Re: Yellow Rose, etc.

[KGiles@prodigy.com ( K D GILES)]

McGoo wrote:

>Yes, they can, I can have several musicians confirm this if you 
would
>like.  They would definately sound very wierd, but so would a 
Dickinson
>poem if you sung it to anything.  While they were metered to fit 
songs,
>the accents fall at some very awkward places (for a song).

I haven't attempted the experiment with many Dickinson poems yet, but 
"I Never Saw a Moor", "My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close", and 
"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" sound perfectly lovely when set 
to "The Yellow Rose of Texas".  What little weirdness I can detect 
comes only when Dickinson's rhyme scheme differs from that of "Yellow 
Rose".  But I can sing all three easily, and greatly amused my 
English teacher by doing so yesterday.
On the other hand, I tried singing all the Who songs Kyle suggested 
to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", and while "Boris the 
Spider" was easy, most of the others had me performing vocal 
gymnastics!  Not only were the stresses in the wrong places, but 
there were usually the wrong number of syllables after the first two 
lines.  Try fitting "By tomorrow's Sunday worship we'll be gone" to 
the bit that's supposed to go "Up above the world so high"!  Perhaps 
a more talented singer than I could pull it off, but it's nowhere 
near as easy as substituting "Yet know I how the Heather looks" for 
"With the Yellow Rose of Texas".  But don't feel bad, "The Yellow 
Rose of Texas" is a fine song.  (I myself am especially fond of it, 
as I am both Yellow and from Texas.)

-Yellow "I'm not a mulatto 'soiled dove', though!" Ledbetter