Cold, Cold Heart in Palau

I just discovered that I had missed the last two posts to Jim Geselbracht’s wonderfully nostalgic (for me) Palauan Music blog. I heard lots of Palauan renditions of Japanese enka and American country and western music during my earliest fieldwork in Micronesia in the 1970s. In his latest post, Jim looks at the antecedents of the Palauan song Aggie Chiang from the 1980s, whose melody goes back at least to 1951 recordings by Hank Williams, Dinah Washington, and Tony Bennett. Hank Williams may have adapted it in turn from You’ll Still Be in My Heart (1945) by “T” Texas Tyler and his Oklahoma Melody Boys. Jim posts links to all those renditions.