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Loveless Love- Billie Holiday version (Careless Love) WC Handy
Painting By Richard Matteson based on traditional woman's lyrics
Traditional, Old-Time, Song and Fiddle Tune. Southeast; Arkansas. The title appears in a list of fiddle tunes from the Ozark Mountains compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954.
ARTIST: From Billie Holiday- Lyrics from WC Handy 1921;
Listen: Billie Holiday- Loveless Love
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes; DATE: Earliest 1880
RECORDING INFO: Byrd Moore, "Careless Love" (Columbia 15496-D, c. 1930); Dock Boggs, "Careless Love" (on Boggs3, BoggsCD1); Riley Puckett, "Careless Love" (Columbia 15747-D, 1932) (Bluebird B-5532, 1934) (Montgomery Ward M-4507, 1934); Pete Seeger, "Careless Love" (on PeteSeeger18) Blues versions- Big Bill Broonzy, Carl Jackson, Brownie McGhee, Joe Turner; Baez, Joan; and Bill Wood. Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square, Veritas, LP (1960), cut#A.09; Douglas, Bob. Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee Folklore Soc. TFS-109, LP (198?), cut# 7; Flatt & Scruggs with Doc Watson. Strictly Instrumental, Columbia CS 9443, LP, cut# 10; Geremia, Paul. Great Hudson River Revival, Flying Fish FF-214, LP (1980), cut# 5; Highwaymen. Homecoming, United Artists UAL 3348, LP (196?), cut#A.06; Hill, Hank; and the Tennessee Folk Trio. Folk Song Hall of Fame, Palace M-716, LP (196?), cut# 10; Homer and the Barnstormers. Blue Grass Banjos - Flaming Banjos, Alshire 2-120-1/2, LP (197?), cut#1A.05; Jenkins, Snuffy; and Pappy Sherrill. Crazy Water Barn Dance, Rounder 0059, LP (1976), cut# 12; Johnson, Lonnie. Lonnie Johnson. The Complete Recordings, Smithsonian/Folkways SF-40067, Cas (1993), cut#A.11; Katzman, Nick; and Ruby Green. Mississippi River Bottom Blues, Kicking Mule KM 111, LP (197?), B.03; Martin, Asa; and the Cumberland Rangers. Dr. Ginger Blue, Rounder 0034, LP (1974), cut# 10 (Two Old Freight Trains Side By Side); McCurdy, Ed. Folk Singer, Dawn DLP 1127, LP (1956c), B.06; Moore, Byrd; & His Hot Shots. Mountain Songs, County 504, LP, cut# 2; Owens, Bill; and the Kinfolk. Songs of the Smokey Mountains, REM LP-1024, LP (197?), cut# 12; Preservation Hall Jazz Band. When the Saints Go Marching In. New Orleans, Vol. III, Columbia Special Prod. FM3860, LP (1983), cut# 3; Price, Bill & Betty. Bill and Betty Price, Rural Rhythm RRBP-239, LP (197?), cut#A.05; Robison, Carson; & his Pioneers. Immortal Carson Robison, Glendale GL 6009, LP (1978), cut# 17; Robison, Carson; & his Pioneers. Country-Western Radio. Rare Radio Recordings of Famous Count..., Radiola MR-1069, LP (1977), cut#B1.1; Rose, Buddy. Down Home Pickin', Dominion NR 3319, LP (197?), cut#B.04; Sandburg, Carl. Flat Rock Ballads, Columbia ML 5339, LP (196?), cut# 3; Sandburg, Carl. New Songs from the American Songbag, Lyrichord LL 4, LP (195?), cut#A.03; Seeger, Mike. Second Annual Farewell Reunion, Mercury SRMI-685, LP (1973), cut# 13; Stoneman's Dixie Mountaineers. Ernest V. Stoneman & his Dixie Mountaineers. 1927-28, Historical HLP-8004, LP (196?), cut# 8; Tarleton, Jimmy/Jimmie. Mountain Blues, County 511, LP, cut# 3; Thompson, Joe. Family Tradition, Rounder 2161, CD (1999), cut#13; Thompson, Joe; and Odell Thompson. Oldtime Music from the North Carolina Piedmont, Global Village Global-C217, Cas (1989), cut# 4; Van Ronk, Dave. Gamblers Blues, Verve FV 9007, LP (196?), cut# 9; Van Ronk, Dave. Dave Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues and Spirituals, Folkways FS 3818, LP (1959), cut#B.02;
OTHER NAMES: Loveless Love; Kelly's Love; I Have No Loving Mother Now (Kelly Harrell); I Fell in Love with a Married Man
RELATED TO: I've Lost My Love; I Fell in Love with a Married Man; Take Me Back to Tennessee; Loveless Love;
SOURCES: WC Handy Autobiography; Mudcat Cafe; "The title appears in a list of fiddle tunes from the Ozark Mountains compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954." (Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc). Randolph 793, "Careless Love" Randolph-Legman II, pp. 648-650, "Careless Love" Warner 167, "Careless Love" Sandburg, p. 21, "Careless Love" Lomax-FSUSA 20, "Careless Love" Lomax-FSNA 309, "Careless Love" Botkin-AmFolklr, pp. 901-902, "Careless Love" MWheeler, pp. 89-90, "Careless Love" Courlander-NFM, pp. 138-139, " PSeeger-AFB, p. 11, "Careless Love" Handy/Silverman-Blues, p. 55-57, "Careless Love" Silber-FSWB, p. 163, "Careless Love" Fuld-WFM, pp. 162-163, "Careless Love" American Songbag, Harcourt Brace Jovan..., Sof (1955), p 21; Here's to the Women, Syracuse Univ. Press, Sof (1987), p 6; Cooper, Wilma Lee. Songs to Remember, Cooper, Fol (19??), p23; Tarleton, Jimmy/Jimmie. Old-Time Country Guitar, Oak, Sof (1976), p36
NOTES: The great Billie Holiday's version "Loveless Love" is a cover of the January 1922 Handy's Memphis Blues Orchestra's version. This is W.C. Handy's 1921 composition based on the melody and some of the lyrics of Careless Love.
