jazzy_dave (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jazzy_dave) wrote2014-09-04 06:16 am
jazzy_dave) wrote2014-09-04 06:16 am
A Pretty Polly Morning - Compare & Contrast
Good morning folks, and a folk tune is on the menu. The one i have chosen has crossed continents and time. To begin with, a demo version of the song Pretty Polly by Tress from their Garden of Jane Delawney album.
I love this version of the traditionl tune, and the sweetner for me is the acid drenched fuzzed guitar middle. The folk rock band Trees only made two albums in their short lived career. The original vinyls of these albums are highly sort after.
The other version of the song is by Sandy Denny.
Pretty Polly is a traditional English-language folk song found in the British Isles, Canada, and the Appalachian region of North America, among other places.
The song is a murder ballad, telling of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and buried in a shallow grave. Many variants of the story have the villain as a ship's carpenter who promises to marry Polly but murders her when she becomes pregnant. When he goes back to sea, he is haunted by her ghost, confesses to the murder, goes mad and dies.
American versions of the ballad, such as those of B.F. Shelton and Dock Boggs, tend to begin in the first person ("I courted Pretty Polly...") and switch to the third person for the murder ("he stabbed her to the heart"); Judy Collins' 1968 recording featured alternating verses switching back and forth between Polly and Willie's perspectives. American versions also tend to omit the reason for killing Pretty Polly and Willie's subsequent madness or haunting by Polly's ghost.
The ballad is likely the musical basis for Ballad of Hollis Brown by Bob Dylan who played "Pretty Polly" himself in his early years.
So finally in this comapre and contrast the deathly sound of Dock Boggs and his 1927 version.
Enjoy.
I love this version of the traditionl tune, and the sweetner for me is the acid drenched fuzzed guitar middle. The folk rock band Trees only made two albums in their short lived career. The original vinyls of these albums are highly sort after.
The other version of the song is by Sandy Denny.
Pretty Polly is a traditional English-language folk song found in the British Isles, Canada, and the Appalachian region of North America, among other places.
The song is a murder ballad, telling of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and buried in a shallow grave. Many variants of the story have the villain as a ship's carpenter who promises to marry Polly but murders her when she becomes pregnant. When he goes back to sea, he is haunted by her ghost, confesses to the murder, goes mad and dies.
American versions of the ballad, such as those of B.F. Shelton and Dock Boggs, tend to begin in the first person ("I courted Pretty Polly...") and switch to the third person for the murder ("he stabbed her to the heart"); Judy Collins' 1968 recording featured alternating verses switching back and forth between Polly and Willie's perspectives. American versions also tend to omit the reason for killing Pretty Polly and Willie's subsequent madness or haunting by Polly's ghost.
The ballad is likely the musical basis for Ballad of Hollis Brown by Bob Dylan who played "Pretty Polly" himself in his early years.
So finally in this comapre and contrast the deathly sound of Dock Boggs and his 1927 version.
Enjoy.
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Thanks for this - an interesting listen. The original isn't really my kind of music, but it's good to hear it, and see how it compares to the more modern interpretations.
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Leave it to the American's to be too prudish for pregnancies and murder. :p
Hugs, Jon
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