guitars Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

My sister MARCIA found this and put it on Facebook:

It’s a promo sheet my father created for himself as a “singer of folk songs,” never as a “folk singer,” which was too limiting a term for him.

I’m particularly interested in the setlist, I’m guessing from the late 1950s. Some of the songs he was still singing a decade later, when my father, sister Leslie, and I sang together, while there are others (Twenty Souls) I don’t even recognize. I’m always fascinated to hear other people sing the songs he, or we, performed, such as Cindy (Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer), Sinnerman (some early incarnation of Three Dog Night), and Hole in the Bucket, which Leslie and I stole from Dad (Harry Belafonte).

I must say we were pretty darned good, but Dad had a natural excellence, not just in singing, but in introducing the songs, that was very appealing to audiences. From an interview from February 23, 1970, Binghamton Press: “I’ll never sing a folk song publicly without explaining the reason behind the song, whether it relates to history or folklore. And I also have to explain my feelings to an audience… [so that they can] understand the emotions behind a song.”

GreenFamilySingers2 (3) — **Leslie Green, Roger Green, Les Green**

If memory serves – it often doesn’t – I started singing one or two songs with Dad on stage, definitely including the Car Song (“Daddy, won’t you take me for a ride in the car?”)

During the summer of 1966 or, more likely, 1967, the family, Dad noted, was “camping at one of the local sites. In the evening, we were sitting around the campfire and I brought out my guitar and Leslie hers. We started strumming and singing and harmonizing. Before we knew it, other families who were camping nearby wandered over. And before we knew it, everyone was joining in. The owners of the camping site booked us for the next summer.”

The story noted that Leslie and I had brought in some of the recent folk-rock songs into the repertoire. It also said that, during the interview, while Dad strummed his guitar, I pulled out a comb and a piece of paper and “began playing a blues melody,” with Leslie playing bongos.

As Dad explained: “We all have a knack for singing, and we do relatively little rehearsing… We’ve even sung songs spontaneously and they come out as if they’ve been practiced. And every time we do a song, we do it differently.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

The item pictured above used to be called a guitar. Then this item-

-came along. And now the first item is now called an acoustic guitar, to differentiate it from the second item, an electric guitar.

This used to be known as a clock

–

– until this –

– came along. Now an analog clock describes a clock with an actual face, compared with a digital clock.

There’s a whole bunch of these, called retronyms, a term the late New York Times wordsmith William Safire believed had been around for 30 years, but in the dictionaries for far less time. Here is a list of retronyms.

This used to be known as a stewardess, but now is a flight attendant.

This used to be known as a fireman, but is now a firefighter.

The language has become more gender-neutral.

Perhaps, the greatest area of change involves place names. A lot of this took place in Africa in my lifetime, where locations that used to be colonies are now independent countries. Also, in the Western Hemisphere, British Honduras became Belize, British Guiana became Guyana and Dutch Guiana became Suriname.

Sometimes the local politics or internal struggles affect the nomenclature. Ceylon is now Sri Lanka, e.g. and the Democratic Republic of the Congo used to be Zaire. Cambodia has had a couple of other names.

Some formerly divided countries re-merged, such as Germany and Vietnam. In Africa, Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined to create Tanzania. Conversely, other countries broke into two or more parts. Bangladesh was once East Pakistan. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and especially the Soviet Union are no more. Egypt and Syria merged to form the United Arab Republic in 1958 but got a divorce in 1961. Here is a list of some countries that have had name changes.

One of the name changes I remember most, though, was a city; Peking became Beijing, explained here; likewise, a description of the change from Bombay to Mumbai, something I admit I occasionally forget. Of course, St. Petersburg, Russia has been Petrograd and Leningrad.

Three of the four schools I’ve attended in my life have changed names. Binghamton Central High School merged with Binghamton North to become Binghamton High School in 1982. Both my State University of New York undergrad school, New Paltz, and my grad school, Albany, have undergone a number of name changes; the former in 1828 as the New Paltz Classic Academy, and the latter as the New York State Normal School in 1844. My first school, Daniel S. Dickinson, has long ago been razed.

Finally, THE song of a name change, first a hit by The Four Lads, way back in 1953. Listen to Istanbul (not Constantinople) by They Might Be Giants.

Feel free to share your favorite name changes.