Notes

Mike O'Donnell's Personal Folk Legacy.

These are songs that came into my ears, passed through my mind, and
exited my mouth as sound, in a way that feels folkie to me. That's
what makes them my "personal folk" something. And, these are the
performances that I managed to record and thought were worth sharing
on the Internet Archive. That's what makes them my "legacy."

I selected each song based on my attitude toward it, and the sound of
the recording. But I wrote down whatever I remembered or could
discover easily about its origin and the way in which it came to me. I
have a good memory. It remembers good things, but not all of them are
strictly factual.

I license all of my rights in this stuff under the Creative Commons
Attribution/Share-alike license. Do what you want with it. That
includes the "Personal Folk Legacy" title. I will be delighted if
other people's personal folk legacies appear.

I tried to minimize editing while producing enjoyable sound. Each
song was recorded in a single continuous take. I turned on the
recorder, stepped up to the microphone, and sang. When I didn't like a
take, I didn't post it, but I didn't try to improve it by editing.
After recording, I only normalized the level (a single adjustment for
the whole song, no compression), adjusted for about two seconds of
silence at each end, and converted, if necessary to 16-bit 44.1 KHz
samples.

I won't say that Michael Cooney taught me my attitude toward folk
music. Rather, his short essay, "WANTED, DEAD or ALIVE: folk music,"
expresses my attitude better than I can do it myself. It appears in
the introductory booklet to the vinyl LP album, "Michael Cooney, or:
'The Cheese Stands Alone,'" Folk-Legacy Records, Sharon CN 06069,
Bread and Butter Series FSI-35, 1968.

Track list

First Buncha Songs

1. Froggy went a courtin'. A favorite with the kids at bedtime. I must
have learned this version in the early 1970s at Cornell
University. Probably from a concert at The Commons, a coffee house in
Annabel Taylor Hall, and site of the famous "Bound for Glory" live
radio show. This song has 17th century roots in England. Some American
tampering put a reference to "the president" in my version. Some
versions have the frog and mouse et up by cat, duck, owl, whatever. I
like the petulant final verse in this one. [2009 August 13]

2. MacNamara's Band. I learned this from my mother, who sang it to me
when I was a sprout. Thanks, Mom. The earliest version for which I can
find a reference is 1914: words by John J. Stamford, music by Shamus
O'Connor. It seems to refer to an actual 19th century band in Ireland,
so there is probably no predecessor in the public domain. My mother's
funeral line is funnier than the published ones. I've found it in
several lyric sheets, but never attributed. I think that "Wah-wah,
whoop-dee-dee" may be unique to Mom. If you think this is too rowdy
for a bedtime song, you're wrong. [2009 August 13]

3. It Was Mary. When my daughter, Mary, called today and asked me to
join her in her drive home from Colorado, I had to sing it. I liked
the song even before I had a daughter named Mary. I learned it from my
father's Bing Crosby record, which was lost, alas, in the Flight of
the Vinyl after the Great Turntable Drought. George M. Cohan wrote it
as "Mary's a Grand Old Name" in 1906. Mary is embarrassed that I sing
it so much. Tough. [2009 August 17]

4. Roll On Buddy. Eric's favorite biking song. I picked it up around
Cornell. Mostly known as "Nine Pound Hammer." Didn't discover much
about the history. Eric & I found it very poignant to sing going up
the switchbacks on Cascadilla Park Road. I don't bike any more, so I
recorded while roller skating (5 miles on the Green Bay Trail). I have
no inline "roller blades." These are good ole roller skates, with the
wheels deployed in a rectangle. I think of them as "out of line." 4.1
gets it rolling, 4.2 is a personalized version, and 4.3 shows the
effects of oxygen starvation on a song. Sounds best through
headphones. [2009 August 24]

5. John Henry. When I was 10ish, a spur of the W&OD railway went by
the end of my dead-end street. I stole a rusty spike from the rail
yard at Bluemont Junction down the hill. The guilt and shame
suppressed the memory for years, and probably blighted what would have
been a distinguished rail career. When my parents moved to a
retirement apartment, my sisters plundered the ancestral home, and
sent me a box of precious memorabilia, including the stolen spike.

