This blog is dedicated to the amateur or beginner musician with music written in a simple and easy to read Alpha Notes format and with Chords for the left hand. This is to assist those with little or hardly at all note reading skills. This is a blog that shows all the chords in Alpha Notes format too which you can find the notes for the chords in one of the blogs. Please feel free to leave a comment or any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day",also known as "Over the River and Through the Woods",is aThanksgivingpoem byLydia Maria Child,originally published in 1844 inFlowers for Children, Volume 2.
Although many people sing "to grandmother's house we go", the author's original words were "to grandfather's house we go". Moreover, in modern American English, most people use the word woods rather than wood in reference to a forest, and sing the song accordingly.
The poem was originally published as "The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day" in Child's Flowers for Children. It celebrates the author's childhood memories of visiting her grandfather's house (said to be the Paul Curtis House). Lydia Maria Child was a novelist, journalist, teacher, and poet who wrote extensively about the need to eliminate slavery.
The poem was eventually set to a tune by an unknown composer. The song version is sometimes presented with lines about Christmas, rather than Thanksgiving. For instance, the line "Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!" becomes "Hurrah for Christmas Day!" As a Christmas song, it has been recorded as "A Merry Christmas at Grandmother's". Although the modern Thanksgiving holiday is not always associated with snow (snow in late November occasionally occurs in the northern states and is rare at best elsewhere in the United States), New England in the early 19th century was enduring the Little Ice Age, a colder era with earlier winters.
The original piece had twelve stanzas, though only four are typically included in the song. One stanza has the word that ends in the M sound rhyme with the word that ends in the N sound.
Over the river, and through the wood, To Grandfather's house we go; the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river, and through the wood, to Grandfather's house away! We would not stop for doll or top, for 'tis Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river, and through the wood— oh, how the wind does blow! It stings the toes and bites the nose as over the ground we go.
Over the river, and through the wood— and straight through the barnyard gate, We seem to go extremely slow, it is so hard to wait!
Over the river, and through the wood— When Grandmother saw us come, She will say, "O, dear, the children are here, bring a pie for everyone."
Over the river, and through the wood— now Grandmother's cap I spy! Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!
The following verses appear in a "long version":
Over the river, and through the wood, with a clear blue winter sky, The dogs do bark, and children hark, as we go jingling by.
Over the river, and through the wood, to have a first-rate play. Hear the bells ring, "Ting-a-ling-ding!", Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!
Over the river, and through the wood, no matter for winds that blow; Or if we get the sleigh upset into a bank of snow
Over the river, and through the wood, to see little John and Ann; We will kiss them all, and play snow-ball and stay as long as we can.
Over the river, and through the wood, trot fast, my dapple-gray! Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound! For 'tis Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river, and through the wood, Old Jowler hears our bells. He shakes his pow, with a loud bow-wow, and thus the news he tells.
A children's book,Over the River—A Turkey's Tale, recasts the poem as a humorous tale of a family ofturkeyson their way to a vegetarian Thanksgiving; the book was written by Derek Anderson, and published bySimon & Schusterin 2005.
It is also the title of a young adult historical fiction novel about a teenage pioneer crossing the wilderness with her young siblings in tow. The book, which features young adult heroine Caroline Darley, was written by author Brynna Williamson and was published by Stones in Clay Publishing in 2020.
Near end of the 1973 TV show A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, as the characters ride in the back of Charlie's parents' station wagon to his grandmother's house, they sing "Over the River and Through the Woods." As they finish the song, Charlie Brown says, ‘There’s one problem with that. My grandmother lives in a condominium."
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On Top of Old Smoky (often spelled "Smokey") is a traditional folk song of the United States. As recorded by The Weavers, the song reached the pop music charts in 1951.
It is unclear when, where and by whom the song was first sung. In historical times folk songs were the informal property of the communities that sang them, passed down through generations. They were published only when a curious person took the trouble to visit singers and document their songs, an activity that in America began only around the turn of the 20th century. For this reason it is unlikely that an originator of "On Top of Old Smoky" could ever be identified.
