The Drunken Sailor and other Kids Favourites

The Drunken Sailor and other Kids Favourites is an album by Tim Hart and Friends.

This album is even more fun than Tim Hart's first collection "My Very Favourite Nursery Rhymes". There is a greater variety in treatment - "Hush Little Baby" is sung as a calypso, with the tune of "Island in the Sun" on oil-drums creeping in at the end. Melanie Harold's "A Fox Jumped Up" has a bouncy hodown fiddle, though there is no credit given for any fiddler. Brian Golbey does a comic-lugubrious version of "Clementine" with steel guitar accompaniment. (Brian had also been present on the first "Silly Sisters" album.) "What shall We Do With Drunken Sailor" is out-an-out disco a la Boney M. "Who Killed Cock Robin" has Maddy Prior double tracking in a very high pitched voice. Notable uilleann pipes player Davy Spillane plays, apprioriately, on the Irish song "Cockles and Mussels". Maddy does a duet with Melanie Harold on "Michael Finnegal", to the sound of mandolas and mandolins (or perhaps they are synthesisers).

EMI released an hour-long cassette called "Favourite Nursery Rhymes" in 1985. It contained all these tracks except "Widdecombe Fair" and "Curly Locks". It also contained all but two tracks from "My Very Favourite Nursery Rhymes". In their place there was a new track - "Humpty Dumpty". In 1989 EMI/Music For Pleasure released a 3-CD set called "The Children's Collection". One CD consisted of a different selection of these tracks. The same two tracks were missing from "The Drunken Sailor", but all the tracks from "My Very Favourite Nursery Rhymes" were present. Running time about 35 minutes. Despite the commercial appeal of these tracks they have not been publicly available since 1989. Producer Tim Hart. Engineer Dave Bascombe, Jerry Boys. Recorded 1983

Track listing

LP - side one
# "Over The Hills And Far Away" (Trad)
# "A Fox Jumped Up" (Trad)
# "Clementine" (Trad)
# "Three Jolly Rogues Of Lynn" (Trad)
# "Who Killed Cock Robin?" (Trad)
# "Cockles and Mussels" (Trad)
# "Hush Little Baby" (Trad)

LP - side two
# "What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?" (Trad)
# "The Riddle Song" (Child Ballad 1) (Trad)
# "Michael Finnigan" (Trad)
# "Widecombe Fair" (Trad)
# "Froggy's Courting" (Trad)
# "Curly Locks" (Trad)

personnel

* Maddy Prior (vocals)
* Melanie Harrold (vocals)
* Brian Golbey (vocals)
* Gina Fullerlove (french horn)
* B.J. Cole (steel guitar)
* Rick Kemp (bass)
* Spike Fullerlove (vocals)
* Tamsey Kaner (cello)
* Lea Nicholson (concertina)
* Steve Noble (percussion)
* Debbie Paul (vocals)
* Andy Richards (synthesisers)
* Beverly Jane Smith (vocals)
* Davy Spillane (uillean pipes)
* The Livingston Hooray Ensemble (chorus).