Peter Blood (1)

I have always had a love-hate relationship with this book. I've had the first edition, used it until it's in shreds & I now have a larger print "songleader's copy."

For every bit of praise, I have a complaint. Let me grouse first, praise later:
The chords are wonky, weird, incomplete, in odd keys, and inappropriate in way too many places. Having been in a song circle lead by the author/editor, I understand a bit better - this is NOT the world's most accomplished guitarist or accompanist - show more like me, he's a person who wants to sing. A weakness of this book is that it's the editor's repertoire, and along with the many that are in the general folk consciousness, there's a considerable whack of them that are obscure.

In using it, I've checked the chords (and lyrics) against published versions of the music, and replaced them with appropriate ones, note my singable keys, etc. I most find fault when what's in the book doesn't match the sheet music FROM THE AUTHORS. I have the sheet music published by the authors for a great number of the contemporary songs, and while the appropriate author citations are made, quite a bit of the time that has NOT meant that the chords as written were used in this book.

Another gratuitous tweaking is putting chords to songs that the songwriters intend to be acapella. I've always heard Sally Rogers sing her "Lovely Agnes" acapella, and I KNOW that in Songs from Fogarty's Cove, Stan Rogers clearly marks "Barrett's Privateers" as acapella.

A last gripe about the book, is not something that's the author's responsibility: because this book exists, there are groups of people who use it like the Holy Writ. If it's not in the book, they won't sing it. If it is in the book, they MUST sing it THAT way. The idea of this book floated around for years: I have several books that are nearly prototypes, but this book really correlated a vast amount of music, organized it and got it out to a general audience. I'd even started my own fake book of the songs I wanted to learn. The author's intent seemed to be to make it easier for folks to sing and play the songs they "sort of" know.

It's a grand tool as a quick reference fake book: it's a book I adapt, correct, and.use perhaps once a week. Organizing by concepts/then alphabetically is brilliant in helping to find songs quickly. It's a great thing to hand someone who says "oh I don't know any folk songs" and they find something they DO know almost immediately and start to sing. It expands the joy of group singing beyond folk, yet it includes some ancient songs: the range is impressive. Having it spiral bound made it incredibly convenient. Publishing a larger type edition was a great service for visibility. Having recorded versions of the songs available made the obscure songs accessible.To work this out and document it must have been a mammoth task, and there are singers all over the world who are grateful, myself among 'em. show less

nonfic/music history. As mentioned in other reviews, there is no sheet music to this compilation, only lyrics and chord progressions, so if you don't already know or can't find a sample of the actual tune elsewhere you're out of luck. But there are so many popular songs in here (and a serviceable index searchable by subject, cultural background, title and artist), you're bound to know many of them already, and (as the editors point out) publishing all of these 1200 songs with sheet music show more would have been very bulky, and much more expensive because of the copyrights.
I didn't find it that useful for my purposes, but it is a valuable resource for some of the rarer folk and traditional songs that might have gotten lost without such a record. show less

First became aware of this book advertised in 'Sing Out' magazine, and was attracted to the promise of a deep well of classic songs of the various folk history lexicons. At the time, I was a rudimentary guitar player, followed the suggested chord patterns, but eventually, was able to adapt to more suitable keys and to add additional chords where applicable.

Biggest benefit was to learn a number of songs that were unknown to me, but proved to be useful building blocks for my development as an show more amateur musiclolgist/songwriter. show less

This is a great collection of song lyrics, but I find the lack of musical notation is a major drawback. You have to already know the tunes pretty well to use this book for singing, but it's a pretty good reference even if you can't remember the tunes.