I have chosen The Cuckoo Bird as this week’s tune/song. It is also called "The Coo Coo Bird" or just "The Cuckoo" or "The Coo Coo". It seems to be a popular tune/song and there are a lot of versions out there. Most banjo versions today seem to be more or less based on Clarence Ashley’s version. However, I will not focus this presentation on his version; instead I will try to bring some other interesting version.
The bird
The Cuckoo, or common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) (formerly European cuckoo), is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, Cuculiformes, which includes also several other species. The cuckoo is a widespread summer migrant to Europe and Asia, and winters in Africa. The common cuckoo is 32–34 centimetres (13–13 in) long from bill to tail (with a tail of 13–15 centimetres (5.1–5.9 in) and a wingspan of 55–60 centimetres (22–24 in). The legs are short. It is greyish with a slender body and long tail and can be mistaken for a falcon in flight, where the wingbeats are regular. During the breeding season, common cuckoos often settle on an open perch with drooped wings and raised tail. Males weigh around 130 grams (4.6 oz) and females 110 grams (3.9 oz). The cuckoo is a brood parasite, which means it lays eggs in the nests of other bird species, particularly of dunnocks, meadow pipits, and Eurasian reed warblers.
We have the cuckoo in Sweden and it use to come to our place around the May 18th every year and we can hear its call: Cuckoo cuckoo. It is one of the sign saying that summer soon will come. The cuckoo stays here till August when it migrates to Africa to survive the winter. It is easy to hear the cuckoo, but it is more difficult to watch it. It is shy and is hiding among the tree tops.
If I have understood right, you don’t have the cuckoo in North America.
The male's call, "goo-ko", is usually given from an open perch. During the breeding season the male typically gives this call with intervals of 1–1.5 seconds, in groups of 10–20 with a rest of a few seconds between groups. The female has a loud bubbling call. The song starts as a descending minor third early in the year in April and May, and the interval gets wider, through a major third to a fourth as the season progresses, and in June-July the cuckoo "forgets its tune" and may make other calls such as ascending intervals. Also the cuckoo seems to have a form of absolute pitch as it tends to sing in the key of C. Here are some examples of how the cuckoo sounds in Swedish:
http://www.server2345.dk/files/Fil275_Goeg.mp3
http://vetamix.net/audio/g%C3%B6kens-l%C3%A4te_2150
In Europe, hearing the call of the common cuckoo is regarded as the first harbinger of spring. Many local legends and traditions are based on this. In Scotland, a number of Gowk Stones exist, sometimes associated with the arrival of the first cuckoo of spring. "Gowk" is an old name for the common cuckoo in northern England, derived from a harsh repeated "gowk" call the bird makes when excited.In Sweden we call it "gök". There is also folklore that the cuckoo could tell the fortunes. There is a rhyme that goes (in Swedish):
södergök är dödergök / västergök är bästergök / östergök är tröstergök /och norrgök är sorggök which roughly can be translated as
Cuckoo in the south, is a message about death / cuckoo in the west, is the best / cuckoo in the east gives consolation / and cuckoo in the north calls sorrows and grief
In Swedish Cuckoo (in Swedish "Gök") is also used for a shot of vodka in the coffee (also called Swedish Coffee):
The Tune
The Cuckoo is a perfect example of a non-narrative song with a very complex and old history. As early as the 13th-century, the cuckoo bird made his appearance in an English round song sung in a Wessex dialect called “Sumer is Icumen In” which translate to “Summer has come in”. The origins of the banjo song may reach back to an Irish Street Ballade “The Noble Skew Ball” printed in 1822.
Like many other English songs and ballads, The Cuckoo crossed over the ocean and found its place in the American folk repertoire. In the Appalachian mountains, the song survived in different forms: For some, usually women, it remained a lyrical song about lost love and the inconstancy of lovers. However, many men in the mountains would add some verses about gambling and rambling and turn it to a banjo song.
An interesting fact is that it has been played and recorded by both white banjoists (Clarence Ashley and Hobart Smith) and black banjoists (John Snipes, Dink Roberts and Rufus Casey).
Most of the versions have a similar construction. They start with the “bird call part” – the high part, and then there is one or several verses sung to a very simple melody, with the bird call coming back as breaks between the verses. The banjo versions are played in sawmill tuning, but the pitch may differ from player to player.
Clarence Ashley
Clarence Ashley recorded the Coo Coo Bird in 1929. I think there is two different recordings by him from the 1920’s (in New Lost City Rambler’s Song Book I can read that he first recorded it with Byrd Moore’s Hot Shots and later with the Carolina Tar Heels). Here is one of the recordings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvJ6M0Oz0lU
After the revival of Old Time Music in the 1960’s performed the Coo Coo. Here is a well known Youtube clip from an outdoor performance in a garden or park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwlOO8RG-og (there is also an interview in the video).
