Jolie Holland, "Mad Tom of Bedlam"

A beautiful solo version of the song from "Escondida", with fiddle.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Jolie
• Holland
• Escondida
• Fiddle

[cistercian0girl]

that was truly awful, why use a violin if you cant play it?

[katmaidog]

That's fiddle playing, and it's different from playing the violin. Same instrument, different technique.

[ejduerr]

This is SOOOOOOOOOO much better than mine, very nice!

[katmaidog]

It's even better without yootoob's compression factor.

but thank you. very much. It was an amazing show.

[archer1949]

How do you "rip off" an anonymous folk ballad that has been performed for at least 600 years and has literally dozens of variations?

I first heard this track a while back and have been trying to find it ever since. Thank you!

[Goiriath]

@KevKli3 "Holland sings it like a drugged black woman in a smoked-filled Blues bar in 1950s."

You say that like it's a bad thing.

And to be serious, it actually seems to be closer to the ambience (if not style) in which it's mostly be played for hundreds of years. Folk, literally being of the people, what is popular in live, informal playing, rather than a false, formal attempt at historical accuracy.

This song has merely been re-folked for a new genre.

[tuberknotube]

Ah, reading Robert Graves The White Goddess... Tom O Bedlam's song shines out of the book!!! Hit the internet... discover Ginsberg turned Dylan onto it in 1964, the only thing missing now is the Robert Johnson connection! Beautiful, thank you, you consumate, luminous, poets and guardians of the words!

[dunnk90]

@KevKli3 Racist asshole.

[murfleblurg]

That's phenomenal.

Anyone who can't see that this is a coherent musical idea executed with assuredness and unreproducible skill just doesn't have ears.

[fooolycoooly]

@katmaidog More like bad technique.

[trips2012]

@cistercian0girl If you are an actual violin player, you would know that there is a style called fiddle playing...some rural people don't even have a name for it....it's used as a backup to chanting songs....do some more research before you mouth off...and if you are an actual violin player, go back to your parlour music and your neo-classical music...

[wordweaver58]

excellent treatment of this old folk song... i love it when genre are blended.

Mixing up the musical DNA...

[KevKli3]

@cactuscrust

We agree to disagree then.

This is an English folk song. Holland sings it like a drugged black woman in a smoked-filled Blues bar in 1950s.

Bluehorses may not be as talented as Holland. But their interpretation is closer to what I know of folk songs from British Isles.

I have every right to make judgements on musical performances; especially folk songs.

So do you. Enjoy your rights.

[COSMICBUM]

Hey,thats the 'Bo-Diddle' fiddle -cool!