For years, I thought that I was singing Leadbelly's version of "John
Henry." But, then I noticed that I was following Michael Cooney's
version from "Michael Cooney or: 'The Cheese Stands Alone,'"
Folk-Legacy FSI-35. In the song, John Henry is not hammering spikes to
lay railroad track. He is hammering a steel drill into a vertical rock
face, to make a hole big enough for a stick of dynamite, to blast out
a tunnel. But, it still seemed like a good idea to bang on my old
spike with a carpenter's hammer for percussion. [2009 August 27]

6. W. W. Dog. I learned this from my mother. Technically, it's a
poem. But, we said it so rhythmically that I think it can qualify as
protorap music. I traced the poem to "A Curious Pup," in The Mouse
With the Small Guitar by Al Graham, 1947. Copyright not renewed. 6.1
is straight up. One day, I thought it should have a melody, and 6.2
came out. I have no idea where the tune came from. [2009 August 27]

7. Kayro Kyro. Or, "Cairo Cairo"? I know this song as a chunk of
sounds. The connection to cities in Illinois and Egypt seems
accidental, rather than essential. Even the parts that sound just like
English words don't seem to really mean anything. I don't know where I
got this. It's the sort of thing Mom and her southern kinfolk would
sing. It makes sense at a Sunday Picnic. Or in the backseat of the
car, heading down US 1, repeated until your parents break down and
stop for lunch at South of the Border. But, I don't remember using it
for such a purpose. Someday one of my southern cousins will tell me
where it comes from, and I'll feel dumb. It don't get no folkier than
this, folks. [2009 August 28]

8. The Derby Ram. I learned this one from "Dark Ships in the Forest:
Ballads of the Supernatural," John Roberts and Tony Barrand with Fred
Breunig and Steve Woodruff, Folk Legacy FSI-65 1977. It's not so much
supernatural as dipsonatural. This is a genuine certified folk song,
#126 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It was mentioned in The Ballads
and Songs of Derbyshire, Llewellyn Jewett, 1867, which claims
that it was already at least a century old.

'Nuff scholarship. Take this song into a pub. Get everybody to join in
the chorus. Those who won't sing can still bang their glasses.
[2009 August 28]

9. Doctor Ironbeard. When I went to Stonewall Jackson Elementary
School, the music programs were pretty bad. We were forced to sit
around singing awful little songs that someone thought were good for
children, and which were mostly thoroughly forgettable. An exception
was "Doctor Ironbeard." As an adult, I decided it must have been
originally German, and I started reverse engineering "Doktor
Eisenbart," supposing that "Bart" was close enough for "beard." To my
surprise and delight, I found references to a Doktor Johann Andreas
Eisenbarth, 1663-1727, and a song about him, "Doktor Eisenbarth," from
the late 18th century. To my further surprise, "Bart" really is the
German word for "beard." Percussion is a big cardboard box, beaten
with a wooden spoon. [2009 August 28]

10. The Ladies of the Harem of the Court of King Caractacus. I
learned this during a single performance at The Commons, Annabel
Taylor Hall, Cornell University. I'm pretty sure that Wendy Grossman
sang it. I am SO proud that I learned it all during that
performance (perhaps almost correctly). Rolf Harris recorded a popular
version as "The Court of King Caractacus" in 1964. It is widely
attributed to an old Boy Scout campfire song book, which I cannot find
anywhere. Did I mention how proud I am that I memorized the whole
thing while hearing it only once in a live performance? [2009 August 28]

11. On Top of Old Smokey All Covered With Sand. A real
children's song, as sung at Stonewall Jackson School. Green rubber
band version. Someday, when we humans have really civilized ourselves,
the green rubber band people and the red rubber band people will live
side by side in harmony. But for now, those reds are just not my
type. [2009 August 28]

12. My Tall Silk Hat. Dunno where I learned this. Published as
"Funiculì Funiculà," with different Neapolitan words by Peppino Turco,
music by Luigi Denza, in 1880. [2009 August 28]

13. Ma Navu. I learned this lovely song while dancing to it on
Thursday evenings with the Cornell Israeli Folk Dance Society. I liked
it even better when I learned what the words mean.

