date back hundreds of years before then. A few of the songs are to be found in a famous collection in the British Museum entitled "Pills to Purge Melancholy -- a collection of old songs," dated 1607.

Gather 'round, you blithe spirits, lovers of wassail and carousers. Come forth, all you rum hounds and revelers. Attend also, you reprobates, scoundrels, jilters and deceivers. And hark, you ladies—virgins and wenches alike. For here is a sampling of licentious lyrics, bawdy balladry and scurrilous song calculated to inflame the unblushing and titillate even the toughest exteriors.

You will find in this offering of songs and ballads a rich measure of aphrodisia. a generous presentation of the subtle art of philandering. This recording, spiced with ditties treating of the eternal encounter between unprincipled deceivers and injudicious baggages, will transport you further along a course similar to that taken in previous releases under the same title.

If there are among you those who have loved and lost, take heed of the valuable lessons herein contained in which lusting lasses have played the game and won. If there are others among you who have loved and won, be charitable to those who have played the game and lost. If there are still others who have never played the game at all, lend an ear, and perhaps you may learn a trick or two from these ribald rounds.

The nature of folk songs is such that there are as many versions as there are people who sing them. These versions are subject to considerable variation on the basis of their geographical origin, the talent and personality of the person who sings them, and the extent to which they reflect the essential human values or moral contained in them.

To understand this is to understand the importance and uniqueness of bawdy songs as an unusual form of the art of folk song. Time was when there was no radio, television, newspaper and other media of communications such as are used in modern times—that leading writers wrote poetry in which they were not afraid to use the frank language of their time. Their writings were not arbitrarily censored by the artificial and hypocritical sense of morality which governs modern communications, with the result that they had a spontaneous and genuine humor. Oscar Brand writes most knowingly on this subject in the following observations, part of a forthcoming book on bawdy songs.

"It is strange that despite interdicts and proscriptions, despite bowdlerizing and laundering, bawdy songs are still part of the daily life of our people. In gathering these songs I had little difficulty. The songs were well known around tavern backrooms, rotarian smokers, army barracks, campus dormitories, and even at church suppers. If a verse seemed to be missing, I had only to ask any clean-cut American youth, and he would surely remedy the deficit. Apart -from professional balladeers, the list of singers include signers of the Declaration of Independence, composers of such noble songs as The Star Spangled Banner, Presidents, Vice Presidents, bootblacks and secretaries of state.

"Highly-respected citizens are numbered anion? the creators of bawdy songs. It is reported that Rudyard Kipling was never knighted because of his authorship of "The Bastard King of England" (Audio Fidelity AFLP 1824). I would have knighted

him for "The Bastard King of England" alone. It is a matter of record that Mark Twain wrote "The Contest", which never enjoyed the wide popularity of "Huckleberry Finn", but has its adherents, nonetheless. The story of "Bella", a ribald refrain, can be learned from George Orwell's "Down and Out".

Apart from some of the literary factors, bawdy songs have very low class beginnings, Brand points out. Like most folksongs, they are created for the amusement and edification of the author's neighbors, he says. Some other wif overhears the song, learns it by ear, and repeats it to his own audience. Faulty memory or the desire to alter the material to fit his own taste causes the new singer to change the song, and after a number of changes, the song loses its original flavor and becomes almost a community product.

"In Elizabethan England, bawdy songs were in daily currency, just as our worst four-letter words were in constant use," Brand notes. "Many of the well-turned phrases found in Shakespeare's plays or in the works of Marlowe and Jonson are now to be found only on lavatory walls or in risque jokes. Today's taboos have forced the material into the thick-aired atmosphere of a men's smoker or into the vocabulary of the gutter."

"It seems a shame that these fine songs, an important part of our culture . . . should be heard only in conspiratorial surroundings," Brand concludes. "They are, after all, a distinguished product of our British heritage, and often contain lines of matchless beauty and clarity. And despite the efforts of those who would deprive us of our pleasure, the songs will live. For they have lived these many hundreds of years and are still as young in heart as the men and women who first sang them."

No. 1: CINDY — This is a fast banjo tune with many, many verses. A favorite pastime of singers is to outdo each other in presenting new and varied verses of the song.

No. 2: TOM BOLYNN — A very ancient song, this has been found by Oscar Brand in half a dozen different versions in many countries. It is apparently based on the exploits of one Tarn Lynn, legendary king of the fairies and a hero of the sexual world.

No. 3: PLYMOUTH TOWN - This is a version of the old sea chanty, "Maid of Amsterdam." It was originally heard by Oscar Brand at a concert he attended at Vasaar College.

No. 4: TWO MAIDENS — This is an old English folk song which, by indirection, tells of a love affair and resembles BASKET OF OYSTERS.

No. 5: BASKET OF OYSTERS - Oscar Brand learned this from John Runge, an English singer, who got it from age-old British folk sources. The song is a minstrel-type ballad.

No. 6: GREEN GROW THE RASHES - One of the songs whose original versions poet Robert Burns cleaned up. Burns made it a practice to take many risque ballads and polish them up for average readership.

No. 7: THE CUCKOO'S NEST - This is another Scottish ballad heard in Scotland widely from tinker (wandering) families. It makes passing reference to the high incidence of illegitimacy in Scotland.

No. 1: SWEET VIOLETS -If was in the streets of New York that Oscar Brand learned this famous ballad, which is known from bar to brothel. It makes much use of the suggestive alliteration of a four letter word which eventually turns out in the form of S-N-O-W.

No. 2: THE MONEY ROLLS IN — Sung to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," this ditty is a college favorite, and deals with the theme of indulgence in sin and gin for material gain.

No. 3; I USED TO WORK IN CHICAGO - Oscar Brand learned this song about Chicago through the cooperation of an advertising man. It treats of the attractions of the Windy City in a very real way.

No. 4: THE OLD SEA CHEST -- This is an old British song first heard by Oscar Brand as sung by Richard Dyer Bennett, In his search among Elizabethan songs, when he was in England, Oscar Brand found many tunes very similar to it.

No. 5: THE WAYWARD BOY - Sung to the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," this has been a favorite stand-by of Oscar Brand for many years. It relates how parents' attempts to keep their daughters inviolate often have an opposite result.

No. 6: DON'T CALL ME — This is a British song with a contemporary air learned by Oscar Brand from soldiers. The words, also, are contemporary.

No. 7; ROLL ME OVER — A famous American army song, this can be sung with as many verses as there are arabic numbers. The challenge to the singer is largely one of improvisation.

OSCAR
BRAND

Through a full and distinguished career on radio, in films, the theater, on records and in concert, Oscar Brand has a remarkable knowledge of folksongs of every nation. A native of Winnipeg, Canada, and a world traveler, Brand has collected literally thousands of songs and ballads both familiar and unfamiliar.

As director of folk music for the Municipal Broadcasting System in New York, Brand has had his own song program which enjoys one of the widest and most loyal listener groups in the country. In this album, one more, he presents some of the ()()()() authentic words which radio insists on blue penciling out of scripts.

The other singer heard with Oscar Brand is Dave Sear, a banjoist-singer who has appeared on Brand's radio program and on many others. Sear himself is a song collector and has appeared throughout the country in concert. Some of the verses in songs recorded here were contributed by him.

PRINTED IN U.S.A. COPYRIGHT 1957 BY AUDIO FIDELITY, INC.


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