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.
Julie sings Careless Love Blues
A magnificent song, in any language – the understated way she lets you know she’s going to shoot him is a real kicker…
Julie sings Summertime
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.
Julie sings with Gav’s melodeon
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…
Julie sings Two Sleepy People
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?
Gavin sings Worcester City
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!
Julie sings Que Sera Sera
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.
Gav sings Frankie and Johnny
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.
Julie goes Waltzing with bears
Our friend Neil Gledhill of the Old Swan Band asked for this, and by gosh he’s got it. Curiously, it’s one of our most requested numbers; I guess most people feel they have a secret Uncle Walter somewhere about their personalities…
Frank Loesser’s Slow boat to China
We’ve been learning some new songs ahead of a gig at Islington Folk Club on the 1st October – and this is one of them. Julie and I think it’s a hoot – Frank Loesser’s chords for Slow boat to China alone are wild and wonderful.
The splendid postcard of the liner United States is courtesy of the Wikimedia, by the way – but in the interests of peace between our two nations, I guess I should point out that the slow boat in question is the yacht – not the Blue Ribband-winning liner.