Sep. 4th, 2014

jazzy_dave: (Default)
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.

More Polly

Sep. 4th, 2014 06:38 am
jazzy_dave: (Default)
Some other notable versions of Pretty Polly are the following - first by Davy Graham


Dig the hat amigo!

Most versions remain in the folk or bluehrass genres but this next one is very very different.

From the album Murder Ballads (Drift) is this somnambulistic nightmare of Ptetty Polly retitled The The Death Of Polly by M.J  Harris & Martyn Bates.



Enjoy.

Achievement

Sep. 4th, 2014 09:42 pm
jazzy_dave: (Default)
It has been a good day despite being in the Office. Weather was sunny and warm. I have compteted the last module of the course, did the test,  and gained a 97 % pass.

So tomorrow oor Saturday i might gonthe cinema and watch a film, That Lucy film looks good as the trailer has fot me intrigued. Seems to be on a similar trakectory to that film Limitless.

Time to watch some TV catch up.

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