{"id":2730,"date":"2017-05-26T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2730"},"modified":"2017-05-27T10:16:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-27T14:16:46","slug":"sweeney-todd-barber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sweeney-todd-barber\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweeney Todd, The Barber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sweeney Todd, the Barber\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2X_vwOnA6ps?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I learned this from a Folkways album of London pub and music hall songs recorded in 1962 by a young Englishman named Derek Lamb, but don&#8217;t recall performing it until I found myself playing in a mock English pub called the Horse Brass in <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2732 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/She-Was-Poor-But-She-Was-Honest.jpg?resize=300%2C288\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"288\" \/>Portland, Oregon. They had bangers and mash, lukewarm beer, and even a London telephone booth in one corner, so this seemed like the right piece of material. It turned out to be the perfect barroom sing-along, guaranteed to engage the noisiest room, and I made it a staple of my repertoire through the early 1980s, eventually recording it on my deservedly rare LP.<\/p>\n<p>Recitations like this were once as popular as songs with both barroom amateurs and stage professionals &#8212; American counterparts would include comic gems like Bert Williams&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/somebody-else-not\/\">Somebody Else, Not Me<\/a>.&#8221; The Sweeney Todd story had already been fodder for plays, Victorian penny dreadfuls and\u00a0 silent films before being immortalized in this manner by R.P. Weston and Bert Lee, who apparently composed some three thousand songs during their twenty-year career. (I&#8217;ve done the math and am dubious, but <em>The British Music Hall: An Illustrated History<\/em> <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2731 size-full alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Brahn-Boots.jpg?resize=280%2C389\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"389\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Brahn-Boots.jpg?w=280&amp;ssl=1 280w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Brahn-Boots.jpg?resize=216%2C300&amp;ssl=1 216w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/>reports that they had a strict daily writing routine, and I guess it&#8217;s possible.) Several of their creations were made famous by the wonderful Stanley Holloway, including &#8220;My Word, You Do Look Queer,&#8221; &#8220;Brahn Boots,&#8221; and &#8220;With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm.&#8221; Holloway likewise premiered this one, performing it in a 1935 film called <em>Play Up the Band<\/em> and recording it in 1956 &#8212; though I know him best for recitations, he does &#8220;Sweeney Todd&#8221; as a song rather than a recitation, except for the extended third verse.<\/p>\n<p>There are plenty of internet sites with information on the\u00a0 Sweeney Todd legend and associated urban folklore, so I&#8217;ll just note here that in <em>Martin Chuzzlewit<\/em> Charles Dickens suggests both the ubiquity and the dubiousness of the story when he describes a lad adrift in London as fortunate that his evil genius &#8220;did not lead <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2879 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/dibdin-pitt-sweeney-todd-e1416746391130.jpg?resize=260%2C345\" alt=\"\" width=\"260\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/dibdin-pitt-sweeney-todd-e1416746391130.jpg?w=320&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/dibdin-pitt-sweeney-todd-e1416746391130.jpg?resize=226%2C300&amp;ssl=1 226w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 260px) 100vw, 260px\" \/>him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis; nor did it mark him out as the prey of ring-droppers, pea and thimble-riggers, duffers, touters, or any of those bloodless sharpers, who are, perhaps, a little better known to the Police&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It may be worth mentioning what barbers mostly did in those days, since the word is now rarely used in its original sense. It comes from the French <em>barbe<\/em>, or beard, and the most frequent reason to see a barber used to be for one&#8217;s morning shave. When I was in New Delhi circa 1980 there were still men who set up in the park or would come around to the cheap hotels and shave customers for a small fee, using a straight razor stropped on a leather strap every few strokes, and barber shops served lines of gentlemen every morning, with the added luxury of hot towels to finish. I only indulged occasionally, but must say it was a pleasure &#8212; though I had to get used to the sensation of someone stroking my throat with a long, sharp blade. (For further mentions of straight razors, check out another bloodthirsty classic, the Bahamian &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/jones-oh-jones\/\">Jones, Oh Jones<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>And finally, I must append this photo, done for a presentation of British ballads that I was roped into by a local professor, David Ingle, <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2733\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Derek-Lamb-David-Ingle-Elijah-300x251.jpg?resize=293%2C245\" alt=\"\" width=\"293\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Derek-Lamb-David-Ingle-Elijah.jpg?resize=300%2C251&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Derek-Lamb-David-Ingle-Elijah.jpg?w=316&amp;ssl=1 316w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 293px) 100vw, 293px\" \/>who came regularly to a semi-open-song-night I hosted at the Bookcellar Cafe in Porter Square, Cambridge, for a year or two in the 1990s, and thrilled me by bringing Derek Lamb, who lived just a few blocks away. A lovely man, Derek had gone on to a highly successful career as a director and producer of animated films and documentaries in Canada and the U.S. (winning an Oscar and producing cartoons for <em>Sesame Street<\/em>, among\u00a0 other things) and he came down to the Bookcellar a few times, still sounding much as he had in the 1960s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learned this from a Folkways album of London pub and music hall songs recorded in 1962 by a young Englishman named Derek Lamb, but don&#8217;t recall performing it until I found myself playing in a mock English pub called the Horse Brass in Portland, Oregon. They had bangers and mash, lukewarm beer, and even &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sweeney-todd-barber\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sweeney Todd, The Barber<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sweeney Todd, The Barber - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sweeney-todd-barber\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sweeney Todd, The Barber - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I learned this from a Folkways album of London pub and music hall songs recorded in 1962 by a young Englishman named Derek Lamb, but don&#8217;t recall performing it until I found myself playing in a mock English pub called the Horse Brass in Portland, Oregon. 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I don't remember why I changed them, or even if I was aware I had, and when I recently listened to his version I thought his were more interesting... But I've been playing it this way for a quarter\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Townes-van-Zandt-live-297x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":203,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/sam-hall\/","url_meta":{"origin":2730,"position":1},"title":"Sam Hall (Josh White)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A condemned man's gory and unpleasant last words, fraught with horror and sung with inappropriate relish -- courtesy of Carl Sandburg and Josh White.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"josh lp","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/josh-lp.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":950,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mister-noah\/","url_meta":{"origin":2730,"position":2},"title":"Mister Noah (Dave Van Ronk\/Frank Shay)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another amusing tidbit from Dave Van Ronk: Folksinger, and is probably the first song I learned off that record, because if you hear it once or twice, you know it, like it or not. I don't know where Dave learned it,* but a similar four-verse version was printed\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"My Pious Friends","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/My-Pious-Friends.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":228,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/when-francis-dances-with-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":2730,"position":3},"title":"When Francis Dances with Me (My father)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A New York waltz of the 1920s, learned from my father and accompanied by appropriate reminiscences and ephemera.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"george1927","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/george1927-177x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1223,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/midnight-hour-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":2730,"position":4},"title":"Midnight Hour Blues (Leroy Carr)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another classic Van Ronk guitar arrangement, this was also the first song I learned by Leroy Carr. Carr was a massively influential figure who virtually redefined blues in the late 1920s and early '30s, turning it from rowdy, shouting dancehall, theater, or streetcorner music into a sensitive, moody style suited\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/images\/carrpic.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":591,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/in-the-evening\/","url_meta":{"origin":2730,"position":5},"title":"In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of Leroy Carr's masterpieces, and one of the first blues songs I learned... oddly enough, from a Pete Seeger songbook.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Seeger-songbook.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2881,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions\/2881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}