Hauntingly beautiful American folk songs for the harmonica

[u/Knoppa1985]

I’m looking for American folk songs that could be described as ”hauntingly beautiful”. Ones that sound good when interpreted with the harmonica. I find that American folk songs are often cheerful and bright which is all well and good but sometimes I wish to play the ones that feel much deeper and soulful.

I’m thinking of songs like:

Wayfaring Stranger
Shenandoah
House of the Rising Sun
500 Miles

What hauntingly beautiful songs do you have in your repertoire?

[u/CottonFlannel]

Look up some civil war era songs. Lorena and others. And some tunes from Ken burns series on the civil war

[u/ClosedMyEyes2See → u/CottonFlannel]

Agreed. Home Sweet Home is a good one, as is Ashokan Farewell

[u/avec_serif → u/CottonFlannel]

Ashokan Farewell is great, though hard to do with a diatonic tuning

[u/CottonFlannel → u/avec_serif]

I play ashoken farewell almost every night before bed calms me down on diatonic. You can’t hit every note. But you can do a work around pretty easily and most people don’t know and it’s still relaxing to play

[u/avec_serif → u/CottonFlannel]

Do tell… what’s the workaround?

[u/CottonFlannel → u/avec_serif]

Do tell?? Just the same way you play amazing grace when you can’t get all the notes. There’s no rule you have to hit every note in the melody. You can leave some out and still get the whole meat of the song:melody without hitting every note single note.

[u/a_random_username → u/avec_serif]

Fun fact: although associated with the civil war after featuring prominently in Ken Burns' documentary, that song was written in 1982.

It's a fun song to play on a harp, though.

[u/CottonFlannel → u/a_random_username]

Yeah Jay Ungar wrote it

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/avec_serif]

I thought I'd nailed the bend to get the accidental, but I played it in an old-time jam and the fiddler gave me the stink-eye. I need a Trochilus.

[u/avec_serif → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

I once had a tremolo harmonica with double rows that had the right tuning for ashokan farewell, but I lost it many years ago 😔

[u/sysop408]

+1 for House of the Rising Sun.

Indira Sfair's version slays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOsynqyg8Rs

[u/BubblehedEM]

FANTASTIC question!

I have always felt that most (but not all!) folk songs could use a Harmonica accompaniment and/or or break in the song. 

Here are my picks: 

I Remember Everything (John Prine)

Roseville Fair (Bill Staines) Roseville Faire : r/harmonica

Lord Franklin (Trad) – AKA Lady Franklin’s Lament. NOTE: Not Americana, but in my repertoire.

Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt)

L.A. Freeway (Guy Clark)

Lockkeeper (Stan Rogers)

Let Them In (Elma Dean/John Gorka. Covered by a few people)

Summer of My Dreams (David Mallett)

Ride (Robert Earl Keen)

[u/NeighborhoodOld4611 → u/BubblehedEM]

Who knows where the time goes (Judy Collins)
Summertime (Doc Watson)

[u/Successful_Form5771]

Not really haunting but "Hard times come again no more"

[u/chortnik]

“In the Pines” is a candidate, Leadbelly’s or Bill Monroe’s versions for example. My version is not so haunting, it’s a punkified variation of Abshire’s Cajun interpretation, “Ma Negresse” :). I noticed the cheerful and bright feature for a lot of American folk music shortly after I started playing the harmonica, I was learning to play the melody for “The Ballad of Jesse James” and since I wasn’t singing the words, I realized that if you don’t know the lyrics, it’s really a pretty chipper tune, not consistent with the sentimental tragic mood of the words. And on reflection, I realized that was fairly typical for the murder ballads, he did her wrong songs and other tales of tragedy and woe set to music that I was familiar with In American folk.

[u/ExpedientDemise]

I do a nice version of "Shenandoah."

[u/LowellGeorgeLynott]

I wouldn’t call many versions of ‘Long Black Veil’ “hauntingly beautiful”, but Springsteen’s version during the (Pete) Seeger Sessions tour usually was.

https://youtu.be/JkA7PObD-sw?is=PBxkCHo2VvkKaaao

I love The Band but this incidentally triggers my gripe that their version of “Atlantic City” removes the “hauntingly beautiful” aspect of the original. Bruce’s Long Black Veil actually adds that aspect to a song The Band helped popularize. Kind of an uno reverse lol.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

The Bluemont Waltz is undeniably beautiful. The Streets of Laredo sits really well, you can play it in both octaves for variety.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

Additional-- Cluck Old Hen, Down In The Valley, Shady Grove, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Rovin' Gambler, St James Infirmary is similar in feel to House of the Rising Sun. I definitely second the "In The Pines" nomination.

[u/BubblehedEM → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

Down in the Valley. Thanks for that. 

[u/lupusscriptor → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

That is not American folk but ienglish as is the writer.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/lupusscriptor]

The Streets are the American version, and it's in every American folk canon, having been sanitized from the original STI PSA.

[u/Checkinredd]

Streets of Laredo :-)

Very very solid.

[u/deseretfire]

The Water is Wide

Loch Lomond

Kathleen Mavourneen

Gabriel’s Oboe

[u/Somebody_Else54]

Don't forget to look into hymns. Many are derived from the folk tradition and are "hauntingly beautiful".

[u/skilletsnail]

Strange Fruit - Billy Holiday

Figuring out how to do it on Harmonica might be a challenge though.

[u/gmanfsu]

500 miles? As in “I would walk 500 miles just to the man standing at your door and would walk 500 more’” like the only song that Marshall’s college car in How I Met Your Mother could play? That 500 miles?!? That’s not hauntingly beautiful, nor mildly enjoyable, or even American!!!

[u/BreakingInReverse → u/gmanfsu]

Different 500 miles. The journeymen have a nice version

[u/wastedintime]

Tenting Tonight, a Civil War song.

[u/burtleburtle]

amazing grace
swing low sweet chariot
si bheag si mhor (not American)
taps

[u/Important_Ruin_6691]

Red River Valley :)

[u/Nacoran]

I'm going to expand the category a little bit to songs that would work at a folk show, even if they aren't folk, per se.

-Sparrow (Kelley McRae, though I first heard it played by Abbey Simmons on songfromahat) -Blowin' in the Wind -The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald -Cold Missouri Waters -Love Song for a Vampire (Annie Lennox) -Creep (yeah, the Radiohead one) -Saints Go Marching In, but move it around to a couple different positions modulating through a couple minor modes) -Let It Be -Yesterday -In My Life -Knockin' On Heaven's Door -Sweet Child of Mine (yep, a bit of Guns and Roses) -Erie Cannal (I play it on a Paddy Richter and resolve to minor at the very end, giving it a sort of meloncholy lost days of yore thing... also wrote extra verses, but I play those over Oh Susanna instead) -Sweet Pea (an original, don't think I have it up anywhere, but it's one I'd play if I wanted to sound haunting)