Song Analysis - Medley: Pick A Bale Of Cotton/On Top Of Old Smokey/Midnight Special

 In mid 1975, ABBA had the opportunity to partake in a compilation album of traditional folk songs, most of which were public domain tracks, from various countries titled "Stars Im Zeichen Eines Guten Sterns", which roughly translates to "Stars In The Sign Of A Good Star".  ABBA were among several different artists included on this album, like Lars Berghagen, James Last, and Karel Gott to name a few. 

For this album, ABBA chose to sing a medley of three American songs, specifically Pick A Bale Of Cotton, On Top Of Old Smokey, and Midnight Special.   When Bjorn was in his folk group The Hootenanny Singers, he and his band mates primarily sang traditional American folk songs, so this seemed right up his alley.

All three of these songs are traditional folk songs with no known songwriters or composers to the songs.  The earliest known references to the songs appear to be from the 1920s and earlier, with a lot of these songs having originated amongst prisoners and/or slaves in the American South.  

The earliest known recorded version of Pick A Bale Of Cotton appears to be by Lead Belly and The Golden Gate Quartet, in 1941, though according to a very cool in depth look at these songs on ABBA's official website, it's mentioned that the first recording was by John A. Lomax and his son in the 1930s.  

Then we have have On Top Of Old Smokey, with the earliest recorded version being by George Reneau from October, 1925.  Though the song seems to have become most popularized in 1951 when The Weavers and Terry Gillykson released it.  

Finally, Midnight Special had it's first known recording by Dave Cutrell with McGinty's Oklahoma Cow Boy Band in 1926, though it appears to have been adapted from another traditional song, Let The Church Go On.

All three of these songs have a lot of interesting history to them, and as much as I'd like to delve further into them, I don't really feel like it or feel like analyzing the lyrical content because they're not by ABBA, and I mostly only want to talk about ABBA on this blog.  Still I wanted to give a brief history to these songs because I think it's important to know.  Not in anyway trying to put down these songs of course. 

I think ABBA really gave it their all for these performances.  They really ABBA-fied these tracks, adding a touch of, in 70s terms, modern pop and rock.  All four members sing Pick A Bale Of Cotton with a bit of a back-and-forth between both As and Bs, reminisce of ABBA's first song together, People Need Love, with the back and forth singing but a completely different style.  Though Agnetha and Frida sing more of the song than the boys do.  Then for On Top Of Old Smokey, Frida sings lead, however Agnetha sort of harmonizes with her kind of in the same style of harmony that they use in the verses of Fernando, at least to me that's what it reminds me of.  And then with Midnight Special, Agnetha sings the first verse, Frida the second verse, and then both singing the chorus together.  ABBA don't really have any songs with Agnetha singing one verse and Frida singing the next.  Most of their songs feature one member on lead vocals and the other(s) harmonizing with them. or just Agnetha and Frida singing in unison.  The only other times that I can think of at this current moment when you have Agnetha and Frida alternating verses is during the 1975 tour when Frida sings the second verse of SOS, in If It Wasn't For The Nights when in the first pre-chorus??? Agnetha sings "So baaaaaad" and then in the second pre-chorus Frida sings "So baaaaad", and the Name Of The Game when they each sort of have their own sections of the songs.  Agnetha sings the "I was an impossible case..." section solo and Frida sings the "...I'm a bashful child, beginning to grow..." section. 

Of the three tracks, I really like Midnight Special, especially as one of the As does a little ad lib "woo" or scream in the last 20 seconds of the song as it begins to fade out.  It's really quiet, hard to hear at times, but it's so unusual for ABBA to have one of those in their songs.  The closest ABBA song I can think of to have a scream like that is King Kong Song, but the context is completely different.

Even though this medley of songs was originally released in 1975, ABBA chose to release it as the b-side to Summer Night City in 1978.  I honestly don't quite know why they chose to release it then as it doesn't quite match up with Summer Night City at all, lol, but I'm guessing similar to when ABBA chose to release Crazy World, which was recorded in 1974, as the b-side to Money Money Money from 1976, they needed some track to put on the b-side and decided that this medley would make a fine choice.  I can't say I agree, but you know, it did add some more interest to the track and I guess they were proud of their work on the medley, agreeing that it deserved to be an official ABBA release.

ABBA recording and performing, or even officially releasing songs not written by them is a very rare occurrence.  This Medley is the only official ABBA release of songs not written by them.  Still, I have a roughly 10 minute long compiling some of the few times when ABBA did the sing non-ABBA songs.