Song Of The Day

Song of the Day

(do you want the history of your favorite folk song? submit an ask or dm me and I'll do a full rundown)

"Dirty old Town" Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, 1956 this song was originally written by Ewan MacColl in 1949, for his play "Landscape with Chimneys". The song is based off of his childhood city, Salford, Lancashire, England, where he grew up.

In an interview with the BBC, Peggy Seeger said

"it remains a perfect song" "It's a beautiful melody, just four economical verses, and it has been covered by hundreds of singers each in their own way"

she continues with regards to the covers,

"I don’t like what The Dubliners did to it, I don’t like what The Pogues did to it – I think they have lost the loneliness," "I think they have lost the confusion of a young person walking through it." "To me, Ewan was reliving his 20s and his late teens so I think it is harder to change."

she adds,

"It speaks to everybody from a dirty old broken down industrial city," "But Salford was in Ewan MacColl’s bones." "He took me to his dirty old town within a week of our three-decade partnership."

This relates to one of my favorite things about the song, it's equally relatable for everyone in a burnt-out industrial city. hell, I really relate to the song and my hometown is a railroad town in Wyoming. I grew up listening to this song because my mom loved it and her hometown is a rustbelt city that was crumbling factorial ruins when she was growing up.

Even though Peggy Seeger doesn't like the covers, I still want to mention the version by The Pogues as it's one of my favorites. I do agree with her that both of the translations lost some of the charm that the original had.

The original captured the spirit of traditional Irish and English folk music, so much so that I assumed it was a traditional ballad. little new compositions of folk music succeed in doing this, which makes the song impressive.

i was never a huge fan of joni mitchell, simply listened to a couple of her songs when spotify suggested it and thought they were nice. but ever since i learned about her doing blackface and being weird (not only about black people, but also natives), i just feel so grossed out and uncomfortable whenever i see her mentioned anywhere😔 i thought that she for sure must've apologised for it already, it happened years ago, but it looks like she still defends herself - it hurts so bad and is such a disappointment. it sucks knowing that such a beloved artist (even if she wasn't by me) has done something like that but THANK YOU for posting about it. you're the only person on social media i've seen mention it

very sorry for the looong message but i just had to say it:(

yea i don't mean to be a hater or anything, i really enjoy the song "big yellow taxi" by her as well. but the fact that she did blackface multiple times, made an album based on her blackface character and then profited off of it, is so gross to me. and the fact that it was based on a real black man who she met. this real guy was literally objectified for her to profit off of. she even claimed in an interview that her dentist told her she had 'the teeth of a black man'.

and she still has not apologized! in fact, in an interview in like 2015 (?) she was almost bragging about it, saying she did it to get revenge on the photographer. ??

and i know a lot of people defend it as like, ignorant but well-intentioned and I wanna push back on that. in a 1988 interview, not only did she use the n slur (when describing another time she referred to Muhammad Ali as such), she describes the black man who complimented her as sleazy. She dressed herself up like a pimp. this isn't good intentions, it's closer to minstrelsy, that like I said before, she profited off of.

genuinely, it's awful that this isn't talked about very much. And it makes me really mad and upset too. Especially how it's swept under the rug. A lot of racism of the folk revival scene is swept under the rug.

I'm planning on talking about it more in depth at a later time. This is just how i feel about it. she's a talented artist, but I can't listen to her music anymore.

anyway, thanks for the ask anon /gen

but heres a cool cover of big yellow taxi if anyone cares

jean ritchie

Odetta, Photo by Herb Snitzer, 1990

Song of the Day

do you want to know the history of a folk song? submit an ask or dm me and I'll cover it

"Passing Through" Pete Seeger, 1956

the song was originally written in 1948 by Dick Blakeslee for the People's Songs bulletin and newsletter.

the organization and newsletter were started by Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax in NYC in 1946 and were published between 1946-50

the first recording of the song is the one featured here, done in 1956. but others have covered it, including

cisco houston 1965

Leonard Cohen 1972

Joan Baez 1975

I love this song, but I've always thought it'd be cool if the verse about George Washington was replaced with john brown.

Ralph Rinzler Collections, Smithsonian Institute

jimmie strothers and Joe Lee, 1936