Publications of the Bush Music Club - Part 2

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Publications of the Bush Music Club 1950s to date - Part 1 

Scanned from an undated, not previously known 20 page booklet owned by Dale Dengate 

Reprinted from Singabout Songster Number 1, May 1968 see contents list, publication no.  7 

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SINGABOUT SONGSTER  Reprinted from "Singabout Songster No. 1"  (annotated & corrected) 

1.  CLICK GO THE SHEARS - corrections, and annotation -
Undoubtedly Australia's most famous shearing song

2. BOTANY BAY  - correction 

3. DROVERS DREAM  - correction

4.  WILD COLONIAL BOY  - tune added

5. NINE MILES FROM GUNDAGAI 

6. OVERLANDER 

7.  BLACK VELVET BAND 

8. DYING STOCKMAN 

9. OLD BULLOCK DRAY

9.  DINKY DI - annotated - 
The 1st AIF's contribution to folklore

10.  MAGGIE MAGGIE MAY - annotated-
Chorus 

11. OLD BARK HUT - first 9 verses 

12. OLD BARK HUT (cont) + CHARLIE MOPPS -
annotated - Adopted as "Australian" as recently
as 1956, this song was originally English. 

13. CATALPA  - annotated - A ballad telling the true story
of the rescue by American sympathisers
of 6 Fenian prisoners in WA penal colony. 

 

14. DENNIS O'REILLY - annotated  - In true
street ballad style this song tells a story of Irish Immigration

15.  RIBUCK SHEARER 

16. WIDGEEOWERA JOE 

17.  JOG ALONG TILL SHEARING 

18. WILD ROVER 

19. LAZY HARRY'S 

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From the Archives - Reprints from SING OUT! Volumes 1 - 10, 1962-1967

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SING OUT! was one of America's earliest folk music magazines and the Bush Music Club was promoting subscriptions in Singabout 1(3)  Winter 1956.

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  Alphabetical song index for Sing Out! magazine - Vols 1 - 55  

All of these songs appeared in Sing Out! as complete lead sheets, with music, guitar chords and lyrics. Each song title is followed by the issue number in which the song appeared, the page number of that issue, and, if available in our database, the composer(s) and copyright info for the song

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Introduction to Volume 1 -

The songs in this collection originally appeared in the pages of  SING OUT! the National Folk Song Magazine. The first issue of SING OUT! appeared in 1950 and, since that time, more than 1000 songs have been printed in the magazine.

Compiled and selected by the editorial staff of SING OUT! 

Editor - Irwin Silber
Associate Editors  - Pete Seeger, Gerry Silverman, Ethel Raim

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Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Volume 5 

Volume 6

Volume 7 

Volume 8 

Volume 9 

Volume 10

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From the Library - New City Songster - 6 issues from the 70s - Songsters in BMC Library - part 2

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Second article on Songsters in the Bush Music Club Reference Library 

Songsters in the Bush Music Club Library - Part 1 

Contents list from Songsters in our Library - Part 3 - Australian Boy Scouts Songsters  The Contents lists of these books were OCR scanned & posted on the Mudcat Cafe site  - Scout Songbooks Index Perma Thread  - see post by Joe Offer Date: 25 Nov 19 - 05:16 PM

      

 our holdings - Volumes 1, 2, 4&5, 7, 8 & 10

New City Songster - About  NEW CITY SONGSTER represents a huge input of work, spread over 17 years. This was-almost half the period that the magazine’s compiler, Peggy Seeger was with her co-singer/songwriter and then partner, Ewan MacColl. Both contributed some of their finest song compositions to the magazine. Their mobility around UK, USA, as well as their two Australia tours, placed them in venues where they would hear and collect new songs. Contributors to New City Songster included established songwriters, members of The Critics Group, and up and coming folk singers such as Eric Bogle, who went on to be internationally known for his song compositions.

Peggy Seeger is ideally qualified for the roles of contemporary song collector and compiler. Approachable at folk venues, she was also able and willing to transcribe and notate compositions submitted on audio-cassette. Compiling songbooks was a discipline which she had learned through involvement in her mother’s projects. Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) was a classical composer and concert pianist. By the 1930s, she was also a folk specialist. She compiled several songbooks including Nineteen American Folk Songs for Piano (1936-1938), American Folk Songs for Children (1948), Animal Folk Songs for Children (1950) and American Folk Songs for Christmas (1953).

What makes NEW CITY SONGSTER unique? Peggy Seeger’s collection of contemporary folk songs differs from Ruth Crawford Seeger’s song compilations in that most of the content is overtly political. Collected between 1968 to 1985, NEW CITY SONGSTER is born out of three closely related folk revivals which extended their coverage to non-traditional contemporary music: i.e. the issues of the day. 

A leading figure in both the post 1940 American folk music revival and the British folk revival, which followed in the 1950s, was folklorist and field collector Alan Lomax. Lomax moved from America to Britain in 1950 during Senator Joseph McCarthy purge of researchers, artists, educators and union activists associated with the political left. It was through the pioneering interests of Alan Lomax that Ewan MacColl was introduced to A.L.Lloyd in 1950 and to Peggy Seeger in 1956. From 1950, MacColl and Lloyd became heavily involved in Topic Records, which started in 1939 as an offshoot of the Workers’ Musical Association . From 1956, MacColl and Seeger were to embark on a partnership which would promote both traditional folk compositions and contemporary songs of love, politics or a blend of the two.

An Australian folk revival was also underway from about 1960 when trade unions, aware of their US and UK counterparts’ contribution to culture through sponsorship of the creative arts, encouraged new compositions through song competitions. Invited by Warren Fahey (founder of Folkways Music and Larrikin Records) and sponsored by the Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union (AMWU), Ewan and Peggy toured Australia in 1976 and 1979.  (Our library also holds a Double Cassette of an undated concert at the Thomas Mann Theatre 

Mapping world concerns and social change from 1968 to 1985, NEW CITY SONGSTER provides rich pickings for those interested in political and social history and cries out for a SUBJECT INDEX. The subjects of the songs reveal the very essence of the US, UK and Australian folk song revivals, in which political motivation is integral. The 399 contemporary folk songs are ‘a touch on the times’ for people who were there (many now pensioners!) as well as those who were absent or too young. NEW CITY SONGSTER offers timeless themes and templates for modern day satirists and new songwriters

1. Cover of Volume 1, originally published in 1968, reprinted 1974

2. Editorial, Volume 1 & Ewan MacColl's Ballad of the Big Cigars

3. cover, Volume 2

4. Introduction to Volume 2 

5. Cover & contents of Vol 4 & 5

6. Cover no. 7, January 1972

7. Editorial Volume 7

8. Cover vol. 8, Sept 72

9. Editorial Vol. 8

10.  Front & back covers Vol. 10, Sept 74 - The Singers Club

11. Editorial vol. 10

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