One of the earliest versions of "On Top of Old Smoky" to be recorded in fieldwork was written down by the English folklorist Cecil Sharp, who during the First World War made three summer field trips to the Appalachian Mountains seeking folk songs, accompanied and assisted by Maud Karpeles. Sharp and Karpeles found to their delight that the Appalachians, then geographically isolated, were a strong preserve of traditional music and that many of the people they met were naturally gifted singers who knew a great number of songs. They were also intrigued to find that many of the songs the people sang to them were versions of songs Sharp had earlier collected from people in rural England, suggesting that the ancestors of the Appalachian residents had brought them over from the old country.
In one version the first verse is the following;
On top of Old Smoky, All covered with snow, I lost my true lover For courtin' too slow.
The version of "On Top of Old Smoky" that Sharp and Karpeles collected was sung to them on 29 July 1916 by Miss Memory Shelton in Alleghany, Madison County, North Carolina. Miss Shelton was part of a family several of whose members sang for Sharp. Memory Shelton's version differs in notes, rhythm, and wording from the version most people know today, but only modestly so; for instance the words of the first verse are as follows:
On top of Old Smoky, All covered in snow, I lost my true lover By sparking too slow.
where sparking is a now-rare word that means courting. She also avoided the extreme prolongation of the syllables of Smoky and lover that are customary today, instead assigning just one musical beat to Smo- and lov- and two to -key and -er. The version Miss Shelton sang has twelve verses. It was published twice; first in the preliminary volume of folk songs prepared by Sharp and Karpeles after their first summer of fieldwork (Sharp and Karpeles 1917), then in 1932 after Sharp's death, in the much larger compendium of Appalachian folk songs that Karpeles edited from the full notes of their three summers' fieldwork.
American field workers were also active in the Appalachians. A (tuneless) text for "On Top of Old Smoky", similar to what Memory Shelton sang, was published by E. C. Perrow in 1915, slightly before Sharp's fieldwork.[9] In the following decades, still further variants of "On Top of Old Smoky" were recorded by fieldworkers in North Carolina and Tennessee.
The Appalachian tradition characteristically spawned multiple variants of the same song. In the extreme case, the same basic set of words could be sung to more than one tune, or the same tune could adopt a completely different set of words. The now-standard tune of "On Top of Old Smoky" competed with a completely different tune, which Sharp and Karpeles encountered when they returned to the Appalachians for further fieldwork in 1917, and versions of this tune were also found by later fieldworkers.
The tune of "On Top of Old Smoky" familiar to most people today was also paired with a completely different set of words in a folk song called "The Little Mohee", about a frontiersman who falls in love with an Indian maiden (or, in some versions, a sailor who falls in love with a South Seas maiden). This tune was collected by the American fieldworkers Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway in Pine Mountain, Kentucky from a singer named Mary Ann Bagley, and published by them in 1916, hence a year before the Sharp/Karpeles version mentioned above.
Because the versions gathered in fieldwork vary so much, there is no particular version of "On Top of Old Smoky" that can lay claim to being the "authentic" or "original" version. The version that Sharp and Karpeles collected from Memory Shelton can be read online (see Sharp and Karpeles (1917), in References below), and the version by Pete Seeger that greatly popularized the song in modern times (see below) is also online.
Old Smoky is plausibly a high mountain somewhere in the southern Appalachians, since so many versions recorded by fieldworkers were collected there. Possibilities include Clingmans Dome, named "Smoky Dome" by local Scotch-Irish inhabitants, but exactly which mountain it is may be lost to antiquity.
Cecil Sharp collected Appalachian folk songs just before the time when that music came to be "discovered" by the outside world and sold as a commercial product by the nascent recording industry, a development which would ultimately create the modern genre of country music. The first to make a commercial recording of "On Top of Old Smoky" was George Reneau, "The Blind Musician of the Smoky Mountains", who worked as a busker in Knoxville, Tennessee, just west of the Appalachians. In 1925, Reneau made the trip to New York City to record the song, and others, for Vocalion (Vo 15366). His version of "On Top of Old Smoky" used the alternative tune noted above.
In the 1940s through the mid 1960s, the United States experienced a folk music revival, of which Pete Seeger was a leading figure. His music, some of it drawn from scholarly sources like Sharp, was popular, and was disseminated widely in commercial recordings. Seeger modified a version of "On Top of Old Smoky" that he had learned in the Appalachians, writing new words and banjo music. He said that he thought that "certain verses go back to Elizabethan times." The sheet music for the song credited Seeger for "new words and music arrangement".
The Weavers, a folk-singing group that Seeger had co-founded, recorded a very popular version of the song, using Seeger's arrangement, on 21 February 1951. It was released by Decca Records as catalog number 27515, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard chart and No. 1 on the Cash Box chart, and selling over a million copies.
The enormous popularity of those recordings (and others following in their wake - see below) led to the curious situation of the song re-attaining folk status. It is one of the few songs that most Americans know from childhood, and many are unaware of the mid-century recordings that promulgated it so widely.
A number of artists released their versions following the success of the Weavers' recording. A version by Percy Faith & His Orchestra with Burl Ives on vocals reached No. 10 on the Billboard chart in 1951. It became one of Burl Ives' signature songs. Vaughn Monroe & His Orchestra also had success with the song, reaching No. 8 on the chart in June 1951.
Following its reintroduction to America by the Weavers, the song became a standard item of popular music, sung by Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Gene Autry, as well as (in a brief excerpt) Elvis Presley.
The country music singer Kenny Rogers sometimes used the first part of "On Top of Old Smoky" as a joke in concert. He played the opening bars of "Lucille", one of his big hits, and told the crowd something along the lines of "None of you know what song this is". When the audience replied with "Yes, we do", Rogers then began to sing "On Top of Old Smoky."
A great many versions followed in the ensuing decades. The following list is ordered chronologically.
In 1951, Swedish revue group Flickery Flies with Brita Borg recorded a Swedish version. This was during a time of collaboration with showbiz impresario and songwriter Povel Ramel who in a revue paraphrased it as "Högt uppe på berget, jag har till en vän, förlorat en femma, jag lär nog aldrig se den utigen" (High up on the mountain, I have to a friend, lost a 5 kronor bill, I doubt I'll see it again).
Dave Van Ronk included the song on his album The Mayor of McDougal Street: Rarities 1957–1969. This version sounds much more Celtic in nature, with more vocal ornamentation and a looser rhythmic structure.
In The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis episode #3.13 "Blue-Tail Fly" (ca. 1961), Dobie, Zelda and Maynard use the tune and change the lyrics to "The Name's Dobie Gillis" to use as Dobie's campaign song for his student council election bid.
Harry Belafonte recorded a version on his 1962 album The Midnight Special. On the sleeves notes it states 'He wrote and tried out OLD SMOKEY during his 1961 summer tour'.
In Germany, the tune of the song was used as the chorus to singer Manuela's hit single "Ich geh' noch zur Schule" in 1963. The recording had nothing to do with the traditional heritage of the original song: "Ich geh' noch zur Schule" (meaning "I Still Go to School") tells the story of a teenage girl denying the tempting offers of a talent scout, claiming she wants to finish school first, but she might agree to a recording contract the following year after her final exams.
Little Eva, singer of "The Loco-Motion", recorded a version called "Old Smokey Locomotion" (1963), with lyrics describing how the residents of Old Smokey caught on to The Locomotion.
In 1964 during Beatlemania, Al Fisher & Lou Marks had "Paul George John and Ringo (All The Way to the Bank)" sung to the "Old Smoky" tune (Swan LP-514).
