"Cindy" or "Cindy, Cindy" (Roud 836) is a popular American folk song. According to John Lomax, the song originated in North Carolina.[ citation needed ] In the early and middle 20th century, "Cindy" was included in the songbooks used in many elementary school music programs as an example of folk music. One of the earliest versions of "Cindy" is found in Anne Virginia Culbertson's collection of Negro folktales (At the Big House, where Aunt Nancy and Aunt 'Phrony Held Forth on the Animal Folks, Bobbs-Merrill, 1904) where one of her characters, Tim, "sang a plantation song named 'Cindy Ann'," the first verse and refrain of which are:
I'se gwine down ter Richmond
I'll tell you w'a hit's for:
I'se gwine down ter Richmond
Fer ter try an' end dis war
An'-a you good-by, Cindy, Cindy
Good-by, Cindy Ann
An'-a you good-by, Cindy, Cindy
I'se gwine ter Rappahan [1]
As with many folk songs, each singer was free to add verses, and many did. In addition, as Byron Arnold and Bob Halli noted in An Alabama Songbook, performers could swap verses with those of other songs, including "Old Joe Clark" and "Boil Them Cabbage Down". [2]
The tune is taken from the spiritual "The Gospel Train", also known as "Get on Board Little Children".
Buddy Kaye, Benjamin Weisman, Dolores Fuller and Fred Wise wrote a version of "Cindy" called "Cindy, Cindy". This version is the familiar one recorded by such performers as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Ricky Nelson, Warren Zevon, Nick Cave (in a duet with Johnny Cash), and others. Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album 101 Gang Songs (1961). Mack Wilberg's choral arrangement of the piece was written for four-hand piano, double eight-part choirs, a string bass, xylophone, and a score of quintessential Americana instruments to supplement the melody during the arrangement's hoedown section. This arrangement is available for any choir to learn and perform, although Wilberg also wrote a special arrangement to be performed by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. The choral parts are the same, but the accompaniment has been rewritten for full orchestra (specifically the Orchestra at Temple Square). Robert Plant featured an arrangement titled "Cindy, I'll Marry You Someday" on his 2010 album Band of Joy .
Modern versions of the song include modified lyrics, such as the following:
Van Johnson sings part of it in the 1956 movie Miracle in the Rain. [3]
The song is performed in the 1957 episode of Maverick , "Hostage" by Don Durant. [4]
The song is performed in the 1959 John Wayne movie Rio Bravo , [5] by Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan.
Andy Griffith sings this song in season 3 episode 10 "Opie's Rival" of The Andy Griffith Show (1962).
On the Lawrence Welk Show episode "My Blue Heaven" (1964), Dick Dale and the Lennon Sisters perform this song.
Mountain dancer D. Ray White made his first major appearance on a PBS special titled Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance - Flatfoot, Buck and Tap wherein he performed to the accompaniment of a banjo rendition of the song by Paul Ray "Dunk" Farris.
"On Ilkla Mooar Baht 'at" is a folk song from Yorkshire, England. It is sung in the Yorkshire dialect, and is considered the official anthem of Yorkshire. It is sung to the hymn tune "Cranbrook", composed by Thomas Clark in 1805; while according to Andrew Gant, the words were composed by members of Halifax Church Choir "some 50 years after Clark wrote his melody", on an outing to Ilkley Moor near Ilkley, West Yorkshire. It is classified as numbers 2143 and 19808 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
"Simple Gifts" is a Shaker song written and composed in 1848, generally attributed to Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village. It became widely known when Aaron Copland used its melody for the score of Martha Graham's ballet, Appalachian Spring, premiered in 1944.
Gaudete is a sacred Christmas carol, thought to have been composed in the 16th century. It was published in Piae Cantiones, a collection of Finnish/Swedish sacred songs published in 1582. No music is given for the verses, but the standard tune comes from older liturgical books.*
"The Water Is Wide" is a folk song of British origin. It remains popular in the 21st century. Cecil Sharp published the song in Folk Songs From Somerset (1906).
