Please tell me your very favorite love song...

Lois Sprengnether Keel
Lois Sprengnether Keel
@lois-sprengnether-keel
4 years ago
197 posts

Hi, @john-c-knopf , yes, I knew there would be a challenge to what song had the most.  There's some generic portability if you choose to go that way.  Speaking of Old Joe, I can never play it as fast as my banjo picking husband, so I don't try.  Instead I have a jig where Li'l Liza Jane meets the Old boy.  First half is her, second is him, then I quietly sneak in a whisper on the melody string giving her the last word.  It's an arrangement by  @Larry Conger and I should be practicing it.  The June meeting will be impossible at Paint Creek Folklore Society, I'm sure, but the theme was "Youth to Old Age" and that was going to be what I played.

John C. Knopf
John C. Knopf
@john-c-knopf
4 years ago
385 posts

Lois, I always thought that "Old Joe Clark" had the most verses, but so many of those folk-song verses are portable!

Lois Sprengnether Keel
Lois Sprengnether Keel
@lois-sprengnether-keel
4 years ago
197 posts

I guess love songs have a lot of variety (cheeseburgers!, animal songs, cocaine?!?) , as @rob-n-lackey says,  "It all depends on what you love!"   Personally I'd choose Shady Grove.  It's claimed to have the most verses of any song so obviously I'm not alone and your can pick and choose the way you want it to go.

hugssandi
@hugssandi
4 years ago
244 posts

@john-c-knopf, I am a Veggie Tale fan, and there is guitar TAB for The Cheeseburger Song!!!  I will learn it.  My very favorite VT is Madam Blueberry....  nod

hugssandi
@hugssandi
4 years ago
244 posts

Y'all are WONDERFUL!!!!  Thank you for being FUN and CREATIVE and such a JOY!!!  I have most recently added "Real Love Baby" by Father John Misty and "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson.  

@dusty-turtle, YES about Erin Mae!!!  I had to relearn quite a few bad, self-learned techniques~LOL.  I have moved into playing a lot of chords via ultimate guitar's site and am enjoying a whole new world.

Dusty Turtle
Dusty Turtle
@dusty
4 years ago
1,720 posts

Well, if we're including interspecies animal romance, my vote is "The Owl and the Pussycat," especially the melody put to the Lears poem by Burl Ives

I get teary-eyed singing the last lines: "And hand in hand at the edge of the sand/They danced by the light of the moon, the moon/They danced by the light of the moon."




--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

updated by @dusty: 05/21/20 04:44:21PM
Steven Berger
Steven Berger
@steven-berger
4 years ago
143 posts

"Froggy Went A'courting"....No, I'm not kidding! frog

Rob N Lackey
Rob N Lackey
@rob-n-lackey
4 years ago
422 posts

Years ago at an open mic I used to attend regularly, the MC said we needed to do love songs.  Being the great rule-follower, I got up and sang "Cocaine Blues" with slide guitar accompaniment.  He tried to upbraid me that what I did wasn't a love song.  I just replied, "It all depends on what you love!" 

Seriously, one of my favorite love songs on the dulcimer (or guitar) is "Would you Lay with Me in a Field of Stone" by David Allan Coe.

 


updated by @rob-n-lackey: 05/21/20 07:14:26AM
Dusty Turtle
Dusty Turtle
@dusty
4 years ago
1,720 posts

One of my all time favorite pop love songs is Van Morrison's "Crazy Love."  I've never played it on the dulcimer, but I don't see why you couldn't. I used to play it on the mandolin back in the day when I accompanied a guitarist who also sang and made all the ladies swoon.

Erin Mae is the best, isn't she? She's so sweet and encouraging and she can tear it up on the fretboard!




