And for your boatman choose old John O'Dreams
I realized that I don't think I ever heard Bill Caddick sing any of his own songs. I learned my first one as a lullaby, as though it were the folk tune it was often mistaken for, and started paying attention to his name somewhere between Priscilla Herdman and June Tabor. I just sang "John O'Dreams" to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch as I remember learning it from my babysitter because I just read that Caddick has died. In a week of artists dying—Rob is mourning Ricky Jay—this is the one that caught me. The song frightened me as a child even when I loved the sound of it, I think because I heard in it the same likeness that makes sleep the sibling of death: sleep is a river and there are other rivers to cross. It haunted me and I have sung it as a lullaby. There are echoes of Housman and Stevenson and Sappho in it. I wonder if it will be the song people sing for him.
spatch as I remember learning it from my babysitter because I just read that Caddick has died. In a week of artists dying—Rob is mourning Ricky Jay—this is the one that caught me. The song frightened me as a child even when I loved the sound of it, I think because I heard in it the same likeness that makes sleep the sibling of death: sleep is a river and there are other rivers to cross. It haunted me and I have sung it as a lullaby. There are echoes of Housman and Stevenson and Sappho in it. I wonder if it will be the song people sing for him.
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...and perfect for a memorial.
(Have we bonded over chamber folk yet? That is, early Pentangle and June Tabor and Silly Sisters and Trapezoid (before Freyda died) and such?)
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You're welcome.
(Have we bonded over chamber folk yet? That is, early Pentangle and June Tabor and Silly Sisters and Trapezoid (before Freyda died) and such?)
I don't think we have, but I'm happy to do so! I grew up on Pentangle; I got June Tabor and Silly Sisters from
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That middle period is the one that I adore: the first of their three albums is on YT here
https://youtu.be/82WzNZXkDuQ
I was a folk musician (alto, dulcimer, rhythm guitar) in an earlier life, and I adore the rough-and-ready sounds common to humans making music for their own delight. What mid-Trapezoid managed to do was combine the repertory of trad folk with exquisitely played arrangement and in-tune harmonies.
Thank you! I have so much to say on this topic I feel a post growing.