In Yonder Old Oak sung by Julie and Gavin Atkin, and learned from Kent’s famous singing family The Millens of Smarden. For more from us, see http://singdanceandplay.net
The image of rural life painted by Helen Allingham is taken from Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helen_Allingham_The_saucer_of_milk.jpg
The Julie and Gavin Atkin album Sentimental Journey is officially out and is available to order from the record label Red Admiral, and as downloads on Amazon and iTunes.
Here’s what the record label blurb says:
‘A 19-track album stuffed full of well-known songs from a bygone age and which you have been hearing all your life – maybe initially on your mothers knee.
‘Julie’s soulful voice is accompanied by Gavin on his Jeffries duet concertina, and melodeon.
‘Recorded in a natural environment they are virtually in the room with you, performing the often nostalgic combination of Tin Pan Alley songs and music from the twenties and thirties.’
And it’s just in time for Christmas! See the Red Admiral website.
The smashing old hit I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter, by Fred E Ahlert and Joe Young, sung here by Julie, accompanied by Gavin on Jeffries duet concertina.
A magnificent song, in any language – the understated way she lets you know she’s going to shoot him is a real kicker…
It was only a matter of time before Julie would add this classic lullaby by George and Ira Gershwin classic to her repertoire – and here it is. It’s great to have her singing more again.
Arranging it was quite a challenge for a two-row melodeon, but I like the way my old C/F Koch box’s mellow tones sit alongside Julie’s silvery voice.
Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron and Nobody Knows You when You’re Down and Out are a couple of songs we’ve been singing in the sessions and folk clubs lately – so we thought it was time to share them.
Dashing is a bit of a departure for Julie, who usually leaves traditional songs to others (but may sing a few more now). I gather from our pal Barbara Brown that it was collected at Minehead by Cecil Sharp – and that he got it from a Captain Lewis. That makes a nice connection, so thanks Barbara!
Nobody Knows You is a prohibition era song about how life can go all wrong for the black market booze dealer. Well, if he or she don’t like their friends, perhaps that’s something to do with the sort of people they hang out with…
This is another song from our visit to the Royal Oak at Lewes last week, with Julie right on song and the tina sounding mellow. Didn’t Frank Loesser just write some corking songs?
I learned this song as a teenager from the famous Leader album of songs collected in Lincolnshire by Percy Grainger more than a hundred years ago.
But somehow have never got around to singing it in public before our gig at our Folk at the Royal Oak gig this week. We think it’s quite a story, so here it is… Beware young men!
We thought it would be fun to try an experiment – accompanying Julie’s singing using the melodeon. We imagined it would make a nice change and this is the result!
The song was originally composed by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, and a very nice, deceptively simple piece of work it is.
Frankie drew back her kimono, pulled and old 44
Then it’s rooty-toot-toot through that bar-room door…
I guess this is what you get when a guitarist of four decades takes up the melodeon – a crazy old American song, with a bit of triplet-blues feel creeping in!
One of the important things I’ve found about being a multi-instrumentalist is that all the instruments inform each other. I’m already beginning to find out how playing the melodeon is influencing my fiddle playing, for example.