For some strange reason, I remember singing an old American folk song-back in grade school. The worhs went like this:
…“I’ve travelled the great big world, I’ve travelled across the great blue seas, nowhere did I find one as sweet, no one as sweet as dear Layotte”
What on earth is this song about?
In the BBQ PIT?
Let’s try Cafe Society.
[ /Modding ]
ralph124c, putting your remembered lyrics into Google got me an expired link to a university’s only article about a singer-songwriter of the 20s, 30s, and 40s: Art Dickson. Specifically it linked to something about this folio of 20 cowboy songs published in 1943. I’m not having any luck tracking things down further than that, though. Maybe someone will recognize that name and be able to go from there.
Alas, Wikipedia doesn’t bring anything up, and the little I can find with Google is going to require a lot of sifting.
Thanks for looking-I have no idea who wrote the song. It was part of a book of American folksongs from my grade school music class. I remember it with songs like “O Shanendoah”, “Turkey In The Straw”, so probably it is older than 1943. Just wondering why it popped into my head!
Just using Google on “Layotte” brought up a song called La Belle Layotte, which was a Creole folk tune, published in the book “Slave Songs of the United States”, by Louis Reichwein in 1867. The sheet music (shown here – use the “look inside” feature to read the actual text) shows the following translation:
Though I’ve wandered every road, I’ve seen no lass fair as Layotte.
Though I’ve wandered every road, none can compare with fair Layotte.
It goes on to ask his friend Jean Babet to report back to him if he runs across her, but to not tell her that he has written this song about her.
I imagine this has probably been translated from the Creole more than once, but the general story is probably the same, does this match up with the lyrics you remember?
There is another song called “Pour la Belle Layotte” which seems to be different. This one appears on a collection of CDs called “The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music” as sung (this song only) by William Eaton (Disk 2, song 4)
You can hear a sample on Amazon here.
(scroll down to song 22)
It’s hard to tell from the short sample, but it definitely seems to be different than the sheet music given in the other source.
One would assume the song was about how beautiful Layotte is.