On the 1975 Sesame Street album Bert & Ernie Sing-Along, Grover sings a version of the song, but changes the lyrics to something about him losing his clothes, lunch, various other belongings, but eventually finds his way home and finds his mother with all the stuff he sang about losing.
In 1978, "On Top of Old Smokey" was released by Swedish pop group ABBA (with lead vocals by Frida) as part of a medley that also included "Pick a Bale of Cotton" and "Midnight Special". The medley featured as the B-side to the group's single "Summer Night City".
In a 1990 episode of the American television series Twin Peaks, "Big Ed" Hurley (Everett McGill) sings the song to his hospitalized wife Nadine (Wendy Robie).
Fans of the English football side Notts County FC have sung the song during games to the words "I had a wheelbarrow, the wheel fell off".
In 1991, Swedish comedy group(s) Galenskaparna och After Shave performed a variant in their "Grisen i Säcken" revue.
Alternative country band The Gourds gangstered the lyrics to "On Top of Old Smoky" in the song "I'm troubled" on their 1998 release Gogitchyershinebox.
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Old MacDonald Had a Farm (sometimes shortened toOld MacDonald) is a traditionalchildren's songandnursery rhymeabout afarmerand the variousanimalshe keeps. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. For example, if the verse uses a cow as the animal, then "moo" would be used as the animal's sound. In many versions, the song iscumulative, with the animal sounds from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse.
The song was probably written by Thomas d'Urfey for an opera in 1706, before existing as a folk song in Britain, Ireland and North America for hundreds of years in various forms then finally being standardised in the twentieth century.
The lyrics to the standard version begin as follows, with the animal sound changing with each verse:
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O! And on his farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O! With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there, Here a moo, there a moo, Everywhere a moo-moo, Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!
The earliest variant of the song is "In the Fields in Frost and Snow" from a 1706operacalledThe Kingdom of the BirdsorWonders of the Sunwritten by the English writer and composerThomas d'Urfey. This version begins:
In the Fields in Frost and Snows,
Watching late and early; There I keep my Father's Cows, There I Milk 'em Yearly: Booing here, Booing there, Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo, We defy all Care and Strife,
In a Charming Country-Life.
It is unknown whether this was the origin of the song, or if his version of the song was based on a traditional song already in existence. Like modern versions, the animals change from verse to verse and the rhythm is very similar, but it uses a different minor key melody.
D'Urfey's opera was largely unsuccessful, but the song was recycled, being expanded and printed in d'Urfey's own Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 2 (1719) and appearing in several operas throughout the eighteenth century such as John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch's Polly (1729). It also appeared on song sheets for decades, so it was presumably popular among ordinary English people in the eighteenth century whether it originated from the opera or not.
Several versions were collected in England in around the turn of the twentieth century by folklorists, such as one called "The Farmyard Song" taken from a John Lloyd of Manchester in the 1880s by Anne Gilchrist, and another called "Father's Wood I O" collected in 1906 in Scotter, Lincolnshire by Percy Grainger; both of the original transcriptions of these versions are available via the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website.
The famous folk song collector Cecil Sharp collected a version called "The Farmyard" in 1908 from a 74-year-old named Mrs. Goodey at Marylebone Workhouse, London; and the lyrics began with the following verse:
Up was I on my father's farm
On a May day morning early; Feeding of my father's cows On a May day morning early, With a moo moo here and a moo moo there, Here a moo, there a moo, Here a pretty moo. Six pretty maids come and gang a-long o' me To the merry green fields of the farm-yard.
Frederick Thomas Nettleingham's 1917 book Tommy's Tunes, a collection of World War I era songs, includes a variant of the song called "Ohio" which lists nine species: horses (neigh-neigh), dogs (bow-wow/woof woof/ruff ruff), chickens(hen=cluck cluck/chicks=chick chick), ducks (quack quack), goose (Honk Honk), cows (moo moo), pigs (grunt grunt), cats (meow meow), sheep/goat (baa baa) and a donkey/mule (hee-haw). The farmer is called "Old Macdougal", unlike in most other traditional versions where the farmer is unnamed.
