The following quote comes from page 105 of The Broadside Ballad by Leslie Shepard, a book we sold today. He is referring to the descent of a ballad from its "noble" beginnings to the custody of hoarders and collectors. I found words which ring true to the task we have appointed ourselves at moneyblows books and music
“This, then, is the last descent of balladry. An ancient and noble inspiration flowered with the seasons in the countryside, passed to beggar, rogue and mountebank, was sold for pennies in the streets, finally stolen and hoarded as dry leaves in the libraries of fanatical collectors. Yet it is the same impulse that runs through the whole of our great ballad story. The range of human emotions is the same, whether a man writes a song or a thesis. One man earns an honest living, another cheats for pennies; one dies for a song, another sings for his supper. Life is a gigantic affair of many intricate and contradictory aspects, and if our elemental origins seem more heroic than the everyday passions and topics of civilization, they are none the less only part of the same picture.
The secret of the Universe may not be bought for a penny, but it is on these sheets and in the commerce that goes with them. The profound and the trivial in human affairs have always coexisted, and the real meaning of life lies in the truth that transcends both. All our affairs, large or small, are swept away in the great tide of history, and the passing pageant of life itself is as insubstantial as a dream. Everything that belongs to the everyday world of the senses is a moment only in our human consciousness, essentially ephemeral—like old scraps of paper or the words of a ballad half remembered.
There are as many ballads as pebbles on a beach, and they are of all sorts and shapes. Just as we collect new experiences and compare them with old ones, so we collect old and new songs to learn a little more about life. And collect we must, before these fragments pass away.
In 1892, The Rev. S. Baring-Gould, a great collector of folk songs and broadside ballads, wrote:
‘It is but a matter of a few years and the broadside will be as extinct as the Mammoth and the Dodo, only to be found in the libraries of collectors. Already sheets that fetched a ha’penny thirty years ago are cut down the middle, and each half fetches a shilling. The garlands are worth more than their weight in gold. Let him that is wise collect whilst he may.’”
Here's one of the ballads illustrated in Shepard's book. It adds a new range of meaning to a familiar song such as Lefty Frizzell's If you've got the money honey, I've got the time. This ballad is from the 18th century:
This Three-Park Series on PBS is subtitled "Cultural History, Intimate Biography, and a front-row seat at great live performances." It is all that and more. The cultural history revolves around how the "American Songbook" was once focused on movies and plays, how it became a propaganda arm of the Allies in WWII, and how things changed after that war.
The intimate biography is of Michael Feinstein, not that intimate perhaps, but focusing on his acquisition of artifacts from the 20th century American Songbook, in order to keep the 21st century from forgetting them. This is the part that engaged me the most. Feinstein knocks on doors of collections both grandly indexed and-- just as likely-- sadly dilapidated. He zeroes right in on items of merit, if you believe the DVD, but editing must have helped. Though his scouting is far more glamorous than my own similar journeys, the end result is, for old musical memorabilia, the same. A temporary reprieve from the landfill.
People just don't have time to see what's on those old tape reels, acetates, records. Confronted with hundreds of pieces of historic sheet music from a relative, the inheritor is often overwhelmed. But I'm not. Michael Feinstein is most certainly not. We wade through these things because "lost" and "lost but not forgotten" are basically the same, in our narrow view. As Nicholson Baker has written, preservation of originals is something to be done for its own sake, even after all the proper digitizing has been duly accomplished.
Disk Two has two hours of archival clips showing some of the wartime uses of music for propaganda, such as Army sing-a-long films (long before Mitch Miller). The care taken in song delivery and offering the singer as a surrogate for the girl back home is striking. It is easy to imagine Frank Capra directing these. Other gorgeous live clips include Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s (Feinstein has a show called The Sinatra Project), and examples from Bing Crosby, Paul Whiteman, Rosemary Clooney, Alice Faye and many more.
The clips of Michael Feinstein's show are also very good, showing a performer in complete command of his material. Interestingly, his approach to romance, though fully drawn, lacks a female counterpart. He is only shown singing either alone or with other guys. I miss the guy-girl thing from network television in the 1950s and 60s. Those made-for-TV duos were strange bedfellows often as not, but the song seemed more "acted" sometimes.
Not much of a quibble for 5 hours of viewing, which I found myself watching with a permanent smile. It was sent along via a dear friend and patron of our store, who ordered me a copy of this great program directly from the producer, shopPBS.org. I have a link above if you want to buy it from amazon. Stash it with your other great 21st century collections of 20th century standards-- by Sting, Rod Stewart, Diana Krall, John Pizzarelli-- and everyone else in the gang that sang Heart of My Heart.
