So I didn’t listen to to much new folk music today. I just couldn’t find any new stuff on the Charts that interested me. Now tomorrow I’ll probably find a lot! I put several albums on briefly but nothing caught my attention. So when I came home I put an old favorite in the CD player a collection of Phil Ochs music There But for Fortune. I listened to the first nine songs and again just loved the music. Tracks that I listened to included: “What’s That I Hear”, the powerful “Too Many Martyrs”, “The Power and the Glory” and one of my favorite’s “The Highwayman” a 1906 poem by Alfred Noyes. From Wikipedia:
“The Highwayman” is a narrative poem by Alfred Noyes, published in 1906. The poem was written when Noyes was a young man, and brought him immediate and long-lasting success. It tells the story of a nameless highwayman who is in love with the landlord’s black-eyed daughter named Bess. Tim, the insanely jealous ostler (stableman), betrays him to the authorities: an action which leads to brutal death for both the lovers.
The poem makes effective use of written imagery for background scenes (“the wind was a torrent of darkness amongst the gusty trees”) and repetitious phrases to create the sense of a horseman riding at ease through the rural darkness to a lovers’ tryst or of soldiers marching down the same road to ambush him.
Phil adapted the song in 1965 and it appears on his album I Ain’t Marching Anymore and also on the Live in Vancover album.
Here’s a video of Phil performing the song!
The final Phil Ochs track I listened to tonight was “There But For Fortune”, another all time favorite. Here’s a Peter, Paul and Mary cover of the song!
Part Two will be up in a while with some early Greenwich Village Folkies including Patrick Sky, Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk!