Week #276 ~ Handsome Molly

  1. Barbara Shultz
    Barbara Shultz
    This week's winner, by overwhelming majority, is Handsome Molly, which was submitted as an Old Time tune. I'm not familiar with it.

    It looks simple enough! Must need some singing to spice it up!

    Here's standard notation and lyrics.

    Here are some videos:

















  2. James Rankine
    James Rankine
    Am I first Up?
    As Barbara says a simple tune so I've added some vocals and kept it short.

  3. Barbara Shultz
    Barbara Shultz
    Bravo!!!!
  4. Hendrik Luurtsema
    Hendrik Luurtsema
    That was great James!
  5. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    That sure kicks the week off with a bang. Love it, James!
  6. Michael Pastucha
    Michael Pastucha
    Well done James. Here's my version. I recorded the vocal and guitar at the same time and then overdubbed the mandolin.

  7. Sasquatch
    Sasquatch
    James & Michael- great stuff!!
    In homage to one of my mandolin heroes, Hershel Sizemore, here is a first take, early morning rendition in the key of B (flubs included)

  8. Michael Pastucha
    Michael Pastucha
    David, talk about a signature sound – the mandonator when paired with your fine singing, a little "squeeze box" and some bowed bass is just great. Do some more like this please. And Tim just pulled out some wickedly cool licks and nailed it... well done!
  9. Niavlys
    Niavlys
    Sasquatch, I love your clear, precise and inventive playing, I'd love to hear this recorded with a better audio quality!
  10. Marty Jacobson
    Marty Jacobson
    I made mine a set - Handsome Molly, Down the Old Plank Road, and Angeline the Baker. It was difficult keeping track of which one was which, but kind of fun to have three very similar tunes side be side.
  11. OldSausage
    OldSausage
    Very nice, Marty, and the fiddle sounds great too! Which mandolin is that?
  12. Marty Jacobson
    Marty Jacobson
    Thanks David, still playing the heron... I can't afford one of my good instruments. ;-)
  13. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    I agree! Awesome job with the fiddle, Marty.
    Everyone's got such a unique twist on the tune this week! It's really fun to hear.
  14. GKWilson
    GKWilson
    That's funny Marty.
    I briefly talked to Dude once.
    He had a used mandolin of his he had taken in trade.
    I mentioned that I'd like to have it if I could afford it.
    He said 'me too'.
    Gary
  15. Victor Daniel
    Victor Daniel


    Long time watcher of the "Song a Week" group. Finally got around to contributing.
  16. GKWilson
    GKWilson
    Really like your old time style on this one.
    That's a great first post vicstylz.
    Your two point [Old Wave I think] really rings.
    Gary
  17. Victor Daniel
    Victor Daniel
    Thank you. The 2 point is an Old Wave c#. I picked it up from the classifieds about 6 months ago. I really enjoy its sound for old time and jazz.
  18. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    Vic, I absolutely love the way you play this song! Is your mandolin in an alternate tuning? Welcome to the Song-A-Week Group.
  19. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    Not to be outdone by Tim's super picking in the key of B, here's a runthrough from Jeff and me in the key of E flat flat.
    This was a fun tune to figure out, and those outstanding early versions from Michael, James, and David sure were a lot of help.
  20. OldSausage
    OldSausage
    Really nice job guys. Good powerful singing and a sweet banjo there.
  21. Sasquatch
    Sasquatch
    Marcelyn, you guys nailed this tune. Interesting flavors from each submission this week. Love it!
  22. Victor Daniel
    Victor Daniel
    Marcelyn, very nicely done. Excellent vocals. To answer your question, my mandolin is in standard tuning, i just try to use as many double stops as I can to give a droning sound.
    -Victor
  23. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    Thanks very much, David, Tim, and Victor.
    And very nice job on the double stops, Victor. I'd have sworn that was in an open tuning. I really love hearing mandolin played in that style.
  24. James Rankine
    James Rankine
    Vic - such a great first post. I really love this, all the open drones and the music comes in waves. I realise I went for a bluegrassy flavour, but yours is the real deal old time and I've learnt an important lesson from you on how you can approach this. Love the sepia - tried to get this on my camera settings and its just come out black and white!.
    Marcelyn and Jeff, beautiful banjo dancing around the mandolin and Marcelyn's lovely vocals. Evenings at your place must be a lot of fun.
  25. Michael Pastucha
    Michael Pastucha
    Here's Handsome Molly by the Saw Mountain String Band. (That's Marcy on the fiddle and singing the lead, with her husband, Jeff, playing 5 string banjo. I added a harmony vocal and played the guitar and mandolin.) Hope you like it!

  26. James Rankine
    James Rankine
    Love it! Perfect in every way. I particularly like the picture of Marcy and Jeff at the beginning - what a joy. And the picture of Marcy at the end -there is some serious artistic photographic endeavours behind this.
  27. Michael Pastucha
    Michael Pastucha
    Thanks James! The pictures of Marcy and Jeff were sent by Marcy. They are all very nice photographs and I'm not sure who took them. Hopefully Marcy can enlighten us. The historic photos all came from the Library of Congress and I tossed in some pictures of my own. Everything was then assembled into a slide show with iMovie '09. The fun is matching up the photos to the music. Oh, the music tracks were mixed in Cubase (Marcy and Jeff recorded their parts first in Tennessee and sent them to me here in California and then I added my parts). After a lot of practice it's not too hard at all...
  28. justkaron
    justkaron
    SAW Mountain String Band is just excellent! That's all....
  29. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    Thanks so much for the compliments James and Karon. Such a fun song, and I really enjoyed the chance to figure it out a little better than I was able to in just a week.
    About the photos--Jeff took that picture of me fiddling on the back steps. Credit for the shot of us together though, goes to my (then six-year-old) son. Jeff set up the camera on a tripod and we played while Everett clicked away. That shot was the best of the bunch he took.
  30. woodenfingers
    woodenfingers
    SAW Mtn strikes again!! Just wonderful.

    Michael - I recently got a Macbook Pro that has iMovie on it but I haven't figured out how to use it to make a movie. Is there anything special about iMovie '09 that separates it from the '14 iMovie that I have?
  31. James Rankine
    James Rankine
    Bob, not sure about 14 but I didn't notice any practical difference between 11 and 09. You may have the capacity to do all sorts of multiple camera angle mixing so we look forward to your first production with anticipation
  32. Michael Pastucha
    Michael Pastucha
    Woodenfingers: I have an older MacPro tower running Snow Leopard. iMovie 14 looks really cool but it just won't run on my machine as it is right now and I can get iMovie 09 to do everything I need. My philosophy is if your old hammer still does the job, why lay out the bucks for a brand new one? I've found that YouTube is a really good source for information on how to use iMovie whatever version you have.
  33. woodenfingers
    woodenfingers
    Michael, Thanks for the tip to check out youtube. I agree on the old hammer philosophy. If my old XP computer hadn't recently died I wouldn't be messing with this one.

    James, I'll check youtube for the multiple camera stuff. I certainly can't see how to do that right now.

    Bob
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