Ten Great Recordings of Danny Boy

Celebrating cultural highlights of 1913...
Danny-blogging, essay 2 of 2
on the song "Danny Boy"

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the song “Danny Boy,” here’s a tasty selection of “Danny Boy” recordings by some favorite artists.  Please understand:  This list is purely subjective as well as limited to songs that I can easily link to via YouTube.  I’m making no claims that these are “the best.”  I’m simply making a claim that:  I like them!

So here are ten versions of Danny Boy, presented in chronological order, with a bonus track at the end:

Judy Garland:  I prefer this 1940 version to the showier version that Garland did in 1955, also available on YouTube.  With “Danny Boy,” I tend to prefer the simpler versions, no frills needed.

Paul Robeson:  With a restrained piano accompaniment, Robeson’s sublime bass voice conveys great depths of meaning.  Proof that men don’t have to be tenors to do “Danny Boy” right!

Harry Belafonte:  Taking his time, Belafonte’s mellow timbre lingers in the air as the last note fades.  Performed at Carnegie Hall, it sounds more like he’s sharing the song privately one-on-one, perhaps comforting a loved one.

Mahalia Jackson:  Usually associated with gospel music, Jackson’s powerful voice searches each word for new shades of meaning.  In her hands, “Danny Boy” sounds like it was meant to be a gospel song.

The Pogues:  You don’t need to be pitch perfect to do a classic “Danny Boy.”  Shane  MacGowan sounds like he’s lived it and that’s what counts.

Frank Patterson:  Of all these versions, this one sounds “most right” to me—an Irish tenor pouring his heart out in song.  Pretty cool that it featured so memorably in Miller’s Crossing (1990), too!

Judy Collins:  Such a beautiful voice, singing a capella.  I love the absolute silence in the hall until the waves of applause at the end.

Johnny Cash:  This is from near the end of Cash’s life, when he was making every word count.

Sinead O’Connor:  I slightly prefer this live version to O’Connor’s recorded one.  On both, she includes a political last stanza that was inserted anonymously many years ago and has become something of a standard over time.

Celtic Woman:  When angels sing “Danny Boy”…

And the 11th bonus track...

Swedish Chef, Beaker, and Animal:  “Moving right along, here are three gifted singers who have all kissed the Blarney Stone…”  It’s the Leprechaun Brothers! 

Reference Sources

The Danny Boy Trivia Connection by Michael Robinson

The Legend and History of the Song Danny Boy

© 2013 Lee Price

Danny boy, oh, Danny boy

Celebrating cultural highlights of 1913...
Danny-blogging, essay 1 of 2
on the song "Danny Boy"

“Danny Boy” sounds timeless—like a song that’s been echoing through the glens and down the mountainsides for centuries—but it’s just 100 years old this year (2013).  In 1913, English lawyer and songwriter Fred Weatherley married his “Danny Boy” lyrics to the much-older melody of the Irish tune “Londonderry Air.”  Before he did that, there was no “Danny Boy.”

Back in 1913, there were just four Weatherley-penned verses:

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flow’rs are dying
’Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, and all the flowers are dying
If I am dead, as dead I well may be
I pray you'll find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me
And all my grave will warm and sweeter be
And then you’ll kneel and whisper that you love me
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

That’s it.  Nothing about the Irish Republican Army.  Nothing to indicate if the person singing the song is a lover or a father or a mother.  But 16 lines turns out to be all that’s needed to masterfully weave three huge (and hugely sentimental) themes together into a compact emotional powerhouse.

“Danny Boy” links three archetypal narratives or themes, letting them flow together without explanation (which allows for that ambiguity regarding whether the singer is male or female).  So even while no clear story emerges, we instantly recognize the mythic themes and all they imply.

A boy leaves home…  In the first verse, the music of the pipes call Danny away from his childhood home and those who love him there.  This taps into hundreds of folk stories, myths, and legends from all over the world.  The hero breaks the bonds of childhood and goes out into the world to become a man through a series of trials.  Inevitably, there’s a sense of loss that accompanies the compelling need to move on.  The pipes may call to war or to adventure or to opportunity—but the basic story remains the same.

