Vietnam Songbook Compiled and edited by Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber Guardian / Monthly Review Press, 1969.

This songbook includes an unreleased Fariņa song, "A Sailor's Song." Like many of Fariņa's songs, this one is credited as having new words to traditional music. The song is set to the tune of "Foggy Dew."

To hear a sample of the melody of "Foggy Dew," click on this sound clip from the Mudcat archives:
http://media.mudcat.org/MIDI/DEWFOG.MID

This version of "Foggy Dew," as demonstrated on the piano, is similar to the melody of "A Sailor's Song" as notated in The Vietnam Songbook. Of course, this gives us only the merest hint as to how Richard and Mimi actually played this composition. It's quite likely that there was at least a demo of this song recorded, but whether or not it still exists or will ever see the light of day remains uncertain. I asked Irwin Silber about it and he replied, "When we decided to do this book we sent out a general call to singers and song-writers for submissions and suggestions. I'm not sure who suggested Richard Fariņa's song to us."

Irwin Silber had recently left his position as editor of Sing Out! magazine to work for the political magazine, The Guardian, which published The Vietnam Songbook with Silber and his wife Barbara Dane as editors. The book includes songs by Barbara Dane, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Langston Hughes, Julius Lester, Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl, Country Joe McDonald, and others, as well as some songs in Vietnamese. Many of the songs originally appeared in Sing Out! and Broadside, but, according to Irwin Silber, "A Sailor's Song" did not appear in either of those publications.

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