--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie
hugssandi
@hugssandi
4 years ago
244 posts

I have loved looking up all of these tunes and seeing what I might be able to play~thank y'all for that!  I have added Tracy Chapman's "Baby Can I Hold You", "Come to Me" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and I am checking out other songs of interest as well.  OH I am having so much FUN with my dulcimer~all thanks to a class I recently took from Erin Mae Lewis!!!  WOW I cannot believe the difference it made for me.  inlove dulcimer

Susie
Susie
@susie
4 years ago
500 posts

Our wedding song, Crazy, by Kenny Rogers.

Salt Springs
Salt Springs
@salt-springs
4 years ago
207 posts

Larry Conger did an arrangement of "Unchained Melody" that the Righteous Brothers did in the 60's.  Simple tune, good lyrics, and easy play with 158.  Check it out on youtube, you might like it.

hugssandi
@hugssandi
4 years ago
244 posts

Thank you all~these are GREAT!  Keep 'em comin'!  I would love a beautiful love song to play, as I think about my husband...  Not finding it though.  Just started learning "Eight Days a Week", but it doesn't quite embody all that I want~LOL!  

Dusty Turtle
Dusty Turtle
@dusty
4 years ago
1,720 posts

The song @Natebuildstoys mentions, "Can't Help Falling in Love" is associated with Elvis and often played at weddings.  But what I find funny is that, as many folks here know, the melody was taken from a French tune called "Plaisir d'amour."  But the French lyrics are anything but romantic: "The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, but the pain from love lasts a lifetime."

The melody does fit on the dulcimer fretboard really nicely, though, and even people who are not folk music fans recognize it, so it's a good one to have in your repertoire.




--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie
NateBuildsToys
NateBuildsToys
@nate
4 years ago
238 posts

I am a big fan of Annie's Song by John Denver, (though I have been hesitant to play it for my lady friend as it seems a bit cornysun )  so I guess my favorite to play would be Can't Help Falling in Love :)

Banjimer
Banjimer
@greg-gunner
4 years ago
141 posts
As far as a traditional song that I do play on the dulcimer, it's hard to beat the Child ballad, "Barbara Allen". I prefer the Madison County, NC version sung by the family of Sheila Kay Adams
Banjimer
Banjimer
@greg-gunner
4 years ago
141 posts
I began listening to music seriously in the 1960s. The song that introduced me to the beauty of acoustic music was "Suite Judy Blue Eyes", Stephen Stills' expression of love for folksinger Judy Collins.
John C. Knopf
John C. Knopf
@john-c-knopf
4 years ago
385 posts

"The Cheeseburger Song" by Mr. Lunt (Love Songs with Mr. Lunt).  Gotta be a VeggieTales fan...

Salt Springs
Salt Springs
@salt-springs
4 years ago
207 posts

"Where are you Tonight" with Archie Campbell.  (you tube/with Johnny Cash etc.)

Ken Hulme
Ken Hulme
@ken-hulme
4 years ago
2,111 posts

A song by one of my best friends, guitarist Jim Visone, who lived down the dock from me here, called I Don't Have The Words.    Other than that, the Robert Burns song called Green Grow The Rashes, O which is a sort of love song celebrating all women.

Dusty Turtle
Dusty Turtle
@dusty
4 years ago
1,720 posts

Cool topic, @hugssandi.  Not long ago I started playing (but not singing) a Welsh love song from the 18th century, called "Bugeili'or Gwenith Gwyn," or "Watching the White Wheat."  It tells the supposedly true story of Wil, a young farm laborer, and Ann, the daughter of a wealthy farming family.  Her family did not consider Wil an appropriate spouse and arranged for her to marry another.  Overcome with sadness, Wil left the village.  After some time he had a dream of an impending death, so he returned, thinking Ann's husband was dying. Instead he found that it was Ann who was dying of a broken heart.  Supposedly they are both now buried in that same village. 

I posted an instrumental version of it about a year ago, and you can find both choral and harp versions on YouTube, but I love the Mary Hopkin version in Welsh .  You can also see this funny Tom Jones version in English .




--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie
hugssandi
@hugssandi
4 years ago
244 posts

...to play on your dulcimer!  The sappier, more poetic the better.  TIA!