> Folk Music > Songs > Careless Love
Careless Love
[
Roud 422
; Ballad Index R793
; DT CARELOVE
, CARELOV2
; Mudcat 58247
; trad.]
Billy and Dee Dee Pierce played Careless Love on the 1958 Folkways album The Music of New Orleans Volume 3.
Long John Baldry with Davey Graham sang Careless Love on the 1963 Hullabaloo ABC Television programme broadcast on 2 November 1963. It was released in 2020 on DVD.
Dick Miles sang Careless Love in 1986 on his Greenwich Village album Playing for Time. He noted:
A well-known traditional Blues played for the first time on concertina.
Johnny Silvo & Diz Disley played Careless Love on their 1999 Fellside album Blues in the Backyard.
Peggy Seeger and Eliza Carthy sang Careless Love at Peggy’s 70th birthday celebration live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 29 May 2005. This concert was released in 2009 on the BBC/Appleseed album Three Score and Ten.
Des Horsfall’s Kuschty Rye sang Careless Love on their 2011 album The Good Gentleman’s Tonic.
Rosie Upton sang Deep and Careless Love in 2014 on her Village Pump album Basket of Oysters. She noted:
I was singing a version of Deep in Love one day and thought why not combine it with Careless Love—a kind of English country blues! The stories are the same the world over about the woman wronged and the fickleness of man!
Elspeth Cowie sang Careless Love on her 2023 album Who Knows Where the Time Goes?. She noted:
I learned this traditional song from the Folk Songs of North America collection by Alan Lomax. It has become a favourite in sessions where the variation on a theme as old as the hills has a wry twist in the tale that still raises knowing smiles among modern audiences.
Lyrics
Elspeth Cowie sings Careless Love
Chorus (after each verse):
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
Love, oh love, oh careless love
See what careless love has done
When I wore my apron low
When I wore my apron low
When I wore my apron low
You was always hanging round my door
Now my apron strings won’t pin
Now my apron strings won’t pin
Now my apron strings won’t pin
Well you pass my door but you don’t come in
I wonder what my mother will say
I wonder what my mother will say
I wonder what my mother will say
When I come home in a family way
She’ll hang hear head and bite her tongue
She’ll hang hear head and bite her tongue
She’ll hang hear head and bite her tongue
’Cause she did the same when she was young