When I was at school, I borrowed a balalaika (souvenir of a Russian school cruise) from another kid, in order to play a self-penned song called Boris and his Balalaika, which used the only three chords I knew on guitar in 1969. I reckoned it couldn’t be harder to play on three strings than six, and would be more authentic for the youth club social.
As I carried it with me into the chemistry lab, the eyes of our Ukrainian emigre lab technician, Mr Kalanowski (who had fled to Britain after World War Two to escape Stalin), lit up. And there and then he taught me a Russian folk tune (with some equally Russian lyrics), the former of which I incorporated into my song as an instrumental break. It’s not the kind of song I would want to keep singing now, but I’ve always been slightly proud that I know a genuine Russian tune for the quintessential Russian instrument – that is, I can say I play the balalaika. I am an ethnic musician.
That is, I was until today, when I heard the same tune, in the same tuning (but for guitar) on YouTube. It turns out that the song Mr Kalanowski no doubt learned on the battle-front during World War Two was actually written by one Henry Worrall, for ladies to play on their small guitars, during the nineteenth century. Worrall was born in Liverpool, but emigrated to America where he led an interesting life in both visual and musical arts. Some of his tunes were published by Ditson, then the distributor for Martin guitars, and were included in the books they sent out with instruments as the nineteenth century equivalent of Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day. Unrecognisably altered, the tune eventually found its way into the repertoires of blues guitarists like Mississippi John Hurt.
And the title of this British/American tune that found its way to both Southern black share-croppers and the Red Army’s soldiers, toting balalaikas rather than shovels in that war?
It was called Spanish Fandango.
Insight and funny that a American black would play a song everyone would think is from the cotton fields . Its always like this. i find the winners in music always know the top songs of all music types and use them secretly or openly.
Good example of that – B. B. King had a classic hit with How Long Blues. It was actually written by a white Londoner, Leonard Feather! Thus proving that blue men can indeed sing the whites.