The Blizzard
I found this 1860's poem by Eugene Ware, who wrote under the name Ironquill, in an ancient Colorado ranch scrapbook, and I put it to music. Vantoon was a popular card game of the day, similar to blackjack or 21, and an asphodel is a lily-like flower. When we recorded this, Flavia and I sat facing each other. I sang directly to her—she had never heard the song before—and then she responded with her violin. When Jim Rooney, our producer, suggested this, Flavia warned him it could get a little wild. “Let it take you wherever it wants to go,” he replied, and she followed it to the smoky shore where her mother waits.
Hal, unaccompanied vocal; Flavia, violin
It was midnight on the Cimeron, Not many a year ago
The blizzard was whirling pebbles and sand, and bellows of frozen snow
The fiddler improvised a tune, at times he would cease to play,
Then shutting his eyes, he sang and he sang in a wild ecstatic way.
Then ceasing his song, he whipped and whipped the strings with his frantic bow,
Releasing impatient music, first playing it loud then low
And this is the strange refrain, which he sang in a minor key,
No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea
Sittin’ on boxes and barrels, uncharmed by the fiddler’s tune,
The herders drank and they bet all night with their cartridges on vantoon
And once in while a player in a spirit of reckless fun
Would join in the fiddlers music, and fire off the fiddlers gun.
An old man sat on a sack of corn and stared with a vacant gaze
He had lost his hopes in the Gypsum Hills and he thought of the olden days
The tears came fast when the strange refrain came forth in a minor key
No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.
At morning the tempest ended, and the sun came back once more;
The old old man of the Gypsum Hills had gone to the smoky shore
They chopped him a grave in the frozen ground where the morning sunlight fell
With a restful look he held in his hand an invisible asphodel.
They filled up the grave and each herder said goodbye till the Judgement Day
But the fiddler stayed and he sang and he played as the herders walked away
A requiem in a lonesome land in a mournful minor key
No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.
© Hal Cannon 2011, H Random Music, ASCAP
Hal, unaccompanied vocal; Flavia, violin
It was midnight on the Cimeron, Not many a year ago
The blizzard was whirling pebbles and sand, and bellows of frozen snow
The fiddler improvised a tune, at times he would cease to play,
Then shutting his eyes, he sang and he sang in a wild ecstatic way.
Then ceasing his song, he whipped and whipped the strings with his frantic bow,
Releasing impatient music, first playing it loud then low
And this is the strange refrain, which he sang in a minor key,
No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea
Sittin’ on boxes and barrels, uncharmed by the fiddler’s tune,
The herders drank and they bet all night with their cartridges on vantoon
And once in while a player in a spirit of reckless fun
Would join in the fiddlers music, and fire off the fiddlers gun.
An old man sat on a sack of corn and stared with a vacant gaze
He had lost his hopes in the Gypsum Hills and he thought of the olden days
The tears came fast when the strange refrain came forth in a minor key
No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.
At morning the tempest ended, and the sun came back once more;
The old old man of the Gypsum Hills had gone to the smoky shore
They chopped him a grave in the frozen ground where the morning sunlight fell
With a restful look he held in his hand an invisible asphodel.
They filled up the grave and each herder said goodbye till the Judgement Day
But the fiddler stayed and he sang and he played as the herders walked away
A requiem in a lonesome land in a mournful minor key
No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.
© Hal Cannon 2011, H Random Music, ASCAP