Old Macdougal had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had some dogs, E-I-E-I-O With a bow-wow here, and a bow-wow there, Here a bow, there a bow, everywhere a bow-wow.
The song seems to have been particularly popular in theOzarkregion of theUnited Statesbefore being standardised. A version was published inVance Randolph'sOzark Folksongs(1980) called "Old Missouri", sung by a Mr. H. F. Walker ofMissouriin 1922. This version names different parts of themulerather than different animals:
Old Missouri had a mule, he-hi-he-hi-ho,
And on this mule there were two ears, he-hi-he-hi-ho. With a flip-flop here and a flip-flop there, And here a flop and there a flop and everywhere a flip-flop
Old Missouri had a mule, he-hi-he-hi-ho.
Several traditional Ozark versions which differ significantly from the standard version were recorded in the 1950s and 60s by different collectors; these recordings are available on the University of Arkansas online digital collection.
The oldest version listed in The Traditional Ballad Index, is the Sam Patterson Trio's "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," released on the Edison label in 1925, followed by a version recorded by Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers in 1927. These recordings may be the first known versions to use the now standard tune, and the first to name the farmer "Old MacDonald". It is unknown what the traditional source of these iconic elements was, but the American versions seem most similar, with their E-I-E-I-O refrains and "old" farmers mentioned in the first line.
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Lyrics:
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a pig, E-I-E-I-O With a oink-oink here and a oink-oink there Here a oink, there a oink, everywhere a oink-oink
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a duck, E-I-E-I-O With a quack-quack here and a quack-quack there Here a quack, there a quack, everywhere a quack-quack Oink-oink here and a oink-oink there Here a oink, there a oink, everywhere a oink-oink Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo Quack-quack here and a quack-quack there Here a quack, there a quack, everywhere a quack-quack Oink-oink here and a oink-oink there Here a oink, there a oink, everywhere a oink-oink Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a mouse, E-I-E-I-O With a squeak-squeak here and a squeak-squeak there Here a squeak, there a squeak, everywhere a squeak-squeak Moo-moo here and a moo-moo there Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo Quack-quack here and a quack-quack there Here a quack, there a quack, everywhere a quack-quack Oink-oink here and a oink-oink there Here a oink, there a oink, everywhere a oink-oink Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
"Old Folks at Home" was commissioned in 1851 by E. P. Christy for use by Christy's Minstrels, his minstrel troupe. Christy also asked to be credited as the song's creator, and was so credited on early sheet music printings. As a result, while the song was a success, Foster did not directly profit much from it, though he continued to receive royalties for the song.
Foster had composed most of the lyrics but was struggling to name the river of the opening line, and asked his brother, Morrison, to suggest one. Morrison wrote, “One day in 1851, Stephen came into my office, on the bank of the Monongahela, Pittsburgh, and said to me, ‘What is a good name of two syllables for a Southern river? I want to use it in this new song of Old Folks at Home.’ I asked him how Yazoo would do. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘that has been used before.’ I then suggested Pedee. ‘Oh, pshaw,’ he replied ‘I won’t have that.’ I then took down an atlas from the top of my desk and opened the map of the United States. We both looked over it and my finger stopped at the ‘Swanee,’ a little river in Florida emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. ‘That’s it, that’s it exactly,’ exclaimed he delighted, as he wrote the name down; and the song was finished, commencing, ‘Way Down Upon de Swanee Ribber.’ He left the office, as was his custom, abruptly, without saying another word, and I resumed my work.” Foster himself never saw the Suwannee, or even visited Florida, but nevertheless Florida made "Old Folks At Home" its state song in 1935, replacing "Florida, My Florida". Despite the song's popularity during the era, few people outside of Florida actually knew where the Suwannee River was, or that it was even a real place.
