It was a gem of a song among an album of mainly nondescript film plot songs for the film which was released in 1964. The film's plot revolves around "The U.S. government wanting to build a missile silo inside a Tennessee mountain, but the backwoods hillbillies who own it refuse to lease it to them"
Presley plays two parts in the film and even fights his own look a like - a GI scout and his lookalike hillbilly cousin!
Tender Feeling was written by - or rather adapted from - Shenandoah, with new lyrics by songwriting team Giant Baum and Kaye who penned Devil in Disguise. The song structure is AABA where A = a verses, B = the Bridge. Shenandoah became a film itself shortly afterwards in 1965, starring Jimmy Stewart.
Shenandoah is a sea shanty, logging song, fur traders’ ballad. Some lyrics of this song heard before 1860 tell the story of a fur trader who fell in love with the daughter of the Oneida Iroquois pine tree chief Shenandoah . Paul Robeson famously recorded Shenandoah but the earliest recorded version is by Albert Campbell & Henry Burr 1917.
Shenandoah was first printed as part of William L. Alden's article "Sailor Songs", in the July 1882 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. There have been several lyric sets to Shenandoah.The lyrics refer to the Native American chief and the missouri not the later adaption in Virginia of the Shenandoah Valley. and river.
Tender Feeling follows an AABA song pattern where A = a verse and B = the Bridge or middle / contrasting section. The original song seems to be an AAA pattern - ie verses without a bridge section, which is one of the musical / lyrical differences between Tender Feeling and Shenandoah.
Shenandoah
" Oh Shenandoah (also called simply Shenandoah, or Across the Wide Missouri) is a traditional American folk song of uncertain origin, dating at least to the early 19th century. The song is number 324 in the Roud Folk Song Index, but is not listed amongst the Child Ballads.
The lyrics may tell the story of a roving trader in love with the daughter of an Indian chief; in this interpretation, the rover tells the chief of his intent to take the girl with him far to the west, across the Missouri River. Other interpretations tell of a pioneer's nostalgia for the Shenandoah River Valley in Virginia, or of a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War, dreaming of his country home in Virginia. The provenance of the song is unclear. The song is also associated with escaped slaves. They were said to sing the song in gratitude because the river allowed their scent to be lost.
The song had become popular as a sea chanty with sailors by the 1880s. Alfred Mason Williams' 1895 Studies in Folk-song and Popular Poetry called it a "good specimen of a bowline chant". In his 1931 book on sea and river chanteys entitled Capstan Bars, David Bone wrote that "Oh Shenandoah" originated as a river chanty or shanty and then became popular with sea-going crews in the early 19th century.
The U.S. congressman for Missouri Ike Skelton noted in 2005 that local artist George Caleb Bingham immortalized the jolly flatboatmen who plied the Missouri River in the early 19th century; these same flatboatmen were known for their chanties, including the lovely "Oh Shenandoah". This boatmen's song found its way down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to the American clipper ships, and thus around the world." Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Shenandoah
The lyrics to the varying versions of Shenandoah can be viewed by following the above Wikipedia link - Oh Shenandoah. As per the folk / blues oral traditions, lyrics and melodies weren't etched in stone back then before the commercialisation of popular music and varied place to place, time to time.
Here's Paul Robeson's version.
The Shenandoah Valley history - This area in Virginia isn't the setting for Shenandoah which mentions 'the wide missouri" - but has somehow adopted the name. "“Everything had a thrifty look,” wrote a Confederate soldier in the Shenandoah Valley in 1861. “The horses and cattle were fat and sleek; the large barns were overflowing with the gathered crops; the houses looked comfortable; and the fences were in splendid order. It was a truly a land of milk and honey.” Read more here http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2011/06/03/the-shenandoah-valley-in-1861-imperiled-land-of-milk-honey/
As for Tender Feeling - the Kissin' Cousin's screenplay was set in the Great Smoky Mountain range
Tender Feeling follows an AABA song pattern where A = a verse and B = the Bridge or middle / contrasting section. The original song seems to be an AAA pattern - ie verses without a bridge section, which is one of the musical / lyrical differences between Tender Feeling and Shenandoah.
Shenandoah
" Oh Shenandoah (also called simply Shenandoah, or Across the Wide Missouri) is a traditional American folk song of uncertain origin, dating at least to the early 19th century. The song is number 324 in the Roud Folk Song Index, but is not listed amongst the Child Ballads.
The lyrics may tell the story of a roving trader in love with the daughter of an Indian chief; in this interpretation, the rover tells the chief of his intent to take the girl with him far to the west, across the Missouri River. Other interpretations tell of a pioneer's nostalgia for the Shenandoah River Valley in Virginia, or of a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War, dreaming of his country home in Virginia. The provenance of the song is unclear. The song is also associated with escaped slaves. They were said to sing the song in gratitude because the river allowed their scent to be lost.
The song had become popular as a sea chanty with sailors by the 1880s. Alfred Mason Williams' 1895 Studies in Folk-song and Popular Poetry called it a "good specimen of a bowline chant". In his 1931 book on sea and river chanteys entitled Capstan Bars, David Bone wrote that "Oh Shenandoah" originated as a river chanty or shanty and then became popular with sea-going crews in the early 19th century.
The U.S. congressman for Missouri Ike Skelton noted in 2005 that local artist George Caleb Bingham immortalized the jolly flatboatmen who plied the Missouri River in the early 19th century; these same flatboatmen were known for their chanties, including the lovely "Oh Shenandoah". This boatmen's song found its way down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to the American clipper ships, and thus around the world." Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Shenandoah
The lyrics to the varying versions of Shenandoah can be viewed by following the above Wikipedia link - Oh Shenandoah. As per the folk / blues oral traditions, lyrics and melodies weren't etched in stone back then before the commercialisation of popular music and varied place to place, time to time.
Here's Paul Robeson's version.
The Shenandoah Valley history - This area in Virginia isn't the setting for Shenandoah which mentions 'the wide missouri" - but has somehow adopted the name. "“Everything had a thrifty look,” wrote a Confederate soldier in the Shenandoah Valley in 1861. “The horses and cattle were fat and sleek; the large barns were overflowing with the gathered crops; the houses looked comfortable; and the fences were in splendid order. It was a truly a land of milk and honey.” Read more here http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2011/06/03/the-shenandoah-valley-in-1861-imperiled-land-of-milk-honey/
Shenandoah Valley and river
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| Moonlight on the Shenandoah, engraving by J.D. Woodward From this site on the Shenandoah river - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenandoah_River |
As for Tender Feeling - the Kissin' Cousin's screenplay was set in the Great Smoky Mountain range
seen here -
1 comment:
I love Shenandoah but am totally captivated by Elvis' Tender Feeling. Doesn't get any better than that.
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