“Garden Song” Composer and Country Songwriter David Mallett Dies
He wrote one of the most recognized and beloved folk songs in history. He wrote scores of other folk songs that went on to be recorded by some 150 separate artists. He also composed songs for numerous country performers, including Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Kathy Mattea, and contributed to the catalog of Hal Ketchum. And though he did his time in Nashville as a professional songwriter, those in Maine know him as a proud son and poet laureate, and are remembering David Mallett fondly after he passed away on December 17th.
To tell the story of David Mallett, you must start with “Garden Song.” Having Pete Seeger cover one of your songs is the ultimate validation in folk circles, but a cavalcade of performers added it to their repertoire as well, from Peter, Paul, and Mary, to John Denver, to even The Muppets.
It was a simple song that said so much. One day while working in his family garden, the inspiration came to Mallett to chronicle the experience in song. Mallett was in his early 20s at the time, and it was one of the first songs he ever wrote. Like a garden, the success of the song only grew over time, and Mallett regarded the song like a gift. For some, it was a song about planting a garden. But for many, it went on to symbolize how daily toils lead to greater things in the future. This was certainly true for the song itself.
Born in Sebec, Maine on April 21st, 1951, David Mallett grew up playing music, and was performing in a band with his brother in northern New England by the time he was 10 years old. Country was a primary influence on Mallett early on, even more than folk. Buck Owens and Johnny Cash had a big impact on him. But when Bob Dylan took the world by storm, Mallett wasn’t immune. It was meeting Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary that ultimately took Mallett down the folk path.
Noel Paul Stookey became a mentor of David Mallett, and produced his first three albums. It was also Stookey who introduced Pete Seeger to “Garden Song,” helping plant the composition as a folk standard when Seeger recorded it in 1979. Mallett was doing just fine in Maine and the Northeast as both a performer and a songwriter for others. But those country influences were still alive in him, and so in the early ’90s, he moved to Nashville to become a professional country songwriter.
Emmylou Harris recorded Mallett’s “Red Red Rose,” and Kathy Mattea cut “Summer of My Dreams.” Hal Ketchum found solid album cuts with “Daddy’s Oldsmobile” and “Old Soldiers” co-written with Mallett. While he was in Nashville, David Mallet also cut a country album of his own called This Town. But perhaps Nashville was too competitive for Mallett, and he was back in Maine by 1997 where he would spend most the rest of his life, and continue to record and release albums.
David Mallett released 17 albums total in his career, and was also a prolific live performer, playing at the famed Newport Folk Festival, and appearing on “Prairie Home Companion.” In Maine, he was popular as a local celebrity, and his passing on December 17th was well-covered in local media. David Mallett was 73 years old.
David Mallet has passed on, but his garden still grows, inch by inch, row by row.
December 21, 2024 @ 1:44 pm
I’m sorry to read of David Mallett’s death. He wrote songs a lot better than that icky one about gardening, but I suppose that will always be the one for which he’s remembered. I doubt that being covered by Pete Seeger (seen in the folk world as a historical figure long before he died) is or was the ultimate validation past, say, 1959.. For one thing, in his later decades Seeger — by choice — paid little attention to other people’s songwriting efforts and did not listen to albums, including Dylan’s after “John Wesley Harding” (to which he would skate in his private rink).
For a song to get to him, it had to pass through a like-minded network — in other words, a certain small subset of folk followers of cornball taste — and it had better be well meaning and sentimental, which “Garden Song” certainly was and which the works of later folk-influenced songwriter contemporaries such as John Prine, James Talley, Guy Clark, Ian Tyson et al. were not.
December 22, 2024 @ 5:33 am
Never heard of Mr. Mallett,but he was an obviously prolific songwriter.RIP,Mr. Mallett.
December 23, 2024 @ 3:56 am
So you are classifying some of if not all
Of John Prines work as “not well meaning and sentimental?”
December 23, 2024 @ 7:36 am
You are correct, sir. I shouldn’t have put “well meaning” and “sentimental” in the same sentence. For “well meaning” substitute “mawkish.” At the same time you might look up the dictionary definition of “sentimental.”
In their writing John Prine and James Talley (still active) both work from a deep moral core, but they don’t communicate their thoughts with a sledgehammer. In their songs they express statements of unusual power tied to their respect for the listener’s own moral intelligence. In fairness, Pete Seeger wrote and covered a handful of superior songs answering to that description, alongside an unfortunate number that were more mawkish and sentimental than effective. Though Seeger and Talley knew each other personally, they had very different ways of portraying the world of experience. Me, I prefer the way Talley and Prine did it.
December 23, 2024 @ 11:07 am
Like his friend and prececessor, Woody Guthrier, Seeger was both a social activist as well as a songwriter and a teacher and a lot of his work was directed specifically for children. He wrote and sang a wide variety of songs–as you finally acknowledge “in fairness.” Some might have been “mawkish” and sentimental,” but, if you want to stick to country, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Lefty and Haggard did some mawkish and sentimental songs, too.
Here’s Seeger doing a non-political classic folk song while purportedly explaining how easy it is to play the banjo (but maybe actually showing off how good he is).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrfs2uaGQag.
I’m not all that familiar with Prine or Talley, but I’m a big fan of both Tyson and Guy Clark. I think they both had wrote several songs that would have been in Seeger’s bailiwick—Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds,” of course, and Guy’s “The Cape,” “The Carpenter,” “Stuff that Works” and even “New Cut Road” and “Blowin’ Like a Bandit,” but I don’t think Pete did many songs that started out as country.
Guy also had a habit of dropping in the b-word, “b*tch”, as an exclamation, in his songs. I’m sure Seeger woud have taken that out–like Ricky Skaggs did, when he sang “Heartbroke”–if he had covered Clark.
December 23, 2024 @ 12:25 pm
I was not, of course, referring to Seeger’s recordings of children’s songs. Nor was I writing about the mid-century country stars you cite. Country music and revival folk started in the same place (traditional music) but evolved in very different directions, stylistically and politically, with largely separate audiences. You and I are among the exceptions.
If you’re familiar with Seeger’s Columbia LPs from the 1960s, it is clear he was listening to the likes of Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, and the like and recording their songs on occasion. (By the way, I don’t understand why you put “even” in front of “New Cut Road” as a Guy Clark song Seeger could have covered. Are you aware that “Road” is based on an old fiddle tune by that name? Seems to me like a natural for Seeger, if he had been aware of the Clark version’s existence.) After that his covers of others’ songs narrowed to those written by what I think of as the neo-Seegers, obscure-to-most performers whom Seeger knew personally and who patterned themselves after him. To my taste — you are entitled to yours, naturally — most of these aren’t very good. I do, however, consider Seeger a fine trad singer.
Another thing I didn’t say or imply, incidentally, is that Seeger could not have recorded the modern folk songs you mention. Obviously, he could have, and I have no doubt he’d have turned in respectable versions. My point was that he had no interest in listening to major folk-influenced songwriters after a certain point.
You really ought to acquaint yourself with James Talley’s work, by the way.
December 24, 2024 @ 11:57 am
Bringing this back to (the great) David Mallett, a couple of examples one might consider from different parts of his career, the song Hard Light (1981), and from his last album, Celebration (2016), both being title songs for the respective albums. He was making music for almost 50 years. Much to enjoy in his music, all comparisons aside.
December 24, 2024 @ 3:03 pm
I knew,was aware of David since the late seventies. I came home to my loft in Portland one afternoon and found David and his band getting ready for a local gig – his sound, songs, were my warm blanket through those winter days. 40 years later he still makes my vinyl rotation. He was Maines Troubadour