TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

I was recently listening to April’s edition of Folkcast (yes, I’m a little behind the times!) and it started with a version of Matty Groves sung by someone called Mark Shillaker.  I know nothing of Mr Shillaker beyond that one song, which was a very competently sung and performed version of Fairport’s Matty.

This brought back to me some thoughts I had a number of years ago when I was at an Eden Burning concert where they too, performed Matty Groves, in the ‘Fairport version’.   My first thoughts were that it seemed to me something of a cheek to perform a song so closely linked to another band, in an arrangement that was very similar to the original.  Reflecting upon it, I wondered why I should have reacted like that.  After all, Matty Groves is a traditional song, not an original Fairport composition, and can’t be said to ‘belong’ to them any more than any traditional song belongs to an artist that performs it.

Yet there still seemed to me that there was something there that made me a little uneasy.  Yes, Matty is a traditional song, and Fairport’s version is their own selection of words from the original ballad (or ballads – I understand there are plenty of versions in the tradition) and choice of tune to go with them.  I would have no problem with anyone making their own arrangement of words and music to come up with something that didn’t sound like they were copying Fairport.  

So I guess it comes down to the same question as that of cover versions of other people’s songs.  Is there any merit in a cover version that is basically the same arrangement as the original?  If you are at a concert where someone plays a straight version of ‘Smoke On The Water’, for example, what are your feelings?  Do you have the same sort of feelings as me about Matty Groves, or am I being too precious about this whole question?  Should I see it instead as an ‘hommage’ to Fairport or whoever (even if the band say nothing about it being that)?

I'd like to hear what other people think.  So over to you...

I am currently playing in a professional cover band...and we always try to make the arrangements as different from the record as we can. OTOH, "tribute" bands, who play the songs note for note like the record, are becoming quite popular here. Drives me batty; why not just stay home and listen to the record?

Oddly, the first version I heard of Matty Groves was by Joan Baez; I forget what tune she used. Fairport's version (hands down, my favorite, of course) used the tune from "Shady Grove," more or less. Steeleye's "Blackleg Miner" seems pretty close to that (I love that one a lot, too)...I have no idea what my point is. :)

Don't want this to sound like The M*dc*t C*fe, but that's how the tradition works doesn't it?

I mean, this bunch of middle class English people get the words of a song which started off somewhere in the Borders maybe around 1500 and somehow migrated to the Appalachians. They then either adapt the American tune or use a completely different one (can't remember which, sorry Swarb!) It's duly recorded, becomes very well known over here, and inevitably other people pick the song up and equally inevitably it sounds a bit like the Fairports.
 
It's happened more recently - I was gobsmacked a few years ago when I walked into a pub in Morpeth and found a very good band doing a Fairport-like version of John Gaudie to an audience ranging from teens to whole families and nanas and grandas. Off the record, I believe it was learned off the record!

My take on it (for what it's worth) is that it's more of a tribute to the people who put the arrangement together than a rip-off. Oh, and Will, you aren't being precious, you simply have an inquiring mind   :)            

My favourite alternative version is Little Musgrave sung by Christy Moore & Planxty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0-gcccksAg&feature=related

Hi, We need a box set dedicated to Matty+Shady Grove+Little Musgrave

I agree with Martin: Planxty's Musgrave is wonderful
Another good Musgrave is by Pete Morton in Trespass album
A nice different Matty is by scottish master folk singer Billy Ross in Shore Street album
A famous Shady Grove is by Jerry Garcia with David Grisman in Shady Grove album

best

Paolo

And who can forget the title track from Quicksilver Messenger Service's Shady Grove album?

I used to walk on the city streets
Now I wander far and wide
And I never found my happiness
Till I moved to the country-side
Now follow me for a quiet day
Out riding on the trails
Away from smog 'n traffic probs
Where all the pigs have tails

I'm in shady grove
Shady Grove my Honey
Shady grove my true love
I'm bound for Shady Grove

I collect as many versions of each song as I can!  Whether they're "covers" or "original versions".

I've got at least three different bands doing Matty Groves (off the top of my head, Fairport, Isambarde and someone else - it might be telling that I've got Isambarde's version on the MP3 player at the minute, it might not).  A good few versions of Beeswing (none as good as RT's original, a couple totally awful!).  Any number of instrumental tunes come around again and again too, and I love hearing a new interpretation of them.

An interesting song I've come across a couple of times is "Rant and Roar" - the UK (Isambarde) version has "trueborn young whalermen" in the chorus and the Newfie (Great Big Sea) version has "true newfoundlanders" instead.  Would love to collect more versions!  Would be interesting to find out more about the lineage of this one.

So I'm in favour of lots of people doing the same songs, it's one of the reasons I'm a folkie!  Even a "cover" version tends to have different and interesting interpretations going on.

I would also put in commendation for Martin Simpson's Musgrave as well.