The loved one will be loyal…  The “I” who sings the song is introduced at the conclusion of the first verse, “I must bide.”  The second verse naturally follows, introducing the theme of loyalty and steadfastness.  Even during a long absence, love will remain strong—through summer and winter, the days and the long nights.  A childhood sweetheart could promise to love like this; a mother or father could promise to love like this.

Love will triumph over death…  The strength of this love is stressed in the last line of the second verse (“oh, Danny boy, I love you so”) and this idea is amplified in the third and fourth verses.  The singer imagines that even their own death cannot change the loyalty and steadfastness of their love.  While there is no promise of heaven, there is a conviction that there will be some sort of reunion in an afterlife.  “I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.”

And here are a few more things that I love about “Danny Boy”:

“From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.”  Savor that Shakespearean iambic pentameter, using simple words that are so crisp and beautifully evocative.

“The flow’rs are dying…”  I love how this is repeated, with the flowers dying both when Danny boy leaves in the first verse and when he returns home to find death in the third verse.

“When the valley’s hushed and white with snow.”  This is another beautifully descriptive line, especially with that musical stress on “hushed” in the middle (for best effect, a short pause following “hushed”).

“Then you’ll kneel and whisper that you love me…”  The song swells to its romantic height, shameless in its sentimentality while holding true to its universal themes.  The musical arrangement calls for the singer to strain for an impossibly high note on “kneel,” and then conclude the line with an exhaled whisper.

That’s when the tears should start to flow.

Here’s the earliest known recorded version, as sung by opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink in 1917.  Enjoy!

“Danny Boy” sung by Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Reference Sources

The Danny Boy Trivia Connection by Michael Robinson

The Legend and History of the Song Danny Boy

© 2013 Lee Price

Casting Call for O Pioneers!

Celebrating cultural highlights of 1913...
Pioneer-blogging, essay 5 on
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

Here’s the set-up:  Interior of a small cabin on the Nebraska prairie.  Lying in his bed, John Bergson, the father of our heroine Alexandra Bergson, is dying.  A recent immigrant, John Bergson remains very Swedish.  His teenage daughter Alexandra stands by his bedside.  She has a will of iron.

Casting call!

Cork Ramer as John Bergson and Heather Graham as young Alexandra
in the 1992 Hallmark production of O Pioneers!

John Qualen in The Searchers.

As a classic film buff, I can’t help picturing this early scene in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! as a John Ford movie scene.  I see John Qualen as the dying father and Maureen O’Hara as Alexandra (yes, I know O’Hara is Irish but she’s got the right personality).   Alexandra’s two bone-headed brothers could grow up to be Ward Bond and Victor McLaglen.  And then I’ll round out the picture with Henry Fonda as Carl Linstrum, Natalie Wood as Marie, and Harry Carey Jr. as Emil.

Maureen O'Hara in
The Quiet Man.

Yeah, I realize there are problems galore with age and ethnicity in the above casting.  Not to mention John Ford’s inevitable problems with Willa Cather’s strong women dominating the weak men.  There’s no role for John Wayne in a Willa Cather story.  And what if Ford insisted on filming it in Monument Valley rather than Nebraska?  Truthfully, my real choice for a director from Hollywood’s golden age might be Jean Renoir, who proved his feel for landscape in movies like The Southerner (1946) and The River (1951).  And for my Renoir-directed O Pioneers!, I think I’ll take Ingrid Bergman as Alexandra.

Liv Ullmann in The Emigrants.

Jumping ahead thirty years to the 1970s, I see only one choice for Alexandra:  Liv Ullmann.  She would have been perfect.  For a supporting cast, how about Genevieve Bujold as Marie, Jeff Bridges as Emil, and Alan Arkin as Carl?  And for a 70s director, I propose Peter Bogdanovich, who showed a real flair for heartland dramas in his early days.  Seriously, imagine O Pioneers! with the feel for place that Bogdanovich brought to The Last Picture Show (1971) and the period details of Paper Moon (1973).

