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Dancing Bob
Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2025
Wish there was a LARGE PRINT version.
Debra
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2024
I love that the book contains the lyrics to so many songs of such a great variety of categories!
erinmaidin
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2023
My copy of this was near 30 years old and because I used it so often for referencing songs, had become quite bedraggled! A must have for anyone who enjoys singing and/or playing!
Albert
Reviewed in Canada on December 1, 2022
This is an awesome, must have collection for any musician. Lots of folk, pop, blues, etc Great for singalongs. The bigger version is more legible for us older folks but i still need my glasses.
shelley
Reviewed in Germany on April 20, 2022
This is a collection of classics in keys that are relatively easy to play (chords).
E. Foreman
Reviewed in Canada on September 19, 2018
This is a very practical book to own and I like the compactness of it. The series was originally developed to allow people to sing together in groups. It does require you to know the tune, as that is not included, but chords are. The keys chosen are easy ones to play in and are not hard to sing in either for most people. I discovered several tunes I didn't know before. On the one hand, these days, you could easily find most of these tunes on the internet, but I am tired of having a lot of loose paper around, and it's nice to be able to have a book you can easily take somewhere. I liked the spiral binding, which stays open nicely and seems to be good quality and unlikely to break. I think some of the song choices are a little strange every now and then, but was surprised at how many more modern songs are in there, like Feist's 1234, etc. Overall, I'm really pleased with it.
Judy Drobeck
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2015
I remember singing so many of these songs on family car trips or washing dishes with my sisters. At first my sisters taught me the songs they were singing in school, or my parents would teach us songs they grew up with, and then I started school and learned many American folks songs and traditional songs. One of our biggest challenges was remembering all the words to all the verses - or in some cases, understanding them correctly from the recordings we heard. As a new mother, I came across this book and fell in love with it. Just about any song you can think of that you learned growing up in the US is in this book -- with all the lyrics. You do not need to read music to enjoy this book, because only the Singing Games / Rounds have musical notation for the melody line. There are guitar chords for those who play, which makes it even better for bringing along on camping trips or to family reunions. But it is really all about the lyrics -- so we can continue the tradition of singing these songs. The book is completely sourced with the composer / lyricist for each piece, if known, and has multiple indices so that you can search contextually for songs (e.g., Holidays, Work, Lullabies, Spirituality, etc.). My favorite packaging of the book is the regular sized soft cover spiral bound version. I now buy this book for families who have new children or babies, to remind them to sing to their babies and with their children, and help them avoid the "I can never remember the words..." excuse!
IanJ
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 8, 2012
With the current situation with politicians etc, This collection of songs from the other side of the pond, endorsed by Pete Seeger gives an opportunity for us to get back together and SING OUT against the current mess- Massive range of tunes and easy to follow notation
TulMarin
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2010
I never thought that just paging through a book of lyrics and chords could repeatedly bring smiles to my face and warmth to my soul. The premise of this collection is that it is not there to teach you songs you don't know, but rather to enable you to sing and play songs that you do know by providing their words and basic chords. The authors' theory is that by providing 1200 total songs, even people who only know a relatively small percentage of them will have enough to keep themselves musically occupied.In my case, I found that I remembered way many more than I would have expected, and just happening upon their lyrics brought back memories of so much wonderful music from my life. I have no voice to mention and haven't picked up a guitar in ages, but paging through this book makes me want to dust off my cheesy old six-string and re-learn those simple chords from my youth so that I can give some of these tunes a whirl.While I haven't yet tried playing any of them, it is clear that the compilers went for simple basic chords that most amateurs could play and that would keep most singers on key. I suspect that in some cases, the professional versions of the songs rely on much more complex chording than what is provided here. But that's no problem--this is about singing great songs and having fun, not duplicating the performance of great musicians.The song that most thrilled me to see in here? "A Rosebud in June", a paean to Spring that I know as an acapella chant by British folksters Steeleye Span. I look at the lyrics and the song surges through my mind and body.Get this book and be happy!
J. LaTorre
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2008
This book is the one referred to as the "hymnal" by our informal sing-along group (I think one of he members picked it up from an autoharp class she had with Brian Bowers). It's a good description; we often find ourselves saying "Is such-and-such a song here? I'm sure it is, lemme see now ... ah. Turn your hymnals to page 62 ..."As Pete Seeger mentioned in the introduction, there's bound to be at least song you know on every page. It's true that there's a strong populist sentiment in the editing process (which some critics would label "leftist" or "socialist" or "liberal"). That's to be expected, since it sprang from the roots of the folk movement of the last mid-century, which sprang in turn from the union organizers and community organizers who were addressing serious social dysfunctions in their songs. And they paid heavily for the right to compose, sing, and teach these songs, often with their freedom and their blood, a fact which many have forgotten or found it convenient to ignore. I doubt you'll get any apologies for their inclusion here, and certainly not from me.But political-themed songs are a small minority here anyway, and they are easily outweighed by the lullabies, love songs and "fun songs" that cut across culture and politics. Even Rush Limbaugh would find some favorites here.My only minor quibbles with the book concern occasional mistakes in lyrics or attributions, which detract from its value as a reference (which it was never intended to be). It is also not for rank beginners; you won't always be able to figure out which chords go where, particularly if your acquaintance is with a different version of the song than the authors had. (Bob Dylan's version of "Blowin' in the Wind" and Peter, Paul and Mary's version used different chords for the same melody, so which one should we be using ... the author's version or the most popular cover of it?) But If you know the song, the annotations allow you to fake the accompaniment reasonably well.If you're playing an instrument, by the way, get the spiral-bound "Leader" version, which is the 9"x12" one. It's a lot easier to read from a few feet away, which is probably the distance from your eyes to your music stand.
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