"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is an English Christmas carol, listed as numbers 230 and 9681 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The famous version of the carol is from the English West Country.
"O Little Town of Bethlehem" is a Christmas carol. Based on an 1868 text written by Phillips Brooks, the carol is popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but to different tunes: in the United States, to "St. Louis" by Brooks' collaborator, Lewis Redner; and in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland to "Forest Green", a tune collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams and first published in the 1906 English Hymnal.
"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" is a traditional spiritual first noted during the American Civil War at St. Helena Island, one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. The best-known recording was released in 1960 by the U.S. folk band The Highwaymen; that version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single.
"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is a Christian hymn written by the pastor and hymnodist Robert Robinson, who penned the words in the year 1758 at the age of 22.
"Skip to My (The) Lou" is a popular American folk song and partner-stealing dance from the 1840s.
"Bethlehem Down" is a Christmas carol for SATB choir composed in 1927 by British composer Peter Warlock (1894–1930)—the pseudonym of Philip Arnold Heseltine. It is set to a poem written by journalist and poet Bruce Blunt (1899–1957). Warlock and Blunt wrote the carol to finance an "immortal carouse" over Christmas in 1927. The pair submitted the carol to The Daily Telegraph's annual Christmas carol contest and won. It is characterised by modal harmony with chromatic inflections. The musicologist Barry Smith described "Bethlehem Down" as the finest of all of Warlock's choral music.
"In dulci jubilo" is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J. M. Neale's arrangement "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" have increased its popularity, and Robert Pearsall's 1837 macaronic translation is a mainstay of the Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols repertoire. J. S. Bach's chorale prelude based on the tune is also a traditional postlude for Christmas services.
Ukrainian folk music includes a number of varieties of traditional, folkloric, folk-inspired popular music, and folk-inspired European classical music traditions.
The choirs at Brigham Young University (BYU) consist of four auditioned groups: BYU Singers, BYU Concert Choir, BYU Men's Chorus, and BYU Women's Chorus. Each choir is highly accomplished and performs from an extensive repertoire. Together, the choirs have recorded and released over 30 albums. The choirs perform frequently throughout the academic year, both as individual ensembles as well as a combined group.
The Wexford Carol or the Enniscorthy Carol is a traditional religious Irish Christmas carol originating from Enniscorthy in County Wexford. The subject of the song is the nativity of Jesus Christ.
"Personent hodie" is a Christmas carol originally published in the 1582 Finnish song book Piae Cantiones, a volume of 74 Medieval songs with Latin texts collected by Jacobus Finno, a Swedish Lutheran cleric, and published by T.P. Rutha. The song book had its origins in the libraries of cathedral song schools, whose repertory had strong links with medieval Prague, where clerical students from Finland and Sweden had studied for generations. A melody found in a 1360 manuscript from the nearby Bavarian city of Moosburg in Germany is highly similar, and it is from this manuscript that the song is usually dated.
"Boil Them Cabbage Down" is an American folk song. Hoecakes are small cornmeal cakes that were baked over a fire on the blade of a hoe. A breakfast of hoecakes and cabbage soup testifies to the humble origins of this song. According to Alan Lomax, musicologist and folklorist formerly of the Library of Congress, this tune was originally associated with African slaves brought from Niger.
"Big Steamers" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1911 as one of his twenty-three poems written specially for C. R. L. Fletcher's "A School History of England". It appears in the last chapter of the book. It is intended for children, with the verses responding with facts and humour to their curiosity about the 'big steamers' - as the merchant ships are called.
"Blow the Wind Southerly" is a traditional English folk song from Northumbria. It tells of a woman desperately hoping for a southerly wind to blow her lover back home over the sea to her. It is Roud number 2619.
"À la claire fontaine" is a traditional French song, which has also become very popular in Belgium and in Canada, particularly in Quebec and the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.
The Byron Arnold collection is an archival collection of Alabama folksong recordings and transcriptions, held at the University of Alabama. The collection was used to publish a 1950 book, Folksongs of Alabama, and later reused for the 2004 Alabama songbook. Several albums have also been published from the collection.