Monday, February 29, 2016

"All Bound for Morningtown Many Miles Away"

Mark Steyn, who apparently is still in Australia, has a lovely piece about "Morningtown Ride." It was a song I grew up with--my late Dad was a huge fan of The Limeliters, the "now-obscure folk group" (as Steyn calls them) that first recorded the Malvina Reynolds-penned tune. (Steyn, with some justification, sees them as a model for the Folksmen in/of the film A Mighty Wind. However, I remember their being downright saucy for a folk group: would the almost unbearably earnest Folksmen ever have recorded, for example, "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear"?)

When my son was little (he's off to university in the fall) I used to channel my inner 'liter and sing him "Morningtown Ride" while a-strummin' and a-pluckin' my guitar; "Lollipop Tree," another number on the Limeliters' live (and delightfully un-PC) album Through Children's Eyes, was also in my repertoire back then.

Ah, memories.

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