St. Patrick’s Day is this weekend, and we’re pretty excited that it’s on a Saturday this year! We’re headed out to our local Irish pub to join the festivities and enjoy some of the wonderful live music. (And yes, even in Oshawa we have some great Irish pubs… not bad for the middle of nowhere, eh? Jann Arden, I’m talking to you. :)
Based on previous revelry, I can pretty much guarantee that one of the songs that will be covered at pubs across the country on Saturday is The Unicorn by The Irish Rovers. And that got me thinking about one of my favourite poets, Shel Silverstein.
Shel Silverstein is the renowned author-illustrator of children’s poetry – we love his work so much, we built gifts around his classic book The Giving Tree and his wonderful poetry collection Where the Sidewalk Ends. But did you also know that Silverstein was a renowned songwriter as well, writing songs for himself as well as for others?
Here are some examples of his songs that were subsequently made famous by other musicians:
The Unicorn by The Irish Rovers
A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash (he even won a Grammy in 1970 for writing this!)
Cover of The Rolling Stone by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show (in fact, he wrote all of their biggest hits, including Sylvia’s Mother and Freakin’ at the Freakers Ball, and my personal favourite Roland the Roadie and Gertrude the Groupie)
All classics, all family favourites. Not only did Shel have a huge influence on our childhood with his poetry, but his songs remain a huge part of the music playlist my dad insists on playing up at the cottage every summer. Now that’s some serious cultural influence.
So this St. Patrick’s Day, when your local Irish cover band launches into a rousing, crowd-pleasing rendition of The Unicorn, raise a green pint to Shel Silverstein!
(And if you can’t make it to a pub, you can pretend by watching this.)
As published by By Heart Books - children's books, children's gifts and loot bags