“Too Close for Comfort” is a popular song by Jerry Bock, George David Weiss, and Larry Holofcener.
It was written in 1956 as part of the score for the Broadway musical Mr. Wonderful starring Sammy Davis Jr., who released the song as a single on March 3, 1956 on Decca Records prior to the musical’s premiere. Several other pop vocalists, such as Eileen Barton, also recorded their own competing versions around this time, as well as other songs from the musical.
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“My Favorite Things” is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music.
In the original Broadway production, the song was introduced by Mary Martin playing Maria and Patricia Neway playing Mother Abbess. Julie Andrews first performed the song in a 1961 Christmas special for The Garry Moore Show, recording it again when she starred as Maria in the 1965 film adaptation of the musical.
Many of the favorite things evoke winter time imagery including warm mittens, packages, sleigh bells, snowflakes, and silver white winters. The song’s cozy lyrics inspired its adoption as a staple of the holiday season, significantly bolstered by the movie’s popularity.
The screen version of the song was ranked number 64 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs, a 2004 survey of top tunes in American cinema.
“How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?” Jane Swan
Waltzing_Matilda is a song developed in the Australian style of poetry and folk music called a bush ballad. It has been described as the country’s “unofficial national anthem”. The title was Australian slang for travelling on foot, by walking (waltzing) with one’s belongings in a “matilda” (swag) slung over one’s back, a slang expression that may have originally been repurposed from a work of light verse by Charles Godfrey Leland.
The song narrates the story of a “swagman” (itinerant worker) boiling a billy at a bush camp and capturing a stray jumbuck (sheep) to eat. When the jumbuck’s owner, a squatter (grazier), and three troopers (mounted policemen) pursue the swagman for theft, he declares “You’ll never catch me alive!” and commits suicide by drowning himself in a nearby billabong (watering hole), after which his ghost haunts the site.
The original lyrics were composed in 1895 by the Australian poet Banjo Paterson, to a tune played by Christina MacPherson based on her memory of Thomas Bulch’s march Craigielee, which was in turn based on James Barr’s setting for Robert Tannahill’s poem “Thou Bonnie Wood o Craigielee.
Molly Malone” (Roud 16932; also known as “Cockles and Mussels” or “In Dublin’s Fair City“) is a song set in Dublin, Ireland, which has become the city’s unofficial anthem.
A statue representing Molly Malone, designed by Dublin artist Jeanne Rynhart, was unveiled on Grafton Street during the 1988 Dublin Millennium celebrations by then Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ben Briscoe. In July 2014, the statue was relocated to Suffolk Street, in front of the Tourist Information Office, to make way for Luas track-laying work at the old location.
The song tells the fictional tale of a fishwife who plied her trade on the streets of Dublin and died young, of a fever. In the late 20th century, a legend grew up that a historical Molly lived in the 17th century. She is typically represented as a hawker by day and a part-time prostitute by night. In contrast, she has also been portrayed as one of the few chaste female street hawkers of her day.
There is no evidence that the song is based on a real woman in the 17th century or any other time. The name “Molly” originated as a familiar version of the names Mary and Margaret. Many such “Molly” Malones were born in Dublin over the centuries, but no evidence connects any of them to the events in the song. Nevertheless, the Dublin Millennium Commission in 1988 endorsed claims made for a Mary Malone who […]
“The House of the Rising Sun” is an American traditional folk song, sometimes called “Rising Sun Blues“. It tells of a person’s life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans. Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid the same fate. The most successful commercial version, recorded in 1964 by the English rock band The Animals, was a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart and in the U.S. and Canada. As a traditional folk song recorded by an electric rock band, it has been described as the “first folk rock hit”.
The song was first collected in Appalachia in the 1930s, but probably has its roots in traditional English folk song. It is listed as number 6393 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
“A good player can make any guitar sound good.” – Michael Bloomfield
“The Fields of Athenry” is a song written in 1979 by Pete St John in the style of an Irish folk ballad. Set during the Great Famine of the 1840s, the lyrics feature a fictional man from near Athenry in County Galway, who stole food for his starving family and has been sentenced to transportation to the Australian penal colony at Botany Bay. It has become a widely known, popular anthem for Irish sports supporters.
“The Fields of Athenry” was written in 1979 by Pete St John, who stated he heard a story about a young man from the Athenry area who had been caught stealing grain to feed his family during the Irish famine years, and was deported to Australia. A claim was made in 1996 that a broadsheet ballad published in the 1880s had similar words; however, the folklorist and researcher John Moulden found no basis to this claim, and Pete St. John stated that he wrote the words as well as the music.
In 1979, the song was recorded by Danny Doyle, reaching the top ten in the Irish Singles Chart. The song charted again in 1982 for Barleycorn, reaching […]