Text from Isaiah 52:7. King James's guys made a lovely English
version. But the Hebrew sings itself. Yossi Spivak composed this
melody, probably in 1956, and Raaya Spivak choreographed the dance. I
have a version sung by Kitka on their album "Wintersongs" from
Magnatune, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license,
which appears to allow my noncommercial performance of the score. I
don't think that Mr. Spivak wrote the modulation, and I don't know how
it slipped in, but it seems OK. [2009 August 28]

14. If I Had a Hammer (reality version). Pete Seeger and Lee Hays,
1949. But I think of the Peter Paul & Mary version when I sing this
parody. I love the original song, and I love ambiguously inspiring
protesty songs generally. When I first heard Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song
Army," I tried to enlist. But, sometimes it's good to think about my
hammer as a thing that drives nails. What would really happen if I
hammered it all the time? Justice, or ... ? [2009 August 28]

15. MacPherson is Dead. I learned this late in my first parental
decade, from another parent. Probably Pat(ricia), who is a bit more
Irish than I am. It's the sort of thing she would've sung to Mike &
Steve. What would they have done had they known? Why didn't they
notice that the other had stopped snoring? [2009 August 28]

16. paradimethylaminobenzoldehyde. Walter & Jeff & I formed a little
nerd gang during our Kenmore Junior High School daze. This is the sort
of silliness that we treasured. I hope they don't notice that I
misspelled it. I'm pretty sure that Walter taught it to me, but it
might have been Jeff. He claimed that it came from Isaac Asimov, who
reportedly sang it in front of a real Irish washerwoman, who
reportedly said, "Begorah, he knows the original Gaelic."
[2009 August 28]

17. Bread & Gravy. I think I heard this on a silly kids' record when I
was one. A silly kid, not a record. I think it was the same one with
"Ladels & Jellyspoons," and "Boom-Boom Ain't It Great To Be Crazy." I
found lots of discussions of this song as a tradition in lots of
different families, usually involving a "landlord," instead of my
"principal." "Warden," "sergeant," "mess cook," "scoutmaster," are
natural variants, which I've probably mostly heard somewhere. Nobody
has the nerve to make it "our mother." Yeah, "luncheon" is way too
upscale, but that's the way it comes out of my mouth. From the online
folkie discussions, it seems clear that the tune is not "Rosin Up the
Bow." [2009 August 28]

18. Swing Low (Glencoe lullaby version). This is one of those
songs that I heard everywhere. So did you. I can't, shouldn't,
attribute it to just one hearing. It traces back to Wallis Willis, a
Choctaw freedman who was already singing it in 1862. [2009 August 31]

End of the first buncha songs
On to the second buncha songs

Recording and rendering

Starting in 2009, I record in 24 bit 44.1 KHz samples on an Edirol
R-09. I use the "stealth" microphones from Core Sound, clipped on to a
music stand for a bit of stereo separation. I normalize amplitudes,
trim excess at the beginning and end, and render to 16-bit 44.1 KHz
with Audacity.

I found that through October 28 the recorder was accidentally set to
16 bit samples. Back to 24 bits from the end of October.

For the trail recordings in tracks 4.*, I put heavy windscreens on the
microphones, and clipped them to the straps of my helmet, just ahead
of my ears. I faded each subtrack in for about 5 seconds, and out for
about 15 seconds.

The percussion in tracks 5, 8, 9 caused several isolated samples out
of range, but I can't hear any distortion. Normalization forced the
amplitude of the singing in track 5 a bit low compared to the other
tracks.

Excerpt from "WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE: Folk Music"

There are thousands and thousands (at least 16) definitions of Folk
Music. I sometimes grumble about what's called a folk song and what's
not. Sometimes I get up on my high horse and refuse to acknowledge a
song as a folk song unless it has been in and out of the ears and
mouths of lots of people and gotten reconstructed and variated and its
parents are lost or put away in the closet. Other times I'll carry on
about how all songs are folk songs because any song must reflect some
of the culture from which it springs. I can talk about it for
hours. But other times I just like to sing. And listen to Jim Griffith
or to Derek Elliott or to Barry O'Neil or to Helen Schneyer. There are
thousands of people I'd like to listen to. Most of them I haven't met
yet.

Quoted with permission from Michael Cooney.