Songnotes

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A Companion to the Old Town School Songbook

Compiled and edited byMark Dvorak.

Bill Bailey

Blues giant Big Bill Broonzy remembers his uncle playing the banjo with other musicians at dances and picnics in the South. Among the numbers in their repertoire were old folk and pop songs like Midnight Special, Frankie and Johnny, Oh Susannah, and the Dixieland favorite, Bill Bailey.
Bill remembers, "I played for big picnics in the South from the time I was around 14 years old. I was in Arkansas then. I played for big picnics, they called them two-way picnics. And barbecues, they cooked big pigs and things like that. And barbecued chickens and ducks and things like that. Free picnics mostly. A two-way picnic is something where they have two stages, one on one side of the band and one on the back of the band. The whites on one stage and the blacks on the other stage. I played the fiddle then. I didn't play the guitar till I came to Chicago in 1920.

Source: Big Bill Broonzy Interviewed by Studs Terkel,” Folkways Records FG3586.
Recordings on File by: Big Bill Broonzy.

Blow Ye Winds

If the existence of a merchant seaman was hard, a whaler's life was hell. Voyages often lasted for two or three years. The vessels were clumsy tubs that stank continually from whale oil. Often months went by without a catch. Like a great many workman's ballads, Blow Ye Winds is a 'gripe song,' but like soldiers' 'gripe songs,' it has spirit - no tears - and the melody has the buoyancy of men who can survive and grow strong on hard work and hard living. It has a tune that will carry in a high wind and blow the blues right out of your system.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: George & Jerry Armstrong, Burl Ives.

Aunt Rhody

Aunt Rhody is a classic American folk song. There's irony here, pathos, humor, and, if you like, history - a reminder of the days when a goose feather bed was the very prime in sleeping, because it cradled you and cuddled you and covered you at the very same time.
The melody to Aunt Rhody and Go Tell It on the Mountain have very much in common. It is also similar to My Home's Across the Smoky Mountains.

Source: Folk Song USA, Alan Lomax, Editor, New American Library.
Recordings on File by: Pete Seeger, Win Stracke, The Weavers.