To date, there’s only been one film of O Pioneers! and that’s the Hallmark Production of 1992.  The casting was superb.  Jessica Lange had the right inner strength for Alexandra, David Strathairn handled the gentleness and humility of Carl with just the right amount of charm, and Anne Heche made a bewitching Marie, flirty and tantalizing.  The period details were exquisite and much wonderful dialogue was pulled straight from the book.  Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s the final word on the subject.  For me, it’s not the definitive O Pioneers!

I think there’s a better movie yet to be made.  Any ideas for casting?

Jessica Lange as Alexandra in the 1992
Hallmark production of O Pioneers!

Reference Sources

Willa Cather: A Literary Life by James Woodress

Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice by Sharon O'Brien
Willa Cather by Philip Gerber

Willa Cather: A Pictorial Memoir by Bernice Slote
O Pioneers!, the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition at the Willa Cather Archive

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

Young Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish in The
Mothering Heart (1913),
directed by D.W. Griffith.

1913-blogging
One hundred years ago...

Women figured out how to act in films before men.  First, Mary Pickford figured out how to underplay for effect under the direction of D.W. Griffith, quickly becoming the world’s first movie superstar.  Then, as Pickford moved toward independence, Griffith nurtured the careers of several talented young women, including Mae Marsh, Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, and Lillian’s sister Dorothy.  To varying degrees, these women all mastered film acting before the equivalent men in Griffith’s stock company.

Lillian Gish was a pioneer of film acting, blazing new paths in the wilderness.  She was smart, dedicated to her craft, blessed with innate talent, and pretty.

Only 18 years old when she signed on with the Biograph company in 1912, Lillian was everything that Griffith wanted for his Victorian melodramas.  In her second year with the company, she performed in at least 15 two-reelers (roughly 20-minute-long shorts).

Lillian Gish in The Battle at
Elderbush Gulch (1913), directed by
D.W. Griffith.

I’ve watched two of Lillian’s 1913 shorts, The Mothering Heart and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch.  She’s the star in The Mothering Heart but I prefer her as a supporting actress in The Battle at Elderbush Gulch, an ambitious three-reel western where Lillian plays a panic-stricken young mother attempting to find her baby in the middle of an Indian attack.  She completely inhabits the role even when she’s in the background of scenes.  She underplays her pantomime, expressively using her hands and eyes to reveal character.  When the plot calls for hysterics, she keeps it believable, ratcheting up the emotion while staying in character.

Please don’t take this as a recommendation for either The Mothering Heart or The Battle at Elderbush Gulch.  I find them fascinating documents of Lillian Gish’s growth as an actress, mastering an art that’s barely been imagined yet.  But the movies themselves haven’t aged well.  Both have scenes that showcase Griffith at his worst, with ugly racism toward Native Americans in Elderbush Gulch and cloying sentimentality in The Mothering Heart.

The promise of Lilian’s early performances was more than fulfilled during the following 15 years of her career.  You can see the roots of her masterful performances in movies like The Wind (1928), The Scarlet Letter (1926), and Way Down East (1920) back in these early shorts, when the art of film acting was blossoming for the first time.

© 2013 Lee Price

Willa Cather's Hobbit Hole

Celebrating cultural highlights of 1913...
Pioneer-blogging, essay 4 on

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything.  It should be of the hill.  Belonging to it.  Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.”

                      Frank Lloyd Wright

                      An Autobiography (1932)

Sod houses are looked down upon in Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers!  As Cather writes, “The Bergsons had a log house, for instance, only because Mrs. Bergson would not live in a sod house.”  (Note:  Mrs. Bergson is our heroine Alexandra’s mother.)

But sod houses aren’t all bad.  The very sympathetic character Ivar lives in a sod house, and it seems a perfectly appropriate place for his barefoot, mystical personality.  It’s just not the sort of place that’s wanted in the newly emerging domesticated landscape of plowed farmland and respectable farmhouses.

Ivar runs back to his sod house in
the Hallmark production of O Pioneers! (1992).

Early in the novel, Alexandra, her three brothers, and her friend Carl Linstrum travel out to see Ivar.  Alexandra points out Ivar’s property and sod house to her youngest brother Emil.

