Monday 7 October 2013

Another Creepy Edward

Coming up soon, posts on ENO Fidelio, Wigmore Hall Schumann (Persson/Boesch) and more on ENO Fledermaus. Watch this space, and come back! But first another version of "Edward" a traditional song of obscure origins that crops up if different times and folk traditions. Ever it was so. Greek myth is retold in myriad forms. Why the modern obsession with preserving things in only one form?  A good basic idea grows and takes on new life.

A while back I wrote about Carl Loewe's Creepy Edward, a Lieder version  to a poem by Gottfried Herder adapting the legend in German Romantic terms. Then, the same story crops up as "Knoxville Girl" in country music (and later in rock) . So here's a version by Richard Dyer-Bennet who would have been 100 years old today. Dyer-Bennet was English but lived in the US (but not in Knoxville) and sang folk ballads. His "Edward" supposedly resembles the original folk song, though he sings it in such a genteel way. Personally I have a weakness for the psychotic desperado within the twanging slide guitar.

 

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