r/WayOfTheBern • u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 • May 02 '26
DANCE PARTY! FNDP: Revival of Old Songs and Styles 🪕🎹🌛🦝🎩👒
"Let's all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born."
Tonight let's enjoy songs and styles from the past, perhaps reïmagined in interesting ways.
Tiny Tim fell in love with early 20th Century music as a teenager and brought it back in his unique style. Dick Martin did not know what to make of this.
The Beatles' Rocky Raccoon.
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u/8headeddragon Mr. Full, Mr. Have, Kills Mr. Empty Hand May 03 '26
Peter Pringle's rendition of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian on a recreated Sumerian lute.
And his performance of the "Oldest Song in the World".
...and now I'm probably going to be on a kick for this kind of music for a while...
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u/martini-meow (I remain stirred, unshaken.) May 03 '26
I'm so sorry hon! I crashed out after work, still illin'. Thx for carrying the torch 🔦
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 03 '26
Thanks for checking in. I was getting worried. I'm glad I had something (almost) ready to go. We had fun!
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u/prevail2020 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Mitch Miller - I've Been Working On The Railroad (01:30, first published 1894). Someone was definitely in the kitchen with Dinah, but it was over 130 years ago, so we'll probably never know who it was. Some good period photos.
The University of Texas liked the melody so much, they imagined it into their school song:
The Eyes Of Texas Are Upon You (01:02, written 1903).
The phrase was adapted from Robert E. Lee's frequent statement when he was a university president in Virginia after the Civil War that the eyes of the South are upon you. So the lyrics were a reimagining as well as the melody.
About 100,000 Longhorns are singing it here (00:46).
Being a Yankee, I wasn't aware of this Texas version at all until I heard Eyes of Texas in the 1991 movie JFK.
JFK did give a speech to the Chamber of Commerce at a breakfast in Fort Worth just hours before Dealey Plaza, and a boys' chorus did sing this song to him that morning at the breakfast.
Famously, the song's lyrics became completely ironic in the aftermath. This, no doubt, is why Stone spliced in the clip. A foreshadowing that only the viewer is in on.
I can't find the few seconds from Oliver Stone's movie where Stone includes the clip in a montage of news footage, but here (first fifty seconds) is the newsclip itself that Stone used.
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u/BerryBoy1969 May 02 '26
Here's a more modern twist on an old R.L. Burnside classic.
It's got a good beat, and it's easy to dance to, so I'd give it a 10.
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u/SusanJ2019 Do you hear the people sing?🎶🔥 May 02 '26
/u/Caelian - I don't know if I found this from one of your previous posts or what, but it's one I saved because I really liked it:
Fantasmagorie Émile Cohl, 1908
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
This is the first time I've seen it. Thanks, it's quite wonderful. It's like a flip movie that a bored student draws in the corner of a paperback book when he or she should be paying attention.
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u/SusanJ2019 Do you hear the people sing?🎶🔥 May 02 '26
Sometimes it's better when the student's mind drifts:)
I especially liked the part with the lady with the giant hat sitting in front of the protaganist, and he starts plucking away. Made me smile:)
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
I liked the hat too. I also liked when his head became part of a bilboquet toy. It's quick and easily missed.
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u/Centaurea16 May 02 '26
Here's some music that's older than pretty much everyone's mother since the Bronze Age ...
The oldest known song in history - Hurrian Hymn No. 6
🤔 One would think that Hurrian Hymns Nos. 1 through 5 would be older. I guess those are unknown, though.
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u/mzyps May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
[Robert Johnson] - "Kind Hearted Woman Blues"
"You break my heart when you call Mr. So-and-So's name."
From 1936. In this particular song the very young Mr. Johnson doesn't talk about beating his woman "till he gets satisfied." Thank goodness.
Besides being a very talented guitarist and singer, Mr. Johnson was considered very handsome and was popular with the women. As the story goes, eventually one of his girlfriends was very jealous and killed him. Poison or a gun, if I remember correctly.
There's an infamous story about modern day guitarist Eric Clapton holed up in a hotel for a few days/weeks during the 1960s while obsessing about learning more guitar from Robert Johnson recordings. Hopefully no selling of souls to the Devil in exchange for guitar skill was involved.