“At one end of the pond was an earthen dam, planted with green willow bushes, and above it a door and a single window were set into the hillside.  You would not have seen them at all but for the reflection of the sunlight upon the four panes of window-glass.  And that was all you saw.  Not a shed, not a corral, not a well, not even a path broken in the curly grass.  But for the piece of rusty stovepipe sticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roof of Ivar’s dwelling without dreaming that you were near a human habitation.  Ivan had lived for three years in the clay bank…”

I wonder if Frank Lloyd Wright would approve?  Ivar’s house is certainly “of the hill,” prairie-style!

My daughter at the entrance of a
reproduction sod house at the
Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in
Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

Reading the passage about Ivar’s house, I recalled our family’s Laura Ingalls Wilder vacation, when we spent two weeks touring the Midwest in search of the Little House sites.  In Walnut Grove, Minnesota, we visited the place that Wilder knew as Plum Creek.  Her fictionalized memories of her life in a sod house on Plum Creek are captured in the first third of On the Banks of Plum Creek (the third book in the Little House series).  She would have been seven or eight at the time.  In the book’s second chapter “The House in the Ground,” she recalls how her family adjusted to life in their new sod house:

“That front wall was built of sod.  Mr. Hanson had dug out his house, and then he had cut long strips of prairie sod and laid them on top of one another, to make the front wall.  It was a good, thick wall with not one crack in it.  No cold could get through that wall.

“Ma was pleased.  She said, ‘It’s small, but it’s clean and pleasant.’ ”

Except for the time when an ox put his rear leg through the roof, the Ingalls’ time in their sod house is fairly idyllic.  Nevertheless, they’re all happy when Pa begins building a log house for them.  It’s a step up.

But what’s wrong with the humble nature of a sod house, barely visible in a hill?  It’s good enough for Bilbo Baggins, after all!

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat:  it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

                                                                                      The Hobbit

                                                                                      by J.R.R. Tolkien

A wizard and hobbit travel past a traditional hobbit hole in
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring  (2001).

Reference Sources

Willa Cather: A Literary Life by James Woodress

Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice by Sharon O'Brien

Willa Cather: A Pictorial Memoir by Bernice Slote
O Pioneers!, the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition at the Willa Cather Archive

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

A Gun-Free Zone

Celebrating cultural highlights of 1913...
Pioneer-blogging, essay 3 on

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
SPOILERS AHEAD!

“You love God as much as the one you love the least.”

                    Father John Hugo

                    Weapons of the Spirit

Jessica Lange as Alexandra Bergson forgives her brother's murderer
in the 1992 Hallmark production of O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.

With my wife and daughter out for the night at a revival of Les Mis, I’m home alone thinking about forgiveness and redemption on the plains of Nebraska.

Just as the plot of Les Miserables pivots on an act of mercy, the final section of O Pioneers! hinges on an intentional act of deeply-felt forgiveness.  In Part V, Chapter II, our heroine Alexandra travels to the prison to see Frank Shabata, the man who murdered her brother Emil:

“Alexandra held out her hand. ‘Frank,’ she said, her eyes filling suddenly, ‘I hope you’ll let me be friendly with you.  I understand how you did it.  I don’t feel hard toward you…’ ”

Alexandra not only forgives Frank for the double murder of Emil and Maria (Frank’s wife) but pledges her continued efforts to get him pardoned.  “I’ll never give the Governor any peace,” she tells him.  “I know I can get you out of this place.”

As Frank is undeniably guilty of two murders and therefore serving a just sentence, this act of Alexandra’s is one of complete and unearned mercy.  It is a freely given gift.  In return, Alexandra’s own life is transformed.  While there’s no direct causal relation, the narrative clearly makes the link.  Since the murders, Alexandra has lost all sense of purpose, falling into a deep depression.  She forgives Frank, returns to her hotel, and receives a telegram that Carl Linstrum is returning to her.  She bursts into tears as her life recovers meaning.

Her act of mercy may save Frank’s life.  And it appears to save her own life, as well.

Leigh Lawson as Frank Shabata in O Pioneers! (1992).

