PETE by Pete Seeger and Friends

PAUL WINTER'S WORLD OF LIVING MUSIC: 20 Years Celebrating the Creatures and Cultures of the Earth INDEX  MUSIC All Living Music titles Living Music catalogue Catalogue by category Recent Releases   CONCERTS  Concert Calendar Solstice Celebrations ARTISTS  Paul Winter The Paul Winter Consort Other Artists MARKETPLACE  Worldwide availability Mail Order Special Offers Request catalogue SUBSCRIBE  to monthly email newsletters COMMUNITY LINKS  Paul Winter Consort Musicians Other community members Reviews of Living Music Contact Information Frequently Asked  Questions Latest News OTHER PAGES ABOUT PETE: The Musicians Grammy Award Pete says... Track List The Making of PETE Purchase details Other Living Music Grammy Award Winners Other Living Music Albums of Folk Song livingmusic.com is hosted and supported by ANU Internet Services (the music friendly ISP).

Kisses Sweeter Than Wine Listen to a Clip (487K) Pete Seeger - voice, banjo Gaudeamus - chorus with The Cathedral Singers Words by Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Pete Seeger, 1950 Music by TRO © 1951 (renewed) & 1958 (renewed) Folkways Music Publishers, Inc, NY, NY Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) was at a party in Greenwich Village when he heard an Irish artist, Sam Kennedy, singing an Irish song, "Drimmin Down". Leadbelly liked the tune, but he wanted to sing it his own way. Some time later, at another crowded Greenwich Village party, he took Sam Kennedy aside into the bathroom, the only quiet place they could find. He said, "Sam, I'd like to sing your song, but I'm changing it a little, and I wonder if it is O.K. with you." Sam was very polite. He said, "Leadbelly, it's an old, old song. Everybody's got a right to sing it the way they want to. You sing it your way; I'll sing it my way." Leadbelly changed the rhythm. Also garbled the words. Once, I was humming through the melody as Leadbelly had played it. I was intrigued by the unusual chords Leadbelly used to accompany it. He'd played A major 7th chords, but sang it in A minor. But I couldn't remember his words. I found myself singing, "Oh-oh, kisses sweeter than wine." I knew it was a good idea for a chorus, but I wasn't skilled enough to figure what the heck to do with the rest of the song. I jotted the idea on a scrap of paper and dropped it in a file labeled "song ideas 1949." It's a year later. Us four Weavers (Lee, Ronnie, Fred and me) found ourselves in a most unexpected situation. Thanks to the enthusiasm of bandleader Gordon Jenkins, we'd recorded one of the songs of Leadbelly, who'd died penniless the year before. "Goodnight Irene" sold more records than any other pop song since World War II. In the summer of 1950 you couldn't escape it. A waltz yet! In a roadside diner we heard someone say, "Turn that jukebox off! I've heard that song fifty times this week." And the Weavers found ourselves on tour going from one expensive nightspot to another - The Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas, Ciro's in Hollywood. In Houston's Shamrock Hotel we were sitting around a swimming pool contemplating a letter from our manager: "Decca Records wants to record some new songs. Please start rehearsing them." Lee says, "Pete, get out your folder of song ideas; let's go through them, see if there's something we can work on." I'm humming this idea and that as I leaf through scraps of paper. I come to this. Lee said, "Hold on, let me try it." Next morning he came back with about six or seven verses. As I remember we pared them down to five. It was a mild seller back in 1950 - a much better seller a few years later when country singer Jimmy Rogers did it. But what makes me really happy is that it has become a standard with many people. The songwriter as matchmaker! Now, who should one credit on this song? The Irish, certainly. Sam Kennedy, who taught it to us. Leadbelly, for adding rhythm and blues chords. Me, for two new words for the refrain. Lee, who wrote seven verses. Fred and Ronnie for paring them down to five. Four children? Eight grandchildren? This is the most subversive song I've ever sung. Subversive to a stable world, certainly. Use a little arithmetic: We each had 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents. Unless someone married a 1st cousin or a 2nd cousin. So 10 generations ago, say 330 years, each of us had 1024 ancestors somewhere in the world. Or slightly less, because almost certainly now there's been some coupling between distant cousins. Go back a mere 1330 years and we each could have had over 1,000,000,000,000 (one thousand billion) ancestors except that we're sure there were less than one billion people on earth at that time. So most of us 5.6 billion humans on earth now are distant cousins of each other, if you go back enough thousands of years, before our omnivorous ancestors migrated to different continents or islands. Look into the future. If the average person today had only 2 children, in a century they'd have 8 descendants, and in 1330 years they (we) could have 1,000,000,000,000 descendants, which is a lot more population than this old world could take. In a few thousand years it will be a rare person who can claim not to have been descended, more or less, from most of us - all 5.6 billion of us, alive today. Kisses sweeter than wine.             Top of Page      Purchase details Join our emailing list to receive newsletters about Paul Winter's World of Living Music Please email us at webperson@livingmusic.com with any questions, comments or suggestions related to Paul Winter's World of Living Music, or to our website.