Careless Love is one of the earliest, if it is not actually the first (WC Handy), blues and is one of the greatest American melodies. Folklorists think that it originated among white singers and was adopted later by Southern African-Americans. Careless Love, like many songs from the South, has changed hands across race lines so many times that it has invariably picked up musical and lyrical characteristics from both cultures. Careless Love, like Easy Rider and Make Me a Pallet on the Floor, all share an early blues heritage as well as a common musical structure. In the ‘Careless Love” structure, each verse is sixteen measures in length with the first line repeated 3 times and the "punch" or rhyming line as the fourth and final line of the stanza.
The "Loveless Love" lyrics written by W. C. Handy in 1921, used the tune and structure of "Careless Love." He also seems to have claimed "Careless Love" at times, but in other contexts he called it a folk song.
According to Malcolm Douglas: "The tune is basically 'The Sprig of Thyme', and 'Careless Love' frequently includes floating verses familiar from songs like 'Died For Love'; so its antecedents are essentially British, though re-made in America with new stylistic influences."
In the US the song can be traced back to 1880. Vance Randolph collected a version in 1948 that was learned in 1880. WC Handy writes about Careless Love and Loveless Love in his autobiography, Father of the Blues (Originally published by New York: Macmillan 1941, the below excerpt from the Da Capo Press paperback version pp 147 - 149):
"Loveless Love is another of my songs of which one part has an easily traceable folk ancestry. It was based on the Careless Love melody that I had played first in Bessemer in 1892 and that had since become popular all over the South. In Henderson I was told that the words of Careless Love were based on a tragedy in a local family, and one night a gentleman of that city's tobacco-planter aristocracy requested our band to play and sing this folk melody, using the following words:
You see what Careless Love has done,
You see what Careless Love has done
You see what Careless Love has done,
It killed the Governor's only son.
We did our best with these lines and then went into the second stanza:
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm,
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm,
Poor Archie didn't mean no harm
-But there the song ended. The police stepped in and stopped us. The song, they said, was a reflection on two prominent families. Careless Love had too beautiful a melody to be lost or neglected, however, and I was determined to preserve it.
[. . .]Having created a vogue for Careless Love, which John Niles calls Kelly's Love in his book of folk songs, I proposed to incorporate it in a new song with the verse in the three-line blues form. That week I went to Chicago, and while there I sat in Brownlee's barber shop and wrote Loveless Love, beginning with "Love is like a gold brick in a bunko game." There I wrote the music and made an orchestration which I took next door to Erskin Tate in the Vendome Theatre. His orchestra played it over, and it sounded all right. A copy was immediately sent to the printers.
Without waiting to receive a printed copy, however, I taught Loveless Love to Alberta Hunter, and she sang it at the Dreamland caberet. It made a bull's-eye. Before Alberta reached my table on the night she introduced the song, her tips amounted to sixty-seven dollars. A moment later I saw another lady give her twelve dollars for "just one more chorus." I knew then and there that we had something on our hands and the later history of the song bore this out."
WC Handy's Loveless Love Katherine Handy - Loveless Love is on YouTube. "This is one of the earliest recordings (Jan., 1922 for Paramount) of this moving composition by William Christopher Handy. In spite of the relatively poor sound quality, this song is obviously brilliantly performed by his daughter Katherine and Handy's Memphis Blues Orchestra, directed by W. C. Handy." Handy's 1925 folk version (Version 6) was recorded by Bessie Smith.
Here are the 1921 lyrics from WC Handy:
LOVELESS LOVE- Billie Holiday
Listen: Billie Holiday- Loveless Love
Love is like a hydrant turns off and on,
Like some friendships when your money's gone.
Love stands in with the loan sharks,
When your heart's in throngs.
It I had some strong wings like an aeroplane
Had some broad wings like an aeroplane.
I would fly away forever
Never to come again.
For love oh love oh loveless love
Has said our hearts are goalless gold
From milkless milk and silkless silk
We are growing used to soulless souls
Such grafting times we never saw
That's why we have a Pure Food Law
In everything we find a flaw
Even love, oh love, oh loveless love.
[solo]
TAG: Just to fly away from loveless love
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