It’s not performed as I recall it from my childhood (and yes, I still have a Childcraft book similar to the one I learned it from around here. . . somewhere *heh*), but Burl Ives does a bang-up job with Froggie Went A-Courtin’:
"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Burl Ives *is* the voice from my childhood of Froggie Went A-Courtin’. 🙂 I have been searching for his recording of My Marmalade Cat Called Joe for years with no luck. Ah, for the days of checking records out from the library. 🙂
*heh* Different childhoods. “The” voice for “Froggie” from my childhood is my own, my sibs, my mom, etc. We didn’t listen to music nearly as much as we made our own. *shrugs* It wasn’t until later childhood that we listened to records much, and that was about half at my maternal grandparents’ and half at home, which meant a LOT of instrumental and choral recordings, little in the way of solo vocals. Oh, when my older sister “ascended” to jr high and got her own lil radio, I’d hear some pop stuff floating from her room, and my dad, of all people, bought two pop singles when I was in (late–5th-6th grade?) gradeschool–Little Nash Rambler and. . . Telstar. Still, even after the advent of recorded music in our home, if we wanted music, our best bet was to make it ourselves, and we had plenty of music in books and sheet music to aid us in that. In fact, I probably learned to read as much from music manuscripts as from books. Strange, I know.
Oh, we sang. The sheer number of stupid or silly songs we knew was legendary. 🙂
We just always had recorded music around as well. Usually radio, and AM at that, but my folks had a decent 8 track and record collection. I never could read music. I took music classes and hated the teacher so I probably didn’t try as hard as I did in my other classes. I have always been able to remember and repeat songs after hearing them once or twice, though. I was in several musicals and in choir but never learned to read music. Just never made sense to me. My mom, her siblings and my brother were all music readers and band people. I never was.
“. . .my folks had a decent 8 track and record collection. . .”
Oh, my. I remember the 8 track years. Driving back and forth to and from college with the 8 track keeping me awake for 740 miles. . . (yeh, usually started off going “home” at late hour and usually had a looooong night the night before heading on back. Needed the wakey-wakey. 🙂 Was my only real exposure to pop music, since the selection of stuff I preferred was not as wide on 8 track, and passengers usually had their own stuff they wanted played anyway).