ACK, VÄRMELAND DU SKÖNA
Created on 05/10/2006Latest update on 18/10/2023
Artist: Gustaf Wennman
Author: trad./Anders Fryxell/Fredrik August Dahlgren
Label: Berliner
Year: 1899
Reissued on double album The First Gramophone Recordings in Sweden (2013 - Sterling). Melody first published as Värmlandsvisan in Värmlandssangen, a Swedish folksong collection from 1822. Landscape songs are big in Sweden; every province has its own repertoire. Värmland is a woody province in the west. The melody is similar to Dutch 16th century song O Nederland Let Op U Saeck, a warning against the unreliability of the Spanish, published in 1626 in Valerius' Gedenck Clanck. The melody of another Lowlands original, Ik Zag Cecilia Komen, also comes close.
Covers:
- 1910:
Otto Bergman [instrumental field recording; sounds as if he's whistling on grass; reissued on Folk Music From Sweden box set]
- 1912:
Joel Mossberg [as Värmelandsvisan]
- 1913:
- 1937:
- 1951:
Stan Getz [as Dear Old Stockholm, recorded in Sweden (Roost Records EP); he took credit for the arrangement]
- 1952:
Miles Davis [idem]
- 1955:
Chet Baker [idem]
- 1957:
Kenny Burrell [idem]
- 1961:
John Coltrane [idem]
- 1965:
Zarah Leander [that's where her family came from; she started her career in the Värmland opera house]
- 1967:
- 1968:
Esther & Abi Ofarim [soundtrack for a tourism commercial for Sweden in the late 90s]
- 1972:
- 1976:
- 1979:
Toots Thielemans [as Dear Old Stockholm]
