OK… I’m a greedy guy and I don’t normally share this space with anyone but my ghosts and demons… but this is so extraordinary… so moving…
As you’ll quickly figure out, it was recorded in streets and fields around the world, from the Champs Elysees to what looks like a farm field in India, each musician adding a part.
Wow.
I don’t think I’ve ever posted a link to anyone else’s music here before, I don’t think, but I just caught this vid and all I can say is wow…
I never saw Pentangle, myself, but I’ve seen all the members of it at various times over the years — typically playing either solo or in various combinations with each other.
I love this video…
The quality of this video is high enough that you should be able to watch it fairly comfortably in full screen mode — but you’ll have to actually click through the vid to go to the You Tube site to do so. For once I don’t mind losing visitors to YT…
It’s Public Domain Sunday.
I just declared it.
So, today’s entry is the traditional folk classic (or an abbreviated, radically reworked version thereof), “Tom Dooley,” a song of love, betrayal, murder… and possibly deception and cover-up, depending on what back-story you buy into.
This rather irreverent (and remarkably sloppy) version is a veritable simulation of being stuck in a backroom jam session at a party circa 19-something-or-other with me behind the guitar (and me on some rather chaos-driven bongos… obviously, it’s kind of a cubist, asynchronous simulation).
Internet Archive page for this recording
Tom Dooley
(Traditional)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
I met her on the mountain, there I took her life
Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Hadn’t been for Grayson,
I’d-a been in Tennessee
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Hang down your head and cry ah poor boy, ah well-ah
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Down in some lonesome valley
hangin’ from a white oak tree
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die