Western Singalong - carrying on a tradition

We are preparing to lead the music for a Singalong at the annual Alaskan Klee Kai convention in Claremont, CA. When we heard that the theme was "Western," we offered our services, then quickly went to get a proper hat for our little Klee Kai, Klondike. After all, a singalong is just carrying on a tradition of the cowboys - singing around the campfire. Of course, the temps here are expected to be close to 100 degrees, so a campfire is hardly on the schedule (and, hopefully, wild fires also will not be part of the event), but a few songs certainly can create an atmosphere. As discussed in earlier blogs, we often use music to establish a sense of togetherness (consider hymn singing in church), so it wasn't hard to sell the conference planners on a a "group sing."

So today I have been working on creating some "songbooks" for the event (back in the old days, everyone knew all the words to the popular songs - well, I guess they do today, too, but the songs we'll be singing were popular in years past and are not likely to be found on today's "hit parade"). I went through some of my favorite collections to come up with the songs for this event and thought it would be appropriate to share some of those sources with my blog followers (hey, you never know when you might like to look up an old song). So here's something of a brief annotated bibliography for western music:

Lingenfelter, Richard E., Dwyer, Richard A., & Cohen, David (editors), Songs of the American West, Berkeley, CA: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1968.
One of the most comprehensive collections I have ever found. This book was recommended to me by my 1987 American Folklore & Ballad class professor, William Henry Koon (at Cal. State Fullerton) and has been a major resource for me since then. The songs are organized into categories: "To the West" (the great migration), "Coming around the Horn" (going West via water), "Crossing the Plains" (more migration songs), "The Pioneer Stage Drive" (the occupation of hauling passengers & freight), "The Railroad Cars are Coming" (songs of the construction & arrival of railroads), "Seeing the Elephant" (first songs of the Gold Rush), "When I Went off to Prospect" (second batch of songs of the Gold Rush), "Apex Boarding House" (more mining songs), "When I was a Miner, a Hard-Rock Miner" (more mining songs), "Stand by Your Union" (songs of organized labor), "Come, Come, Ye Saints" (Mormon migration songs), "The Handcarts" (songs of the second wave of Mormon emigrants), "Wish I was a Mormonite" (Mormon songs by non-Mormons), "The Mormon Question" (more Mormon pioneer songs by non-Mormons), "The Merry Mormons" (life in the Salt Lake Valley), "The Sioux Indians" (living with the Native Americans), "The Regular Army-o!" (the military in the West), "John Chinaman" (songs about life with the Chinese workforce . . . many not politically correct), "What was Your Name in the States" (songs of the outlaws), "The Texas Cowboy" (ballads of cowboys), "The Cowboy's Life" (songs about the lifestyle of the cowboy), "Git Along, Little Dogies" (songs of cattle-driving), "If Your Saddle is Good and Tight" (songs of horse-breaking), "The Campfire has Gone out" (songs of the end of the wild west), "The Kansas Emigrant" (songs of that plain state), "Starving to Death on a Government Claim" (songs about homesteading), "But the Mortgage Worked the Hardest" (farming songs), "Harvest Land" (more farming songs), "Fifty Thousand Lumberjacks" (songs of the lumber trade), "A Dollar a Day without Board" (songs of the hard life, trying to make ends meet), "Hallelujah, on the Bum" (songs of those who did not make ends meet), "Oh, You Wobblies" (uniting the unskilled laborers), and "The Old Settler" (songs of those who saw better days). This book has been around a long time, but is still the first I grab when I am looking for songs of the west.

Lomax, Alan, The Folk Songs of North America in the English Language, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1960.
This was my texbook for my Folksong & Ballad class at CSUF. Besides providing a wealth of information on the back-stories of the songs, it contains most of my class notes from the course, reminding me of some of the nuances in the lyrics (sorry, my personal notes are not available in new copies of this book!). While the book addresses all sorts of geographic and cultural aspects of traditional music, there is one section on "The West" that is divided into seven categories: "Beyond the Mississippi," "Plainsmen and '49ers," "Soldiers and Renegades," "Cowboys," "Prairie Farmers," "Railroaders and Hoboes," and "The Last West."

Silber, Irwin (compiler, editor), Songs of the Great American West, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967, 1995.
Lots of Western songs, some repeats of those in the other two books, organized by category: "Ho! For California," "On the Plains of Mexico," "Come, Come, Ye Saints" (about the Mormon migration), "The Days of '49" (about the Calif. Gold Rush), "Ride Around Little Dogies," "The Farmer is the Man," "Come All You Bold Fellers," and "Roll on, Columbia" (about the Northwest).