Hobart Smith
Hobart Smith’s version of Cuckoo Bird is a very hard-driving and rhythmically exciting version. His “double-noting” technique contributes to this sound. Smith begins his Cuckoo version with his take on the “bird call” motive. His interpretation is very similar to Ashley’s, but includes an extra beat making the measure a group of 5 beats instead of 4. There are two recordings available from the 1960, by Lomax and by Fleming Brown. I don't know which version these two links are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj22m9f-sFw
http://oldweirdamerica.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/03-the-cuckoo-bird.mp3
There is also a nice a capella version by his sister Texas Gladen:
Black Banjo Songsters
The Album Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia contains three interesting versions of The Coo Coo:
John Snipes ’ “Coo Coo” is the only performance in the Cuckoo genus that does not include lyrics. Snipes’s performance is a mellow, haunting stroll through shifting time signatures and motivic fragments. Snipes performs the tune on a fretless banjo so he is able to play with the intonation of the F-naturals / F-sharps and B-flats / B-naturals to create a distinctive harmonic fingerprint.
Dink Roberts s version of the song is quite different from the others. Instead of jumping into the rhythmic groove for the song, Roberts plays a short blues riff-based introduction before beginning the rhythmic part of the song as the others do with his unique variation on the “bird call” part. His version of the bird call takes the G-F aspect of the others and exaggerates. His version rocks back and forth from G to F# (others use F natural) over and over until finally breaking loose and making the characteristic descent to the lower strings. His playing at many points feels like a run on sentence, or like a record that skips and gets stuck on one or two notes before moving forward.
Rufus Casey's “Coo Coo Bird” s also the longest of all the versions clocking in at 4:45, giving the listener more time to digest his complex web of lyrics and licks.Kasey begins as all the others do–with the “bird call” motive in the banjo part, which is characterized by a descending lick beginning with the high G and moving through the notes of the minor pentatonic scale to be used throughout the tune (with special emphasis on the high G and F alternation). Kasey, unlike Ashley and Smith, does not return to the “bird call” motive in between versus. Rather, he inserts other filler licks between the verses. Kasey barrels through the lyrics and finally at the end of the recording comes back to the “bird call” theme. The final 1:40 of the track is without vocals. It serves as a kind of much-needed instrumental coda after hearing all the lyrics in rapid succession.
On Digital Library Of Appalachian there is also a recording by John Lawson Tyree . As with all the versions, Tyree begins with a variation on the “bird call”. Tyree’s variation is very similar to Clarence Ashley’s–it shares the same contour, note choice, and even meter. In this version, the bird call motive begins the song and then appears twice more during the tune to break up the disjunct lyrics Tyree sings.
The Bird Call motive
Common for all versions above is that they all contain some variation of the so-called bird call motive. On the site Banjology there is a comparison between the different versions in music notation. The following analysis is taken from that site. This motive or A part of the tune comes at the beginning of each version and then repeats at various times during each performance. The “bird call” motive involves a repeated interval that could be mimicking the actual Cuckoo bird. (For example, the Common Cuckoo’s bird call is characterized by a repeated interval of a minor third from higher note to lower note in a short-long rhythm. above for an audio clip of a Common Cuckoo. In Ashley’s version, it is seen in the upbeat to each measure where there is an oscillation between D and G. Smith’s and Tyree’s versions are very similar in how they use the D to G interval as the recurrent one. Roberts and Snipes, however, use G and F (between F-natural and F-sharp) to create this oscillation. Rufus Kasey’s version does not include this kind of oscillation, but it quite similar to the others in how it descends from the high G to the low G. All versions involve this descent from the high G that moves through the notes of the scale to be used in the performance. An interesting difference between Ashley’s and Smith’s versions is how Smith adds in an extra beat in the middle of the measure. Instead of descending G-F-D-C-Bb-G followed by an upbeat leading back to the high G, Smith adds an extra D-C-Bb, thereby creating a measure of five-beat length instead of the more common four beats. This “hiccup” in Smith’s version adds to the intense drive and forward propulsion of the tune. Roberts’ and Snipes’ variations are interesting in how they use F#s and in how they oscillate between the two highest notes before making their descent.
Comment: I think that neither of the musicians ever have heard a cuckoo bird in real life. I have difficulties to hear the cuckoo in their playing.
More information, recordings, tabs, etc
There are two sites that contains a lot of information about The Cuckoo or The Coo Coo.
Banjology contains sound clips and music transcription of all the versions above. The music transcriptions are good, but the tabs are not accurate – the tab may show the right note but often it shows wrong information of how the note or which string is played. There is also some interesting analyzes of the tunes (I stole a lot of the text from there).
The Old Weird America contains mp3s of several version, both banjo and non-banjo, for example by Janis Joplin and Jean Ritchie and several others.Several of the audio links above is to this site.
Some other nice versions are:
Dan Levenson (in the Clawhammer Tunetirial serie):
Rocket Science Banjo contains a chapter about the cuckoo rolls (rasgueado) used by Clarence Ashley.
I have put just added two own tabs in the tab archive:
Clarence Ashley from his 1929 recording
Hobart Smith from the recording by Alan Lomax