ETHAN LANG

Created on 13/01/2007
Latest update on 13/12/2023

Artist: Emry Arthur
Author: trad. arr. Emry Arthur
Label: Vocalion
Year: 1928

Reissued on JSP box set Appalachian Stomp Down. This Kentuckian is the soggy bottom of hillbilly personified: he also wrote I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (see there). Clearly an offspring of Jack Hall/Sam Hall, but with no older English recordings around, this Appalachian takes credit. See also: Going Around The World.

Covers:

1935:

Tex Ritter [as Sam Hall or Samuel Hall]

1955:

Josh White [idem]

1956:

Terry Gilkyson [idem in film Star In The Dust]

1956:

Paul Clayton [as Admiral Benbow; sea shanty about a pub]

1960s:

Walter Pardon [as Jack Hall; traditional singer from Norfolk on Topic cd Voice Of The People Vol 17]

1964:

Michael Hurley [as Captain Kidd; again, same melody]

1965:

Johnny Cash [as Sam Hall on Ballads Of The True West and in '02 on American IV, crediting Tex Ritter]

1965:

Cornelis Vreeswijk [as Mördar-Anders]

1969:

Dubliners [as Sam Hall on At Home With The Dubliners; own lyrics]

1980:

June Tabor & Martin Simpson [as Admiral Benbow]

1989:

Frank Tovey [as Sam Hall on Tyranny And The Hired Hand]

1989:

Steeleye Span [as Jack Hall]

1998:

Ed Kuepper [as Sam Hall]

2003:

Richard Thompson [idem on 1000 Years Of Popular Music]

2004:

Waterson:Carthy [as Captain Kidd]

Sam Hall is an old English folksong, known in the 1850s as Jack Hall (credited to comic minstrel C.W. Ross). Jack was a criminal hanged in 1707 at Tyburn, then the outskirts of London where public executions took place (near Marble Arch in Westminster, where Edgware Road meets Bayswater Road).

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

No Facebook No Twitter