Sherlock Holmes In Song

Have you ever arrived at a Sherlockian meeting having not read the story of the day? What you need is a 3-minute synopsis. In verse. With music. That very solution is in your hands.

Jim Ballinger began writing folk songs about each of the Sherlock Holmes stories in 1981 and performing them at meetings of the Bootmakers of Toronto with accompaniment on his guitar. After a hiatus or two, the project was completed with the sixtieth song in 2017. The lyrics and notation of the original music are included in this volume, edited by Mark Alberstat.

The music encompasses a variety of styles from generic trad rock or folk rock to Victorian music hall, Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs, sea shanty (Black Peter), rhumba (The Dancing Men, The Sussex Vampire), bouzouki (The Greek Interpreter), country and western (The Three Garridebs), military band (The Naval Treaty), rugby song (The Missing Three-Quarter), and drinking song (The Six Napoleons). There's even some tasteful yodeling at the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem, and The Creeping Man strays dangerously close to punk rock. Other influences include Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Tom Lehrer and Gordon Lightfoot.

Videos of the songs are posted on the YouTube channel Sherlock Songs.