Alexandra accepts Frank’s tortured description of the murder (a description which mirrors the more objective murder passage in Part III).  Frank blames the gun.  He says, “An’ I ain’t never hurt her (Maria).  I never would-a done dat, if I ain’t had dat gun along.  I don’ know what in hell make me take dat gun.  She always say I ain’t no man to carry gun…”

O Pioneers! is a deeply anti-gun book.  The book’s most sympathetic characters—Alexandra, Carl Linstrum, and Ivar—want nothing to do with guns.  In contrast, Alexandra’s unsympathetic brothers celebrate their guns, Alexandra’s brother Emil deeply offends Maria by shooting a bird for her, and Frank’s experience with a gun proves disastrous.  I think it’s pretty clear that Willa Cather stands with the mystical Ivar.  “No guns, no guns!” Ivar shouts in his first appearance in the book, threatening to send a wagon of visitors back if any of them are armed.  Ivar’s land is a gun-free zone.

Now I don’t believe in making real-life arguments from fiction.  I’m not going there.  I’m just simply pointing out that a hundred years ago, Willa Cather—a pure product of Virginia and Nebraska—eloquently expressed her belief that guns were at the root of much violence in this world.  She loved the pioneers and their wild prairie world, but not their guns.

An image of mercy:  Jessica Lange as Alexandra Bergson
in O Pioneers! (1992).

Reference Sources

Willa Cather: A Literary Life by James Woodress

Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice by Sharon O'Brien
Willa Cather by Philip Gerber

Willa Cather: A Pictorial Memoir by Bernice Slote
O Pioneers!, the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition at the Willa Cather Archive

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

© 2013 Lee Price

The Centennial of N.C. Wyeth's Kidnapped

Celebrating cultural highlights
of 1913...
Wyeth-blogging, essay 1 on
N.C. Wyeth's Illustrations 
for Kidnapped

Dustjacket cover of Kidnapped by Robert Louis
Stevenson, a Scribner Illustrated Classic published
in 1913 with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his classic adventure novel Kidnapped in 1886, so the text technically falls outside of my current 1913 focus.  Nevertheless, I’m hoping to take this occasion to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a very special book, the 1913 Charles Scribner’s Sons “Juvenile Classics” edition of Kidnapped for which the publisher commissioned illustrations by Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth.

Wyeth was still young, just 30 years old, when his illustrated Kidnapped was published, but he already commanded a formidable reputation as one of the country’s most talented illustrators.  Scribner’s was a top national publisher and they were intentionally striving toward an unusually high standard for book illustration.  While still a student of the renowned illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911), Wyeth began selling pictures and taking commissions from Scribners, quickly establishing himself as the go-to artist for scenes of history and adventure.

Kidnapped was Wyeth’s follow-up to Treasure Island, a breakthrough masterpiece of adventure illustration.  A huge bestseller for Scribners, Treasure Island set a standard that even Wyeth knew would be hard to equal, much less surpass.  Scribners suggested doing Kidnapped next, and Wyeth weighed his options.  He was feeling ambitious.  “I want you to know,” he wrote the publisher, “that I have the greatest hopes, and unless I outclass Treasure Island I want you to cancel the entire scheme.”

Looking back on these highlights of a golden age of illustration, who really cares anymore if the illustrations for Kidnapped are better than Treasure Island?  Wyeth hurled himself into reimagining the adventure plots with an almost inhuman vigor and artistry, creating images that define and enlarge—even mythologize—the texts.  Considered as objects, these books are among the finest ever published because of the near perfect meshing of prose and illustration.  With the Scribners’ editions of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, the boys’ novel became art.

Title page of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson,
a Scribner Illustrated Classic published
in 1913 with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

Reference Sources

N. C. Wyeth: A Biography by David Michaelis

N.C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr.
The Brandywine Tradition by Henry C. Pitz
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art

Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life by Richard Meryman

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

My low-resolution copies of the N.C. Wyeth book illustrations are via the beautiful high-resolution scans at The Golden Age, one of my favorite art blogs on the internet.

© 2013 Lee Price