O, Do Not Forsake Me
From This Might Be A Wiki
The song's original sheet music, transcribed by Wilbur Pauley of Hudson Shad
| song name | O, Do Not Forsake Me |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | John Henry, John Henry + Factory Showroom |
| year | 1994 |
| first played | April 21, 1993 (42 known performances) |
| run time | 2:30 |
| sung by | Hudson Shad |
Trivia/Info
- This song is performed by Hudson Shad, a vocal quintet from New York City that specializes in early 20th-century vocal harmony. At the time of recording, the group consisted of Wilbur Pauley (lead/bass), Peter Becker (bass baritone), Hugo Munday (baritone), Mark Bleeke (tenor) and William Douglas Vannice (tenor). The song's a cappella arrangement was written by Pauley, after John Flansburgh sang the melody to him over the phone. He described the process in 2020:[1]
I got a call from John [Flansburgh] on my answering machine; he'd heard us and wanted us to record a song he'd written for his group They Might Be Giants. I had no idea who they were, but I'm loathe to turn down offers of gainful employment. I called him back and, as I recall, he sang the song over the phone, just the melody. He said he wanted the solo alone, with a 'churchy' sound for the chorus and a descending 'countermelody' during the second verse. I arranged it pretty quickly, and I think we sent a demo. I believe we recorded [for the album] in early 1994.
Sometime after the album came out, they were playing Irving Plaza in NYC [in October 1994] and asked if we wanted to do a set ending with O Do Not Forsake Me, that would lead into their coming onstage. OK, five guys in tails with a harpsichordist playing an electric piano, sure, why not? ... As soon as we began O Do Not Forsake Me, the entire audience sang with us...they of course had bought the CD and knew every word! It was our debut with a 'rock' band.
- According to Pauley, the song was recorded in three takes over an hour or two.[2] It appears to have been Hudson Shad's first studio recording. Pauley recalled in a 2022 interview with the Don't Let's Start podcast:
What they talked about over the phone, it wasn't really that much different from reconstructing an early music piece or something like that. Five voices, a cappella. [Flansburgh] gave me the melody and that one little counter melody in the second verse. It's in D, basically. There's not really any place for it to get real real tricky. [...] It wasn't one of those sessions where you walk out bloody at the end of it. I recall that it was pretty easy, no more than a couple hours. [...] The backup lyrics, I did those myself. A lot of the times I'll do that with backup vocals. Because I've been on so many backup vocal gigs where you're just singing 'ooh' and 'ahh', why not do words? It's easier to memorize for one thing, and it's just more interesting.
- The original demo of this song, alternately referred to as the "Richard Reagan" or "Ronald Nixon" version, featured John Flansburgh singing in an exaggerated Richard Nixon impression. Flansburgh was reportedly dissatisfied with the demo's approach, and John Linnell, having recently attended one of their performances, suggested re-recording the song with Hudson Shad.[3] In a 1996 interview with Pitchfork, Flansburgh explained:
For the record, I sung the demo. I can sing all those notes, too, but I thought it'd be more interesting to hear somebody with like a really profound, bassy voice sing this song with all these theatrical qualities. If we were only making one record, it's probably be more like, "What are our personal expression? What about us?" But we've made a lot of records and I think we feel like it's okay to share the limelight.
- Flansburgh has stated that he was inspired to write the song after listening to an album by folk singer Ed McCurdy. He explained in a 1995 interview: "[McCurdy] has this really archaic way of singing, it's theatrically cobwebbed. And I was kind of falling under his spell listening to him... It sounded like he was from another time. [The song is about] being out of time, of traditions being lost, of ways of speaking becoming archaic. Getting somebody else to sing it sort of amplified the remoteness of the song. I don't think it was that important that we sing it." Flansburgh further elaborated on the song's influences in a 2022 Tumblr post:
As a little kid, I grew up around a lot of kind of traditional folk music which was about as ubiquitous in the 60s Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts as hip hop is in the streets of NYC today. There was a certain kind of very dramatic yet very austere way of presenting these tradition songs/murder ballads/etc that you can hear in recordings by Ed McCurdy of the Weavers on his own, John Jacob Miles, Oscar Brand and many other men and women who loomed large in that Cambridge Ma folk scene (which I guess was essentially a satellite of the West Village). Often with spare instrumentation or simply sung. I found that style very arresting and was really drawn to how direct and irreducible the presentation made the songs and the stories in them sound. Nothing to mishear! It also seemed extremmmmely old fashioned and kinda out of time. So O Do Not Forsake Me the song is really reflecting on that form. Hudson Shad brought a lot of extra color too it and I really appreciate the "otherness" of it. I suppose may folks would find it unpersuasive or not fun enough for a band they expect to be poppy, but I am proud of it.
- Live performances of the song were usually sung by Flansburgh. At one 1994 show, Hudson Shad joined the band onstage to perform it. Wilbur Pauley also performed it with them on at least two other occasions.[4][5] In 1993 and 1994, the song was played at a slow tempo and was frequently used to open the show. In 1995, the band reworked it with a fast-paced swing arrangement reminiscent of Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing".
Song Themes
A Cappella, Age, Different When Played Live, Forgetting And Remembering, Friendship, Gleeful Irreverence, Non-John Vocals, Numbers, Plants, Questions, Super-Human Qualities, Time
Videos
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