"Old MacDonald Had a Farm" is a children's song and nursery rhyme about a farmer named MacDonald (or McDonald, Macdonald) and the various animals he keeps on his farm. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. In many versions, the song is cumulative, with the noises from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse.
The oldest version listed in The Traditional Ballad Index is the Sam Patterson Trio's "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," released on the Edison label in 1925. This was followed by a version by Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers, "Old McDonald Had a Farm" (Columbia Records, 1927) and "McDonald's Farm" by Warren Caplinger's Cumberland Mountain Entertainers (Brunswick Records, 1928). In 1954, the composition was arranged for accordion sextet and recorded for RCA Thesaurus transcriptions by John Serry, Sr. in the United States. Sophie Ellis-Bextor has performed a short excerpt of the song live. Other popular versions are by Frank Sinatra (Capitol, 1960), Harry Connick Jr., Elvis Presley (in his movie Double Trouble), Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald (on her 1967 Verve album Whisper Not)., Flatt & Scruggs, The Three Stooges, Sesame Street cast, Gene Autry, The Kelly Family and Nikki Yanofsky. The multi-platinum selling Kidsongs version recorded "A Day At Old MacDonald's Farm" for video and CD release in 1985. The Australian children's television show Play School recorded a version of this song on the album, There's A Bear In There.
No comments:
Post a Comment