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.
no subject
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
no subject
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.