Written in the first person from the perspective and in the dialect of an African slave (at a time when slavery was legal in 15 of the states of the US), the song's narrator states "longing for de old plantation", which has been criticized as romanticizing slavery. On the other hand, a longing for the "old folks at home" has sometimes been interpreted, for example, by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), as a longing for the people and traditions of Africa, where most of the human beings enslaved in the New World had been free before they were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in the Atlantic slave trade. The word, "darkies", used in Foster's lyrics, has been amended; for example, "brothers" was sung in place of "darkies" at the dedication of the new Florida state capitol building in 1978. In general, at public performances another word like "lordy", "mama", "darling", "brothers", "children", or "dear ones" is typically substituted.
In practice, the pronunciation, as written in dialect, has long been disregarded in favor of the corresponding standard American English usage, as demonstrated by the song's performances at the 1955 Florida Folk Festival.
As the official state song of Florida, "Old Folks at Home" has traditionally been sung as part of a Florida governor's inauguration ceremony. However, over time, the lyrics were progressively altered to be less offensive; as Diane Roberts observed:
Florida got enlightened in 1978; we substituted "brothers" for "darkies". There were subsequent revisions. At Jeb Bush's second inauguration as governor in 2003, a young black woman gave a moving, nondialect rendition of "Old Folks at Home", except "still longing for the old plantation" came out "still longing for my old connection". Perhaps someone confused Stephen Foster's lyrics with a cell phone commercial.
In his 2007 inauguration ceremony, Charlie Crist decided not to include the state song, but rather to use in its place, "The Florida Song", a composition written by a black Floridian jazz musician, Charles Atkins. Crist then encouraged state Senator Tony Hill, who was the leader of the legislature's Black Caucus, to find a new song. Hill joined forces with state Representative Ed Homan and the Florida Music Education Association to sponsor a contest for a new state song.
On January 11, 2008, the song "Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)" was selected as the winner. The Florida Legislature considered the issue and ultimately adopted it as the state anthem while retaining "Old Folks at Home" as the state song, replacing its original lyrics with a revised version approved by scholars at the Stephen Foster Memorial. Governor Crist stated that he was not pleased by the "two songs" decision; but he signed the bill, creating a new state anthem and establishing the reworded version of the state song by statute, rather than by resolution like the 1935 decision.
Original lyrics by Stephen Foster, 1851
State Song of Florida as revised in 2008
Way down upon de Swanee ribber, Far, far away, Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber, Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation Sadly I roam, Still longing for de old plantation, And for de old folks at home.
Chorus All de world am sad and dreary, Ebry where I roam; Oh! darkeys, how my heart grows weary, Far from de old folks at home!
2nd verse All round de little farm I wandered When I was young, Den many happy days I squandered, Many de songs I sung. When I was playing wid my brudder Happy was I; Oh! take me to my kind old mudder, Dere let me live and die.
3rd Verse One little hut among de bushes, One dat I love Still sadly to my memory rushes, No matter where I rove. When will I see de bees a-humming All round de comb? When will I hear de banjo strumming, Down in my good old home?
Way down upon the Suwannee River, Far, far away, There's where my heart is turning ever, There's where the old folks stay.
All up and down the whole creation, Sadly I roam, Still longing for my childhood station, And for the old folks at home.
Chorus All the world is sad and dreary Everywhere I roam. O dear ones, how my heart grows weary, Far from the old folks at home.
2nd verse All ‘round the little farm I wander’d, When I was young; Then many happy days I squander’d, Many the songs I sung. When I was playing with my brother, Happy was I. Oh, take me to my kind old mother, There let me live and die.
3rd Verse One little hut among the bushes, One that I love. Still sadly to my memory rushes, No matter where I rove. When will I see the bees a humming, All ‘round the comb? When shall I hear the banjo strumming, Down in my good old home.
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