Carolyne and Dick Farina:
Four For Fun
Waverly Records (ELP 113) 1963
Released in Scotland.
Songs:
Deep Blue Sea - 3:16
Banks O'Sicily - 2:25
Salty Dog - 1:57
Chastity Belt - 4:49
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Rory and Alex McEwen and Carolyne and Dick Farina: Four For Fun Waverly Records (ELP 113) 1963 Released in Scotland.
Songs: |
Rory (right) and Alex (left) McEwen were a popular Scottish folk duo in the sixties. They are briefly discussed in Hajdu's book. Hajdu doesn't mention an EP; he only states that the quartet recorded four songs in a London studio (p. 129), though other sources say this EP was recorded in Scotland. Neither Fariņa nor Hester seem to have mentioned this recording again. Despite Fariņa's penchant for self-promotion, he was apparently content to let this one slip into oblivion.
Here are the notes on the back of the EP:
Four songs, four singers, three men and a girl. It was the Edinburgh Festival of 1962 that brought Rory and Alex McEwen, two of the most popular folk singers in Britain, into partnership with Carolyne and Dick Farina, a husband and wife team from America. The four songs they sing all come from their Festival show. Two are American, one is Scots, and the other, a new one, is naughty in any language. The soprano is Carolyne. The harmonica is Dick. And Rory and Alex the guitars.
Some further info on the songs:
"Deep Blue Sea," with Carolyn on lead vocal, is an inconsequential folk ditty with three verses:
It was Willie what got drownded"Banks O' Sicily" was a song by Hamish Henderson, originally titled "The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily." This in turn was based on the tune of "Farewell to the Creeks," composed by Pipe-Major James Robertson of Banff, Scotland. Hamish's "Banks O' Sicily" is in Scots English and is difficult to understand even with printed lyrics. Fariņa did keep a species of the song in his repertoire, combining it with Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" to form a song he called "Hamish." It has recently been speculated that Bob Dylan also may have borrowed the melody for one of his songs, "The Times, They Are A-Changin'".
In the deep blue sea.Dig his grave with a silver spade
In the deep blue sea.Lower him down with a golden chain
In the deep blue sea.
"Salty Dog" is the only song where I can actually detect Fariņa. That's definitely him saying "Take it away" to introduce a guitar solo, and he sings the following verses after the solo:
Down in the welldrip, sittin' on a log
Finger on the trigger and an eye on the hog
Honey let me be your salty dog.Pullin' the trigger and the gun let go
Shot landed over in-a Mexico
Honey let me be your salty dog.
"Chastity Belt" is an imitation Elizabethan ballad. Originally titled "Sir Oswald Sodde," it was written for a South African musical revue, Wait a Minim. The lyrics can be found at http://users.bestweb.net/~foosie/minim2.htm. It's a silly song about a woman locked up in a chastity belt. Her husband goes off to war, taking the key to her chastity belt. She tries to get a locksmith to remove the belt, but it baffles his skills. Finally, the husband returns from war, but confesses that the key fell overboard into the Strait of Gibraltar. All parties consider the case hopeless until a page boy presents a duplicate key. Richard and Mimi resurrected this song a few years later for a performance they gave with Barry Tashian of The Remains, when they were interviewed on MIT radio station WTBS.
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Four For Fun was part of a series of EPs that Rory and
Alex McEwen recorded.
Shown at left is one of their their earlier LPs, Scottish Songs and Ballads
(1957). Rory was later a regular guest on the British chat show,
Tonight. He died in 1982 by falling onto subway tracks.
Alex currently lives in Ayrshire, Scotland.
--Douglas Cooke |
Many thanks to Ian Woodward and Thomas McKean for supplying information and materials for this page.