There is a band called Shambolica who do a rather nice Matty in the Fairport style - and Kerry, their singer, has a lovely voice so you get a sort of Matty with Sandy effect.

I love that one. The entire CD is fantastic!

It sounds like Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy, whose chorus goes:
We'll rant and we'll roar
Like true British Sailors
Rant and we'll roar
All on the salt sea
Until we strike soundings in the channel of olde England
From Ushant to Scillies is 35 leagues

It's not actually the chorus is it? I thought it was two seperate songs woven together by SoH/Phil like they do with Tall Ships/Spanish Ladies.

Aka "Spanish Ladies".

Re other Matties, Plant and Krauss stuck  a snatch of the song in the middle of a slightly odd medley on their recent tour. Unexplained and a bit superfluous, neither nowt nor summat.

That's a third version then!  Great Big Sea call theirs "Rant and Roar"; Isambarde call it "The Talcahuano Girls".  I've never been able to really make out the lyrics to the second part of the chorus in either version.  Might have to be brave and ask Chris if I get a chance at the Maudsley on Saturday evening...
Whos is your version, Bob?  Where (as in which side of the Atlantic) is it from?
JP, same questions, sounds like another one

(apologies for the thread hijack, would it be worth a moderator's time & effort to snip this bit out?  Or is this still relevant here?)

It crops up time and again in Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons " books, (along with Hanging Johnny) John Tams has done a version too. There's a bit in "Peter Duck" where the old sailor explains to the nippers how the chap who wrote it must have been beating up the channel against a nor-easter, by the landmarks the writer was looking for, which must have been at the northern extremity of each tack.

The first land we sighted was called the Dodman,
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and  Wight;
We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dungeness,
And then we bore up for the South Foreland light.

Well you did ask

Sorry to send this thread further off course, but Anna, you might be interested in the Song Links projects that have come together from time to time. The projects consider songs that have evolved separately on different continents, and show how the same song, tune or idea has followed different interpretations in different places. The first Song Links (http://www.folkmusic.net/htmfiles/webrevs/fecd176d.htm) album looked at songs that were taken to Australia and shows how they evolved along different paths from the versions that were sung back in the UK. The second Song Links 2 (http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/wyndham-read/records/songlinks2.html) took the same approach for songs across the Atlantic. Both albums contain 2 discs, one having the english versions the other having the australian/american versions.

The albums were originally put together to accompany concerts of the songs. I saw the show for Song Links 2 at Sidmouth a few years ago and it was very interesting. If you want to hear how songs evolve along different paths I'd recommend taking a listen to these.

Cheers

Nick

Just by chance I've just found this version of Matty - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXUPZf979Ig

As others have pointed out, I goofed with the title - it is actually Spanish Ladies and was part of the original Tall Ships medley put together by Show of Hands. I also was not aware that the "rant and roar" part was not actually part of the Spanish Ladies song until now. Hold on there! According to this site (http://www.napoleonguide.com/music_spanlad.htm), perhaps I was not so incorrect after all ...

Jiggawat, scheduled to play the Warwick festival this year, http://www.myspace.com/jiggawatt4

My favourite example of a song changing in my own personal experience was one we used to sing in Time and Tune, then Singing Together, both Schools Radio programmes which must have introduced a generation to traditional music. It was variously called "Gilgarry Mountains" aka "Cork and Kerry", aka "Captain Farrell" a fairly rumty-tumty ballad of crime and punishment. Who would have thought that ten years later it would resurface on TOTP as, of course "Whisky in The Jar". (Sung by the then Coolest Man in Town, Phil Lynott).

I guess We have compiled the ultimate Matty Box Set

p 8)

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have also been doing Matty on tour. Sounds like it is based on the Liege and Lief version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq6YqJBHHIc
(not great quality sound)

Nope. Leaves me cold. What's the point?

Every point. You want a song to survive, sing it. Evene if you copy someone else's version, it'll be different enough to carry it forward.

Sorry, didn't make meself clear, I didn't like it, pointless to argue further, just a matter of taste. I didn't think it was a "version" of the song, and I kept wanting them to sing the song, not snatches of the song in the middle of another song/framing device.

one of the earlier Buffy Ste. Marie albums has "Lady Margaret"...sung to the 'Shady Groves/Matty Groves tune the words combine aspects of both 'Barbara Allen' and 'Matty'.....forbidden love and death, a classic combination!

Probably been mentioned, but don't the Kipper Family do a version called Fatty Groves

Jason Wilson did a reggae version of Matty on his latest album.

Swarby played with Wilson earlier this month in Canada, and did quite the avant garde fiddle solo on Matty.  If I'm not mistaken, Swarb also plays on the album.

For me Nic Jones' version is far better than Christy's (which is just annoying).

Nic's is my favourite 'Little Musgrave'.

I really don't have another favourite 'Matty' - all the others seem poor by comparison to the FP/Sandy renditions