it's not Julie Christie's version of "Bushes and Briars" (actually voiced by Isla Cameron, song advisor on Far From Madding Crowd) that DJ Seduction and Bumble sampled (Bumble first, then sampled by Seduction, presumably?).... So whose version was it? Nobody seems to know...
info about the song scooped off the net:
The song "Bushes and Briers" was 'collected' by Ralph Vaughan Williams at Ingrave, Essex, on 4th December, 1903, from the singing of Mr Charles Pottipher, a seventy-year-old labourer.
"Vaughan Williams had been specifically invited by the local Vicar's daughters to attend an old people's tea-party their father was giving, so that he could meet some real traditional singers. In fact, he only noted the first verse of Bushes and Briars from Mr. Pottipher, being then new to song-collecting, and later got the rest of the words from a broadside published by Fortey of Seven Dials." (from the Mudcat thread, below)
The Essex version is perhaps the best known because of its inclusion in the film of Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd".
LYRICS:
Through Bushes and through briars
I lately took my way
All for to hear the small birds sing
And the lambs to skip and play
I overheard my own true love
Her voice it was so clear
"Long time I have been waiting for
The coming of my dear
Sometimes I am uneasy
And troubled in my mind
Sometimes I think I'll go to my love
And tell to him my mind
But if I should go to my love
My love he would say nay!
If I show to him my boldness
He'll ne'er love me again."
The words are different in the version used by Bumble and Seduction:
"sport and play" rather than "skip and play"
never knew this existed
I remember this tune (Sub Dub) from 'back in the day'. As a then 12-year-old, I knew the tune of Brushes and Briars, I'm sure, as it seemed very familiar to me. Over the years I'd thought of that tune and had just assumed it was Steeleye Span or someone like that that was sampled, as they would've been 'big' in the 80s, thereby causing me to know it. Aaaaaanyway, so recently the DJ Shadow song Sad And Lonely reminded me of it once more so I started trying to find the B&B sample used by DJ Seduction too and, same as you, knew it wasn't any of the ones thrown up by youtube etc etc. Because it had seemed such a familar folk tune to me, I was surprised that it wasn't more widely recorded.
ReplyDeletewhosampled.com comes up a blank too, which suggests Bumble recorded the vox themselves? http://www.whosampled.com/Bumble/West-in-Motion/
Just found this, is you didn't inthe end... http://www.eveningoflight.nl/2013/08/17/bushes-and-briars-a-brief-raving-folk-history/
ReplyDeleteApparently it was Breda Maycock!
Brilliant, thanks!
ReplyDeleteI always assumed it was maddy prior or June tabor. Son surprised to hear the song in far from the madding crowd although knew it wasn't the sampled version
ReplyDeleteThe vocal was not sampled. As Anonymous suggested above, we (Bumble) did record Breda Mayok for the record. All the traditional musicians were recorded rather than sampled. With regard to the lyrics, the lines that Breda sang were "for to hear the young birds singing and the lambs to sport and play".
ReplyDelete