By popular request (any one person showing interest in Kelly is very popular with me), we take a look-see at Walt Kelly's take on the old saw, A Frog He Would a Wooing Go. Kelly did several versions that I'm aware of (it IS such a lively ditty). He drew these up for the little folk, but it sounds suspiciously like an old drinking song to me — with some ribald verses, I can hear the quaffing and rowdy clinking of pints in the background.
The two pages below are one of Kelly's earliest versions and is not related to Pogo, but is from the nursery song book that he illustrated. I'll get the other versions up soon as I pin em down and scan em.
Thanks Bruce for the request!
Walt Kelly — Complete Nursery Song Book
The song was allegedly a political satire in its earliest version, although when & why precisely it was written have been lost to the mists of time. It's a great folk standard that's been recorded by everyone from Guthrie to Blind Willie McTell to Springsteen. It's interesting that, while Kelly and Bob Dylan came from vastly opposite ends of the 1960s cultural spectrum, they probably could have conversed about folk music for days on end.
ReplyDelete~~Craig