Word: songs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Flower Drum Song. Not top-drawer Rodgers & Hammerstein, but even their second and third drawers have a lot to offer...
...presidency. It now enjoys a third distinction as the subject of a pop disk, The Battle of New Orleans (Columbia), which has sold some threequarter million copies in less than a month. The recorded Battle is the handiwork of Louisiana Country Singer Johnny Horton, but the song has been played by bayou fiddlers for generations. Singer Horton toned down the original verses ("They lost their pants/ And their pretty shiny coats/ And their tails were all a-showing/ Like a bunch of billy goats"), gave the song a martial beat, and produced a runaway bestseller. Sample lyrics...
This and other musical numbers are strung together like unmatched beads, but some of them have the wicked glint of genuine satire. Party Song stingingly peppers the social climbers of suburbia. Rejection ("that childhood rejection") does the same for the hobohemian set. New York is a cathartic for all the romantic nonsense set to music about the Big Town...
Although the show itself is skillfully and professionally executed, the youthfulness of the performers gives 3 Folk Sing a fresh and natural touch. Its organizer is Brooks Jones, Princeton '56, a former president of the Triangle Club Show. A tall, lanky blond, Jones might pass for a song leader at a summer work camp; and yet, a touch of the Princetonian ivy still seems to cling to him. (On their record cover the three singers are posed on a tiger...
...folk singing concert, it is almost a curiosity that all of the selections are in English. When asked why the group did not sing foreign songs, Jones remarked, "I guess we don't know any." A better explanation might be gleaned from the group's parody of esoteric folk singing. Explaining that some Greenwich Villagers had criticized their repertoire as lacking in "real folk songs," they proceeded to sing "a real field song--Field Holler" ("We found it in a field," Jones said) and "a real mountain song--"Bring Me Back My Brown-Eyed Girl" ("We found...