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Musicologists went thru the Appalachians during the 1930's, and perhaps earlier, transcribing folk songs. First time I noticed it just in passing, from third- or fourth- removed sources. Back about 1970 got a Joan Baez album that was Appalachian folk songs. And happened on an album of modern renditions of English Elizabethan songs. Possibly Pentangle was the group. The dang songs were identical!





Could be Pentangle, they did a lot of traditional English ballad stuff ... The Trees They Do Grow High, Bruton Town, etc. but they had more of a jazz-influenced style. I wouldn't necessarily call it "modern."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentangle_(band)

Perhaps it was Steeleye Span?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeleye_Span

Both bands were amazingly great, by the way.



Hi First

I had some Steeleye Span back then too, so it is a possibility. The Steeleye Span stuff I had was primarily bright-metallic, up-tempo madly agressive reels and jigs, as best can recall. The Pentangle and Steeleye Span were 'pirated' with an old-fashioned method-- reel-to-reel tape dubs of friends' vinyl. Those tapes are probably in that big dusty chest full of tape, if I still had a reel-to-reel tape machine to try to play them on. Agreed it was great stuff.

One song I recall being very similar between the Pentangle and the Joan Baez (unless memory is failing) was "Sir Patrick Spens" though the name was probably different in the Appalachian version.

There was another song about star-crossed lovers who were killed in a family feud, and from their graves a rose and a thorn bush grew up and entertwined on the church steeple, or something like that. That is a perfect Appalachian song theme reminiscent of Hatfields and McCoys, and on the other hand is also reminiscent of European family feuds ala Romeo and Juliet. I recall a bluegrass player saying that proper themes for a bluegrass song include unrequited love, crime, death, and despair. Bluegrass is a "synthetic" modern form, but it does sprout from earlier roots.

The songs were not exactly identical between the New York hippy gal singing the Appalachian songbook, versus the young Brits interpreting Olde English songbook, but the resemblance was awfully close. Some drift in lyric, but very little drift in melody.

James Chandler Jr
http://www.errnum.com/