Bob Lind's Message Board

I'd be interested to know who wrote the music for this song, if indeed the author is known as opposed to "traditional". I already know the words come from the poem "Song of the Wandering Aengus" by W B Yeats.

I tracked down two other recordings of the song, one by Judy Collins and one by Terry Callier, Neither offers any information about the authorship. Finding information about the song is made difficult by the multiple titles it seems to get given, as well as the fact that there are several other versions of "Golden Apples of the Sun" or "Song of the Wandering Aengus" with the same lyrics, but set to completely different tunes. There is one such version by Donovan, one by The Waterboys, and at least one other.

Good question, Bob Nos.

I'd like to know also.

I love the poem, and love Christy Moore's version as much as Lind's.

Beauty.

I always thought that Will Holt wrote the musical setting Judy Collins used, and that she learned it from him at The Gate of Horn in Chicago in the early '60s.

JimInNFLD wrote:I always thought that Will Holt wrote the musical setting Judy Collins used, and that she learned it from him at The Gate of Horn in Chicago in the early '60s.

I never heard of Will Holt. Any info?

bob_32_116 wrote:

JimInNFLD wrote:I always thought that Will Holt wrote the musical setting Judy Collins used, and that she learned it from him at The Gate of Horn in Chicago in the early '60s.

I never heard of Will Holt. Any info?

Wiki has info on him.

He was not only a Folk Singer/Song writer but wrote musicals for Broadway.

I am sorry to have taken so long away - Will Holt started out as a folkie in the late 'forties - early 'fifties. He was associated with Richard Dyer=Bennet, Vince Martin, Chad Mitchell - the list is actually very long. I have only two of his "folky" records - one on Coral (same label as Buddy Holly) and one on Elektra. He made at least five or six more LPs in the folk vein before becoming a writer for Broadway, film, and a bit of television. Hamilton Camp was another folk singer / song writer one thinks of in connection with Holt. Holt's best-known song is Lemon Tree: I am sure that everybody knows that one.

At any rate, I recall an interview with Judy Collins from way, way back where she casually mentioned Holt as the author of the melody she used on her second LP (Golden Apples of the Sun). This interested me at the time because the beautiful, haunting tune was not credited on the album sleeve or label and is definitely not a traditional folk melody. I think that interview was the same place I learned that Holt taught the tune to Collins in Chicago. Here in Newfoundland we had very good access to American folk recordings from about 1954 on.

Also - Dave Van Ronk did a show in Montreal in the late '60s in which he performed the song. He remarked that although somebody on the train told him that Collins herself had written the tune "I always thought Will Holt wrote it". And I believe that Dave was right.

And now the second part of the information that underlies my belief that Will Holt wrote that melody: Judy Collins' 1987 autobiographical book Trust Your Heart: on page 66 of the first edition hard cover she describes her first booking at the Gate of Horn, in the spring or summer of 1960. When she started, Holt and his wife Dolly Jonah were the main act, Collins was the opener. She writes that when she heard Holt sing The Song of Wandering Aengus "I had to sing the song; I was not myself without it."

This was before she had a record deal or had recorded anything at all, so the interview I remember has to be from 1962 (the year she recorded it on her second LP) or a bit later.

Reading what bob is quoted as saying about the writing of "Elusive Butterfly", I realise now that the two songs are basically about the same thing, i.e. the pursuit of something you feel you once had, have now lost, and chersih the hope of finding it again someday.

I heard Bob's rendition of "Wandering" recently on a radio program called "Golden Apples of the Sun". They have also been known to play another track from the album-that-dares-not-speak-its-name, namely "Black Night"; those two songs are probably the ones that suffer least from the bad production.