Ski Songs

I was reminiscing with friends recently about singing songs around the campfire.  A long time ago.  In the summer.  Songs about mountains, rivers, skies.  Songs about canoeing, sailing, hiking. Our instruments of choice then were guitars and harmonicas.  There were lots of fun memories but talk soon shifted from the season that was over to the season that is here.  Which meant songs were irrelevant because—we could not think of one song about skiing!  Seriously!  Are there any?

Googling the phrase “songs about skiing” yields a list of websites that feature “Top 10 skiing songs.”  Or “Top 5.”  Or, “Best.”  Point being, these are songs that have been judged great to listen to while skiing.  They are not about skiing. (Though it's true that The Doors’ Riders on the Storm and Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel are pretty sweet powder tunes…)  I thought my research might be more successful if I searched for the lyrics themselves.  At the Lyrics.com database a truncated search strategy worked, sort of.  This technique involves putting an asterisk at the end of a root word that might have many different endings, in order to find various forms of the research term, ie ski*. In this case the letters s,k,i begin all of the words ski, skiing, skier, and skis.  Unfortunately, they also start the word skies, about which many songs have been sung! So, this librarian suggests that you use the truncation trick in research databases or library catalogs, where you can also include a “this, but not that” key word directive.

Some of the songs I did find?  How about Billie Holiday’s Moonlight in Vermont with the lyrics: 

Pennies in a stream/Falling leaves a sycamore/Moonlight in Vermont/Gentle finger waves/Ski trails down a mountain side/Snow light in Vermont.

Sara Vaughn and Count Basie did a pretty good job with it too…Just ask Alexa.

In To Be Given a Body Torres sings:

Where would I have been if/Not safe in the middle/Pressed between/His right shoulder/Your left shoulder/Drowsy on the ski lift/Drowsy on the ski lift…

Let’s just say, the song was not a hit.  Four Bitchin’ Babes sing:

Look at me I'm skiing/When I do not like skiing/But he loves skiing/And I love him/I rent the boots and poles/ I shiver in the cold I'm charging down the mountain/Risking life and limb/There's no exhilaration /I am only feeling terrified/Everyone everyone around me's having/Such a great time/I do not like skiing/But look at me I'm skiing/It's a good thing He can't read my mind.

Hmmm...a tune that is both a song about skiing and a ballad about a doomed relationship.

A number of raps about ski masks and guns can be found on the Amazon “ski-word” playlist but I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with the actual sport.

I gave up on the web and the free pseudo-databases and went to Worldcat.org, a giant catalog of items held in libraries all over the globe, where I found what I was looking for.  An album by Bob Gibson, produced in 2008 called Ski Songs.  Perfect for a summer camp chorus-- vocals, banjo, guitars and surely a harmonica or two.  The song titles on the album are: Celebrated skier, In this white world, Super skier, Highlands Lassie, Bend in his knees, Talking skier, Ski patrol, Skiin' in the mornin', Super skier's last race, What'll we do, Skol the skier.  Now this is an album of ski songs!  You build a campfire in the snow while I look up the chords!

(Find the album in a library near you at http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/225876490)