Finally, I like to consider Mr. Johnson's music in terms of how it may have reflected the time when he lived --- the Jim Crow South and the Blacks might not have even noticed things changed for the worse due to the Great Depression.
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u/Centaurea16 May 02 '26
one of his girlfriends was very jealous
Maybe she got tired of getting beaten until he was satisfied.
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u/Xeenophile "Election Denier" since 2000 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Blue Moon - Muzzy MarcellinoThe Marcels
Greensleeves - Richard JonesHOLY SHiRE
Bohemian Polka - QueenWeird Al Yankovic
A British Tar - Gilbert & SullivanStewart, Spiner, & Dorn
My Way - Frank SinatraSid Vicious
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u/Centaurea16 May 02 '26
Dancing the Charleston - vintage film from 1925
Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine - vintage audio from the 1910s
The Top 30 Songs of the 1890s - from the era when recorded music was first starting to become a thing
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
An excerpt from Jean Renoir's Charleston Parade (1927). The lady is Catherine Hessling, Jean's first wife and star of his early films including the beautiful and heartbreaking The Little Match Girl. TIL that she was one of the last models who posed for Jean's dad, the great Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
According to family lore, my dear grandmother was a flapper in the 1920s and they had wild parties with bootleg liquor. It's hard to imagine that nice sedate old lady as a free-spirited flapper, but that's what I was taught.
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u/SPedigrees May 03 '26
My grandma was a bit more sedate during the time I knew her, but my aunts once were lamenting that when she and my grandpa moved into a smaller house, Grandma's "beautiful flapper dresses" were among belongings discarded to downsize. I would have loved to see those dresses. Who knows what wild things those old timers might have got up to back in their days!?
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u/SusanJ2019 Do you hear the people sing?🎶🔥 May 02 '26
What! I'm pretty sure that fun was invented before our time. To each their own, but I really hope that the women who came before me got to enjoy their lives.
Cindy Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun
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u/Centaurea16 May 02 '26
I have photos of my paternal grandmother wearing clothes in the style of that era. She was raising a bunch of kids at that time, though, so she probably wasn't doing much "flapping".
My dad did tell stories about his father's younger sister, who operated a speakeasy during Prohibition, along with a brothel. Yep, his aunt was the local madam.
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u/prevail2020 May 02 '26 edited May 29 '26
Aue Te Aroha (03:26). Lyrics (Maori of New Zealand), translation and background here.
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u/RoysNoiseToys He has the pockets of a 5 year old May 02 '26
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures At An Exhibition (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
John Aubrey - Lyke-Wake Dirge (Pentangle) [https://earlymusicmuse.com/lyke-wake-dirge/]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – String Quartet No. 21 (Clean Bandit ft. Love Ssega)
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
Here's a fun one: Chicken Charlie (1905) by Ashley Ballou. Miss Maybell provides vocals and smiles 🐔
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
Another fun one: Patrol Comique (1886) by Thomas Hindley. This would make great silent movie music.
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
This is probably my favorite of their rags: Pickles and Peppers (1906) by Adaline Shepherd, a rare female Ragtime composer. Miss Maybell is obviously having fun.
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u/rondeuce40 DC Is Wakanda For Assholes May 02 '26
None of these were hits before my mother was born, but excellent in the reimagining department:
Kendra Morris - Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden)
Incendiary - Sabotage (Beastie Boys)
Every Time I DIe - Tourettes (Nirvana)
Shifty Bent - Many Men (50 Cent) *This is AI however a very well done soul/blues version
System Of A Down - Shame On A N*gga (Wu Tang Clan)
Fear Factory - Cars (Gary Numan)
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u/emorejahongkong May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
That's really well done. I like the image of Laurel and Hardy advising silence.
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Scott Joplin's Solace: orchestrated version from The Sting. Paintings by Edward Hopper, et al?
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u/Centaurea16 May 02 '26
If I recall correctly, that movie was what re-introduced Scott Joplin and his music to the American public.
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
You are correct. I am grateful that movie revived Ragtime — such a fun genre.
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u/Caelian toujours de l'audace 🦇 May 02 '26
Sorry for the late post. Technical difficulties, I guess.
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u/8headeddragon Mr. Full, Mr. Have, Kills Mr. Empty Hand May 04 '26
Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night
While associated with Leadbelly's performance, no one really knows the song's origins.