Of course there are other books and recordings. One of my favorites is produced by Keith and Rusty McNeil, here in Riverside County. Their website lists their book of western songs, a companion to their CD on the same topic.

Whenever I put together a program of traditional music, one of my first resources is Google - if you are looking for a particular song, try Googling the title of the song and add the word "lyrics." If that doesn't get a hit, try using one line from the song. For example, if I have been trying to find "Home, Home on the Range," I might select "where the deer and the antelope" . . . sometimes we remember phrases or titles incorrectly, so use a phrase that you are certain is correct - note: if I added the word "roam" to the end of that phrase, the chances are I wouldn't get a hit, unless someone posted it with incorrect lyrics (the last word to the phrase is "play"). Again, if I don't get a hit, I'd try a different phrase. Don't forget to put the phrase or title in quotation marks, otherwise you will get hits for anything that has all the words, not necessarily in that order! (If you know the author of the song, include that as well; I usually use only the surname of a composer as sometimes the first name is given as initials or a common nickname - R.D. or "Bob" instead of "Robert").

Happy searching . . . adding the songs your ancestors sang to the "notes" section of your genealogy program can remind yourself about their humanness and their everyday life.

Sing along!

I love the Reader's Digest (note: the apostrophe is before the first "s," not after it, so it focuses on the single reader, not readers en masse . . . just a little detail that did not escape me). I think I have subscribed to it since I was in high school. For a while in life, when there was very little extra $$ for the small pleasures, a friend and I developed a system: one of us would maintain a subscription, then give the magazine to the other person the next month; we rotated this arrangement each year for quite some time before I was able to have my own subscription. I preferred to get my own copies as I would take out articles of special interest to keep in an ever growing file. I now remove only very carefully selected items since past issues are all available on line these days.

This latest edition (June/July 2010) of Reader's Digest includes "100 Things We Love about America." One of the "things" was "Best Crowd-Pleaser": musician Josh Wilson's experience in the Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. As has happened far too often in recent years, a delay, the result of a security issue, caused crowds of travelers much inconvenience and, as a likely offshoot, much frustration and short tempers. Josh, took his instrument and played and sang the Beatles "Hey, Jude," among other songs. This song, obviously well-known (or at least somewhat known) by most of the travelers, got the crowd smiling and, soon thereafter, clapping and singing along. Soon his fellow sojourners were all "na-na-na"-ing together! What an amazing experience that must have been. Josh stated that he wanted to take the situation and "make it better" . . . and he did (p. 120). Read more about the amazing young artist, whose latest recording, "Life is not a Snapshot," was released last year, at his Sparrow Records website (where other accounts of his experience at Newark are detailed). Or check out the experience on YouTube (nothing can happen in this post-1984 world without someone capturing it on video!).

I see this shared experience of those passengers and Josh as a perfect example of what music can and will do for a group: bring people together and help them deal with everything from adversity to amusement, religion to relaxation. It was no different with our ancestors who joined together after a day of work to share a little music in front of the fire before turning it. When times were hard, a song could help them deal with the stress (consider the passengers on the Titanic, joining in "Nearer My God to Thee," or all of us at various venues on and shortly after 9/11, joining in "God Bless America"). When someone passes away, we gather at a memorial or a funeral and sing together - "Amazing Grace," "Blessed be the Tie that Binds," etc. Conversely, during the holidays, even the non-religious can be found singing "Fa-la-la"s with the mall carolers. And, for those of you who visit Disneyland whenever the opportunity arises, can you honestly tell me you have not joined in with the (animated, not even human) pirates singing "yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me"? And don't we feel better and more connected to those around us when we've shared a song? Obviously, Josh Wilson was well aware of the emotional power of "singing along."

This weekend - Sunday, May 16 - Southern Californians will have this opportunity at the 50th annual Topanga Banjo and Fiddle contest, taking place at Paramount Ranch Agoura Hills. But this is much more than just a contest: there are concerts, workshops, activities, and lots of vendor booths, plus many jamming and singalong opportunities all over the vast park. My husband, Uncle Butch, will be teaching a saw workshop with our friend, Gary Friedman, who will teach people how to play xaphoon at 1-2pm. There is truly something for everyone as this all takes place on the old Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman filming location: lots of hiking opportunities are provided in the surrounding acreage, and, of course, a lot of great food to refresh oneself after the hike. Our friends, Songmakers, will have a spot in the "town" where they will be entertaining the crowds and providing lots of singalong opps, so check them out (and join in the singing), if you decide to come to this great event.

So do like your ancestors did - celebrate life by singing along (if not at "Topanga" this weekend, then maybe with friends or family). The emotional experience is worth the effort!