don.rob11 wrote:

I remember a lot of these :

Thanks, Don.  I have to confess that I remember all but 4 and one of those four was by Elvis and one by Etta James.  At one time or another I had over half of them on 78 RPM's that my mother sold at a yard sale because I wasn't writing regularly when I was in the Navy.  Of course a lot of them were broken before I even went to college.  In Hot Springs, which was about 10 miles from where I lived up until '57, the was a record shop called Gill's Amusement that had the juke box concessions in many of the businesses in that area.  When they pulled records off the juke box, either because it was no longer getting places or because they were replacing the entire juke box with one they played 45's, they would put the 78's on a sale table at Gill's and sell them for 25 each or 6 for a dollar.  That's here I bought most of them.

I didn't study the cite enough yet to figure out how they arrived at the choices.  I would have thought that the Johnnie Burnette Trio (originally "The Rock and Roll Trio") version of "Honey Hush" was more popular than it's flip side, "The Train Kept a Rollin'. "  But I have their LP (33 & 1/3).

The Burnettes, Johnnie and Dorsey, and their lead guitar, Paul Burleson, were from Memphis, which I wasn't at the time.  They each had pretty big success with some solo releases but died young.  Their sons, Rocky and Billy, had some success a couple of decades ago and I think one of them sang with Fleetwood Mack during one of the periods when Lindsey Buckingham went out on his own.

Mom also unloaded my 45's, which included most of my Elvis not on LP.

Mags wrote:

Actually, it has a lot to do with Pete.

Point conceded.  Pete was important not just for writing a few songs that will live on for many years, but because he popularized the songs of many others including Woody, Leadbelly, and others.  Most people know Goodnight Irene, if not from their parents singing it on car trips, then from The Weavers ot Pete Seeger, and few people have heard Leadbelly's version of it.  Ditto for "This Land is Your Land", although many other people have gone on to record that one, too, including Springsteen.

The Weavers did The Reuben James, too.  Sometimes I like the up-tempo songs, but . . .

My favorites tend to be ballads that are a bit melancholy.  I also feel that Albert Grossman's idea to dress up folk music a bit, with simpler, but more skillful arrangements, was a good idea, and I tend to find that Peter, Paul, and Mary make some of the most listenable versions of "folk music".  So of the things I put on mix tapes, er . . . iTunes playlists, and listen to a lot, it's "Tiny Sparrow" and "Old Coat", but for some reason, the only versions of those that i can find on YouTube are by that group from Minnesota who, for young kids, performed amazingly well.

Max wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

Bruce Springsteen used to say that "This Land is Your Land" ought to be the national anthem.

I grew up in a family where it kind of seemed like it was,

. . . not that it has much to do with Pete, since that was Woody's song.

Actually, it has a lot to do with Pete.  Whenever someone does a special on Guthrie, they nearly always conclude with a group sing-a-long of this land is your land orchestrated by Pete.  Also, for many years, Pete performed and toured with Arlo Guthrie and they could be counted on to do the song.  In fact, many years before I got the chance to visit with Pete, my wife and I took friends to see a concert the two of them did in Memphis in the mid-eighties.  We went to dinner after it at my favorite Memphis restaurant, which means not a real pricey joint.  My wife and the wife with us got up to go to the women's room and ran into a friend of hers in the radio business who was having dinner with Arlo and got invited to sit down and visit with them.  I later told my wife that I wasn't nearly as jealous of them as I would have been if Pete had been at the table.

I think my second favorite Guthrie song is the one where he put his own lyrics to the traditional Wildwood Flower.  It's called "The Ruben James."  The Kingston Trio had a version of it in the early 60's, with Stewart I believe.

artie_fufkin wrote:

Bruce Springsteen used to say that "This Land is Your Land" ought to be the national anthem.

I grew up in a family where it kind of seemed like it was,

. . . not that it has much to do with Pete, since that was Woody's song.

Bruce Springsteen used to say that "This Land is Your Land" ought to be the national anthem.
You might be glad to know you're not alone in your affinity for Seeger, Mags. One of the summers I worked at a record warehouse, a lot of the Weavers catalog was released for the first time on CD (this was during the mid '80s, when record companies would release an artist's catalog on CD all at once, or like the Beatles parceled out with one LP per week) and the demand was pretty high. And it remained pretty consistent for a few weeks, unlike a lot of bands who would ship their stuff out all at once and the rush would last about 48 hours.
One of the other bands for which there was a similar phenomenon was the Psychadelic Furs. I never quite figured that one out.

It's hard for me to pick a favorite Weavers song, but one of 'em would be the one below.  I couldn't find a version on YouTube by Th Weavers, but I found this version by Odetta:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V26i_cHlpgA&feature=related

Max wrote:

Here's another.  It might be a bit like Elvis in Las Vegas . . . no, it's not that bad.  It's a bit of history:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLvk-qsKonQ

Not bad at all.  Thank you, Max.  About 25 years ago, I was bemoaning how I'd chosen to waste my life on "legal education," and one of my colleagues asked me who I would most want to be like if I could be any one that ever lived.  I told her, and meant it, "Pete Seeger" and perhaps still would.  Of course, being an ignorant person, she had never heard of him.  Several years ago, I got to meet him and had a rather lengthy conversation with him at the dedication of the Civil Rights museum here in Memphis.  I learned that Lee Hayes, the guy who does the initial monologue and is wheelchair bound, is the son of a Methodist minister from Arkansas.  I didn't ask what part.

Good Night, Irene has never been one of my favorites in the repertoire of the Weavers and wasn't when it and the following were popular.  I loved this one in the early 50's and still consider it about my favorite of theirs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSGkvyF0jkM

I think when I was 8 or 9 I preferred the Guy Mitchell version.